For immediate release: 10/12/11
Contact Person: Robb Kidd, (802) 223-7222, robb@ruralvermont.org
Rural Vermont and the Brattleboro area’s Post Oil Solutions announce a collaboration to facilitate discussions about local food sovereignty in the Brattleboro community.
The first meeting will be held at the Marlboro Graduate Center, Room 2 East, 28 Vernon Street, Brattleboro, on November 3 at 7pm. A half hour video presentation featuring Bob St Peter’s discussion about Sedgwick, Maine’s Local Food and Self Governance Ordinances will be aired to stimulate the conversation. Bob St Peter organized the passing of the ordinance in Sedgwick, Maine, is the Executive Director of Food for Maine’s Future and is currently on the board of the National Family Farm Coalition. Light refreshments will be available.
Rural Vermont, a statewide advocacy organization, has embarked on a campaign to facilitate discussions with local partners on developing local food sovereignty. Over the past 26 years, Rural Vermont has been engaged in advocating for agricultural policy change in Vermont, and continues to face enormous hurdles with federal and state policies and a commodity food system that undervalues local sourced food. Rural Vermont is working with communities all throughout Vermont in their campaign to support food sovereignty. Robb Kidd, Rural Vermont Organizer, states that “too many times food policy discussions take place in small meeting rooms in Montpelier, and inadvertently leave the communities out of the discussion. Rural Vermont is bringing food discussions back to the local community, where it belongs.”
Collaborating with Post Oil Solutions, Rural Vermont is excited to work with a local, community-based organization addressing solutions to the challenges of modern society. Tim Stevenson, Founding Director of Post Oil solutions, states that “food sovereignty means food democracy, the right of a people to choose how we will feed ourselves. It means reclaiming our right as communities to control our food system, from seed to table, to produce, process, sell and purchase our local foods as we decide. As an organization dedicated to building a regional community-based food system, Post Oil Solutions believes that food sovereignty is second to none to fulfilling this mission.”
Rural Vermont and Post Oil Solutions welcome input from the Brattleboro community. Part of the agenda of the meeting is to begin a process for Brattleboro and Windham County communities to cultivate local food sovereignty as each community feels appropriate. Whether the approach is to adopt local food sovereignty ordinances similar to what the community of Sedgwick, Maine passed last March, or to proceed with Vermont’s tradition of Town Meeting Day advisory resolutions, we hope to build upon the success of the growing international movement for food sovereignty.
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.
Post Oil Solutions is a group of citizens from the Southeast Vermont bio-region who began meeting in June 2005. Post Oils Solutions works in the communities that straddle the Connecticut River between Southeastern Vermont, Southwestern New Hampshire and Northwestern Massachusetts, though most of the work centers on the more populated towns of Brattleboro and Bellows Falls. In working toward the vision of sustainable and socially just communities, they are inspired by what they value most. For more info, call 802.869.2141, visit www.postoilsolutions, or email info@postoilsolutions.org.