Projects | Midcoast Permaculture

By Nathan Davis and Jesse Labbe-Watson | Dec 01, 2016 Original link

This question is at the core of the movement for food sovereignty in Maine and around the world. Food sovereignty is the assertion of local control over our food system, and the assertion against control by big agribusiness and nonlocal corporate interests. Eighteen municipalities in Maine have passed food sovereignty ordinances, and food sovereignty is now before the Rockland City Council. Rockland would be the largest community in Maine to pass a food sovereignty ordinance, and the first city to do so. We strongly support food sovereignty, and we think that the proposed food sovereignty ordinance deserves the Council’s support.

The movement for food sovereignty in Maine began in 2009, when Heather Retberg at Quill’s End Farm in Penobscot wanted to sell raw milk directly to her neighbors. She became frustrated when state regulators required her to obtain a permit that would have demanded expensive investment far beyond what her small-scale sales could justify. It seemed ludicrous that regulations created for and by the factory farm industry would be applied to neighbor-to-neighbor transactions. So Heather and other like-minded farmers and consumers drafted what became the first food sovereignty ordinance in the state. This ordinance has become a model for ordinances in communities throughout Maine, including the one before our City Council.

The preamble to the ordinance begins as follows: “We the People of Rockland, Knox County, Maine have the right to grow, produce, process, sell, purchase and consume local foods thus promoting self-reliance, the preservation of our local food economy, family farms, and local food traditions.” It then continues with philosophical and legal justification (drawing upon the Maine Constitution and Maine Revised Statutes) before arriving at the core statements of law: “Producers or processors of local foods in the City of Rockland are exempt from licensure and inspection provided that the transaction is only between the producer or processor and a patron when the food is sold for home consumption”; and “Producers or processors of local foods in the City of Rockland are exempt from licensure and inspection provided that their products are prepared for, consumed, or sold at a community social event.” The ordinance thus covers only transactions in which there is little or no separation between producer and consumer. It applies to neither third-party distributors, grocery stores, nor restaurants. It relies on – and strengthens – the feedback loops and bonds of community that nourish local business and form the fabric of traditional Maine life.

Food sovereignty supports economic development, environmental sustainability, community resilience, food security, local control, and individual liberty:

It combats control of our food and our government by large unaccountable corporations. It’s no secret that big agribusiness drives government food policy. As President Obama stated in a recent interview, “For a long time, agribusiness has had obviously a prominent seat at the table in Congress. It’s bipartisan.” Food sovereignty aims to remove regulatory burdens appropriate to large industrial-scale food production from small farms and producers (and ONLY from small farms and producers).
Huge monoculture farms produce well-documented negative environmental effects. Food sovereignty encourages diverse, small crops rather than uniform, large ones. It promotes active and careful stewardship of our farmland and natural resources by encouraging tight feedback loops between patrons and farmers.
Localized food systems are resilient against economic, environmental, and other stressors. We don’t know what our climate, economy, or society will look like in 20 or 50 years, and we should build systems and structures (not just related to food) that will lead to prosperity in a variety of futures, some of which may involve the weakening of national and global supply lines.
A food sovereignty ordinance in Rockland would reinforce our position as a leader in local food culture, which attracts visitors, new residents, and investment to our community.
Food sovereignty preserves Maine’s traditional food heritage and folkways, which are among the reasons that Maine is a great place to live.
Food sovereignty guarantees in local law the right for people to choose where they obtain their food and how that food is produced. If you want to get your food from a big store, you can do that. If you want to support a young farmer in the startup phase of their business, you are free to do that as well. A food sovereignty ordinance reduces the capital-intensive barriers to entry that many small farmers struggle with and also codifies the right of farmers to be able to sell directly to patrons who willingly support them.
Local law is the next frontier and most powerful current tool for protecting a sustainable agriculture system made resilient by diversified small-scale producers exercising their own right to self-determination.
This ordinance supports local businesses in the growing agricultural sector of Maine’s economy. By extension, it supports all local businesses, because if people can’t eat nourishing food, they can’t work or live here.

You may have heard of the “Farmer Brown” case decided by the Maine Supreme Court in 2014 against a seller of raw milk in Blue Hill. Contrary to some accounts, the Court did NOT strike down the food sovereignty ordinance in Blue Hill, nor did it strike down any food sovereignty ordinance elsewhere. Rockland would not contravene the Court’s decision by passing this ordinance. Government regulations around food safety arose in the early 1900s in response to centralized industrial meatpacking plants and have never been designed for small-scale direct farm-to-patron sales. The original motivation for food safety regulations like the Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1907 was for government to provide oversight in situations where the consumer could not do that for themselves. A food sovereignty ordinance clarifies where government oversight is needed and where it isn’t. Under this ordinance, direct patrons of local farms would essentially regulate how farms produce food by taking their business to farms they trust in a true free market.

Food is one of the most immediate and intimate aspects of human life. Let’s celebrate that immediacy rather than ceding it to structures and systems built to mitigate the worst aspects of the industrial food systems of the past. Small farms drive Maine’s economy and attract young people to our state, and their numbers are increasing. Let’s keep it that way.

Nathan Davis and Jesse Labbe-Watson both live in Rockland. Davis is a co-founder of Renew Rockland, which has proposed a food sovereignty ordinance for the city. Labbe-Watson is the founder of Midcoast Permaculture, current board president of the Permaculture Association of the Northeast, and an expert in designing and building regenerative food systems for home and farm clients.

