2024 TOP 10 BLOG
How Can Maine’s Constitutional “Right to Food” Serve as a Foundation for Prioritizing Food System Resilience Across the State of Maine?
VJEL Staff Editor: Alexander Arroyo
Faculty Member: Laurie Beyranevand
In Maine and beyond, food insecurity affects tens of millions of people. Every day, people face impossible choices between basic needs like healthcare, rent, and education. This intersectional burden disproportionately falls on working families with low incomes, people of color, women, and children. Unequal access to healthy and nutritious food reflects deep structural inequities across our society, such as wage and wealth gaps, elevated poverty rates, and racism. Currently, federal food assistance programs support over 160,000 Mainers. Yet, these critical programs are vulnerable to political shifts, where funding becomes a bargaining tool in negotiations on how to allocate federal funding in the farm and food space.
As the wild and destructive weather of this past summer shows, human systems are extremely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Temperature increases, changes in rainfall patterns, reductions in water availability, and extreme weather events reduce agricultural productivity and can even wipe out entire crops for a growing season. These impacts also disrupt supply chains and food delivery, resulting in spikes in food prices and food unavailability. This situation is made worse by our current industrial food system, which heavily relies on massive monocropping. Moreover, a few giant agri-businesses have consolidated control of crucial commodities, making them the primary beneficiaries of federal subsidies, especially in the event of losses.
There is no better time than now to examine the shortcomings and inequities and consider how to address this dire situation in a sustainable and just manner. Food systems that are neither equitable, nor resilient, exacerbate food insecurity.
Maine’s recent constitutional amendment—the “Right to Food“— potentially serves as a beacon of hope, if done well and with consideration to make its protections equitable and democratic. In November 2021, Maine became the first state in the U.S. to enshrine the human right to food in Article I, Section 25 of its State Constitution. The success of the amendment followed a decade of organizing and legislative efforts to advance food sovereignty and food resiliency policies. These actions provide a broad base of support for Maine’s vision for ending hunger in the State by 2030.
This article explores how Maine’s groundbreaking constitutional provision can bolster state efforts to combat hunger, encourage policies that support local agriculture, and serve as a foundation for prioritizing food system equity and resilience across the state.
Food Systems and Food and Nutrition Security
Food systems define how we eat. They are complex networks that determine how we access and consume food. Food systems can be as simple as a trip to the garden or as complicated as a global network that is more industrial than natural. These systems are made up of farmworkers, farmers and ranchers, fishers and foragers, trucks and trains, markets and wholesalers, restaurants and cafeterias, consumers and eaters, and so much else.
Food and nutrition security is the measure of a person’s ability to consistently and equitably access healthy, nutritious, safe, and affordable foods that are essential for living a healthy, dignified, and thriving life. At a minimum, food and nutrition security means that nutritionally adequate and safe foods are both readily available and able to be acquired in socially acceptable ways, without resorting to emergency food supplies.
Local and regional food systems can play a crucial role in generating food and nutrition security and resilience for a community. Resilience refers to the capacity of food systems to respond to unforeseen disturbances, particularly in times of crisis, such as pandemics and climate change-related events. Often, resilience efforts are targeted at responding to the immediate crises rather than prioritizing long-term strategic planning that accounts for lasting impacts. Defining a right to food is a significant step to help prioritize long-term strategic food system planning in state policy now more than ever.
Maine’s Efforts to End Hunger
Maine’s food system exists at the end of a long, industrial food chain. This makes the state susceptible to disruptions in those long supply chains. Although the state produces enough crops to meet the needs of Maine’s 1.3 million residents, it imports the vast majority of the food that residents consume.
Maine has higher rates of food insecurity than other New England states. Hunger impacts hundreds of thousands of Mainers and jeopardizes the vitality of their communities. Data from 2022 revealed that nearly 12% of Maine residents experienced food insecurity and tens of thousands of families rely on federal food program assistance.
Maine has taken important steps toward ending hunger and building food system resilience. The state legislature enacted laws to address food and nutrition insecurity, increase food self-sufficiency, promote regional food procurement, and support local food sovereignty. The state’s plans include the promotion of “personal and regional food self-provisioning and self-sufficiency,” protecting farmland and fisheries, and encouraging urban agriculture and community gardens.
From a procurement perspective, Maine’s Department of Corrections is a national leader in sourcing local foods. They have even taken the initiative to establish farms that teach agricultural skills while growing produce for use on-site. Moreover, Maine’s schools utilize a state “Local Food Fund,” which matches funds for purchases of produce, dairy, protein, and other minimally processed foods purchased directly from a variety of local sources including farmers, local food hubs, local food processors, and food service distributors in the State.
Constitutionalizing an Enforceable Right to Food
In November 2021, Maine citizens voted to add the “Right to Food” to their State Constitution. The amendment seeks to ensure the right of individuals to grow crops, raise livestock, and forage and hunt during a time when industrial agriculture and corporatization threatens local and community ownership of food supplies.Sponsors of the amendment stated that the “legislation would help individuals fight hunger and regain control over food systems and supply” by supporting efforts to shrink supply chains and empower local food producers. The nonprofit, Why Hunger, called the vote “a transformative step in ensuring the protection of food as an unequivocal basic human right.” This “Right to Food” will have its greatest social impact by encouraging sustainable and environmentally friendly production, while supporting equitable access to healthy and nutritious food for all Mainers.
At the federal level, the Farm Bill is an extensive piece of legislation that funds food assistance programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), among much other important support for agriculture. The Farm Bill expired at the end of September 2023, putting a stop to all critical aid from that program until Congress can pass a new Farm Bill. Over 160,000 Mainers rely on the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Recognizing food as a human right obligates governments to eradicate food insecurity. A fundamental right to food for all residents necessarily depends on food systems that are resilient in the face of social and environmental change. Maine’s efforts to build a strong local food system, while guaranteeing a right to food to all Mainers, provides a solid foundation for a food system in Maine that serves Mainers equitably and is resilient to changing conditions. Maine can establish such a system on the foundation of a constitutionally guaranteed right to food. This will free the state from being reliant on industrial food supply chains and independent from the uncertainties of federal aid, which consistently put Mainers at risk of hunger.
A Right to Food should mean a right to a resilient food system. Framing this right as a central focus of food system policy enables coordinated government action that can address the multi-dimensional challenges posed by climate change and inequitable social structures.
If the focus is on just and equitable food system resilience, Maine’s constitutional “Right to Food” can serve as a model for asserting the basic human right to live free from fear of hunger. It can support state efforts to diversify and localize food systems, improve local procurement policies, and enhance the ability of individuals to access healthy and nutritious food consistently and affordably. It sets an example for other states to adopt constitutional provisions that prioritize resilient, local food systems which uphold the fundamental right to food. In Maine’s state motto, “Dirigo” (meaning “I guide“), there is a fitting reminder that Maine’s efforts can guide the nation towards a more equitable, resilient, and food-secure future.