Food Freedom

And how it revitalizes rural communities

As we explored a few weeks back, much of our nation’s agricultural policy is morally and economically corrupt.

But the work we do here at the Rural Revival Project is more than pointing out uncomfortable truth. We’re focused on spiritual, agricultural and economic solutions from people in rural America.

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Food freedom is a term most Americans are not yet familiar with. The idea is that people have the right to grow food, hunt, save seeds, fish, make cheese, milk a cow. In addition, people have the right to buy food from their neighbors, eat the food of their own choosing, and to do so without approval from government entities.

We’re all familiar with freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and the right to bear arms because these were outlined in our Bill of Rights. They are fundamental to our identity as Americans. Our founders, as ingenius and forward-thinking as they were, were not able to foresee a future in which it would be illegal to raise chickens in one’s backyard, to buy an unregulated chicken pot pie from a neighbor, or to grow a garden in the front of one’s house.

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The food freedom movement is a national initiative to amend state constitutions and eventually the national one to provide people with the right to food.

A few years back, Maine became the first state in the nation to successfully amend their constitution with this right to citizens:

All individuals have a natural, inherent and unalienable right to save and exchange seeds and the right to grow, raise, harvest, produce and consume the food of their own choosing for their own nourishment, sustenance, bodily health and well-being, as long as an individual does not commit trespassing, theft, poaching or other abuses of private property rights, public lands or natural resources in the harvesting, production or acquisition of food.

It passed with more than 60% approval in a statewide vote uniting Republicans and Democrats. The bill was cosponsored by blue collar legislators - farmer Craig Hickman (D) and lobsterman Billy Bob Faulkingham (R).

In the four years since the bill’s passage, there has been an explosion of economic activity and success in rural Maine. The amendment paired with the Maine Food Sovereignty Act allows for people to have a right to food, and the ability to sell food without government interference. This has led to lots of people starting home bakeries, making cheese and yogurt to sell to neighbors and raising cows to process into locally-sourced grass-fed burgers.

Last year the Stockholm Sovereign Market got started in Northern Maine and immediately launched dozens of businesses.

And the movement is spreading. More and more people in rural America are realizing that food freedom is a ticket to economic opportunity. Across the country, state after state is making changes to their laws to allow for small-scale unregulated food businesses.

This is just the beginning.

best thoughts,

graham