This was an earthworks project in the back woods of Waldo county. The design process for this project started with a concept sketch for the client whose goal is to develop this piece of land into an agroforestry farm with a focus on chestnuts. The design challenge in this case was the topography and the process of transitioning the species composition of an existing forest. We got called to consult on the project after the logging operation had been done.

The consult led to this cursory design sketch which we then used as the starting point for construction. We began with a ridge access road to build the first few terraces at the height of land near the northern border of this parcel, highlighted in yellow. In this case the client was keen to begin construction of water conserving earthworks on this hillside as they had already purchased the chestnuts and wanted to get them planted as soon as possible. Another challenge to the project was that while the client lives nearby, it is not the current residence, but likely will be for the client’s “next act.” So establishment of this system may involve challenges of periodic neglect because there are no permanent residents living on site yet.

The recent logging operation left quite a bit of slash across the landscape which presented a challenge for us to work around. The slash made layout of the terraces in the landscape especially hard because we couldn’t see the surface of the ground as readily as we would have liked.

We used a water level to find our contour lines and make adjustments for BFRs, BFSs and between-row tree spacing. I’ve been assured that BFR stands for “Big Fat Rock” and that BFS stands for “Bid Fat Stump.” The spacing of the terraces was based on the mature crown diameter of chestnuts which we assumed to be about 40 feet in diameter given the forested conditions. Normally in a field or pasture setting, i would plan on a chestnut growing a canopy of 50 feet or more. The client’s stated goal was for a closed canopy chestnut grove so that meant we could space our terraces somewhat close together. The in-row spacing will also be tight to encourage a fast, upright growth habit.

The excavator moved earth, rocks, stumps and large logs while the hand crew arranged slash on contour and constructed our hugel berms. The terrace itself will serve as vehicle access, pasture and grazing lanes. The chestnut trees themselves will be planted on or below the hugel berms, functioning as tree planting beds.

For this landscape we laid out the terraces from the middle and worked our way outward toward the ridges. Since we are working with contour, you can see that the middle of the terraces are the closest points together and then flare out toward the ridge. Since the middle is the pinch point we had to space our terraces from one another starting from this middle point. It was a balancing act: we wanted to space the terraces at least 35 feet to allow for full crown expression of the mature chestnuts, but since the excavator was on the small side for this job, we also had to avoid big stumps and great big rocks. We pulled small to medium stumps, but we wanted to avoid the larger pine stumps. The result was a between-row spacing of between 30-40 feet. It was the best compromise given all the other obstacles in the landscape we were designing around. We did a final grading of these terraces by hand, and so we needed to remove any prominent debris. Once the grading and construction of the downhill berm was complete we mulched the beds heavily with old round bales of hay we got from the dairy farm down the road. The seeds present in the hay will introduce pasture species of grasses and forbs into the forest soil seedbank. We also recommended sowing a pasture mix of seed or something like a deer forage seed mix.

2016 was a year of drought in Maine, and while that made it easy for us to do our earthworks it also suggested another issue regarding establishment: irrigation. I had put an irrigation tank at height of land in the cursory design, but there was no plan just yet for installing it. I emphasized to the client the need for an irrigation plan given the changing and variable climate. Under normal climatic regimes you wouldn’t need supplemental irrigation to get the chestnuts established. But since we’re off the map now regarding climate, it seems critical to provide irrigation to the investment of nut trees. Fortunately, the client does have a plan now for a gravity feed irrigation tank at the top of the hill. They will use two 250 gallon IBC tanks placed at height of land to provide irrigation water. Periodically the tanks will be topped off with a sump pump placed in a nearby dug well.

In the meantime, the chestnut trees got heeled in a temporary garden bed for the winter. They will get planted out in the spring into the berms on the downslope side of the terraces. We learned that a concept sketch is good for small residential garden construction projects, however a farm is much more complicated and involves more planning between the concept, construction, establishment, maintenance and how all of that fits into the overall business plans for the farm. We were able to make this project work because no matter the business plan or the ultimate composition of trees and livestock, this hillside will need access. We were able to provide that with a ridge path leading to all the terraces we built.

The client learned that starting the design from the tree or vegetation layer can cause problems of retrofitting a landscape design around that vegetation element. We usually recommend starting with goals first, then topography, water, and access before moving on to designing the vegetation layer, in alignment with the Regrarians platform. Even though you may read on the internet that permaculture is focused on planting trees early in the establishment of a project, that only applies if your earthworks, access (roads) and irrigation plans are all sorted out first. And while all of that might be easy for a home residence situation where you already have a residential structure, electricity and plumbing; when developing a site without those assets, the phases of construction should be carefully considered with close attention to goals.

A tighter attention to goals rather than elements makes for an easier decision making process. In this case most of our decisions were focused on keeping the chestnut trees alive because they had been purchased in the spring before the logging operation had been done. The client jumped down the hierarchy of design and skipped to thinking about vegetation and trees without consideration of access, water or geography, all of which are higher in the hierarchy of design. During the drought this year, water proved to be an especially important limiting factor for this design.

There is some distortion in this shot because it’s a panoramic photo, but on the right you can see the ridge road that provides access to all the terraces. Here are the finished terraces showing the slope we were working with and the lay of the contour lines on the hillside. The hugel berms are also visible and will provide the chestnut seedlings their planting beds. Width, size, lineal distance.

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