For immediate release
Mar. 8, 2012
Contact
Robb Kidd
Phone: (802) 223-7222
Email: robb@ruralvermont.org
With the broad support of thousand of friends and neighbors, Rural Vermont successfully petitioned and passed local food sovereignty resolutions on Town Meeting Day in Benson, Calais, Charlotte, Chester, Groton, Montpelier, Peacham, and West Windsor. These communities demonstrated the broad based support for enhancing and expanding the ability of Vermonters to Feed Vermonters. Communities overwhelmingly voted by wide margins to pass these resolutions, and in particular the Montpelier Local Food Sovereignty Resolution passed by 1948 to 461 on article 41. The other towns easily passed on voice votes.
These diverse communities all support the vision of a local food system that meets the needs of our community, supports our farmers, and sustains our lands. Debate at town meetings, and events prior to town meeting day, highlighted the real on-ground problems farmers and consumers are faced with accessing community based foods. Whether it is a farmer in Chester who can not sell milk to her customers at her market just down the road from the farm, costly regulatory burdens for a small goat farmer in Peacham, or the concerns of a Calais resident who wants to know if her food has been genetically engineered, Vermonters are concerned and want to see policies that are appropriate to the needs of their communities.
Calais Farmer Peter Harvey stated, “Food Sovereignty is about taking back our basic rights to be able to choose what we eat in a country and state that increasingly is forcing us to eat Industrial Manufactured food. Food Sovereignty is about allowing people to eat food that their neighbors grow, produce, and share, on a small local scale, without the threat of violence from the Giant Food Industry and State Government Regulators.”
Rural Vermont Organizer and Montpelier Resident Robb Kidd said “too many times food policy discussions take place in small meeting rooms of multi-national corporations and Washington D.C., that leave the affected communities out of the discussion.”
Speaking of her town’s resolution, Lisa Kaiman, a Chester farmer, passionately emphasized that “it is ridiculous and silly that consumers have to express a desire to preserve their right to buy local food. It seems like a ‘given’ in this free country of ours. The most basic of ‘givens’. But since it isn’t, we need to stand and be heard or go hungry!!”
The Town Meeting Day resolutions are just one piece of Rural Vermont’s broad campaign to support Vermonters Feeding Vermonters.
Rural Vermont will continue collaborating with communities and groups throughout Vermont to develop local food systems that sustain our farmers, our communities, and our lands.
Rural Vermont is a nonprofit advocacy group founded by farmers in 1985 that advocates, activates, and educates for living soils, thriving farms, and healthy communities. For more info, call (802) 223-7222, visit www.ruralvermont.org, or email robb@ruralvermont.org.
Read the story on VTDigger here: EIGHT communities demonstrate broad support for Vermonters feeding Vermonters.