News

Municipal agricultural commissions have a new role to play, thanks to an amendment to the law that gives local boards of health their authority, which was enacted earlier this year. Local boards of health must now submit any new regulation that impacts agriculture to the agricultural commission, should it exist, for review before it can […]

Funds from the most recent federal coronavirus relief package, the American Rescue Plan (ARP), will soon be available to municipalities. The program’s preliminary guidance cites food insecurity as one of the reasons these resources are being distributed, and states that funds may be spent “To respond to the public health emergency or its negative economic […]

Last week’s budget draft from the Senate Committee on Ways and Means reflects how effective all of your advocacy has been! The proposal included funding at the requested levels for priorities like the Healthy Incentives Program, Buy Local Organizations, MEFAP, the MA Food Trust, and others. Four amendments have been introduced that would further strengthen […]

Last week’s budget proposal from the House Committee on Ways and Means budget draft reflects how effective all of your advocacy has been! The proposal included funding at the requested levels for priorities like the Healthy Incentives Program, Buy Local Organizations, MEFAP, the MA Food Trust, and others. Three amendments have been introduced that would […]

Do you want to: Understand how to read legislation? Learn advocacy tips to help bills get passed? Help build advocacy efforts around key bills? Then join the Collaborative for our upcoming series of Advocacy 102 sessions on key local food system bills under consideration in the Massachusetts Legislature. The Zoom-based workshops begin on April 22 […]

Massachusetts’ local food system has been vital to the response to COVID-19.When the national and global food supply chains failed, local farmers,fishermen, processors, and distributors stepped up to help fill the gaps. When the crisis increased demand for the emergency food system, food banks, pantries, schools, and other community-based organizations developed and implemented innovative ways […]

The Massachusetts Food System Collaborative (www.mafoodsystem.org), which has led the Campaign for HIP Funding (www.hipma.org) for four years, opposes Governor Baker’s plan to dramatically cut support for healthy families and sustainable farms by reducing funding for the Healthy Incentives Program (HIP) as proposed in yesterday’s release of H1. HIP is a vital program for nearly […]

For Massachusetts farmers to feed the Commonwealth, land must be available and affordable.  There are a number of laws, programs, regulations, and an executive order seeking to maintain our agricultural land base, but they do not coordinate, or do not coordinate well with each other, leading to , reduced effectiveness, economic and administrative inefficiency, and […]

Participants in the 2020 listening sessions that led to publication of Massachusetts’ Local Food System: Perspectives on Resilience and Recovery repeatedly raised the need to build up awareness of the local food system at the municipal level. There were many ideas put forward toward that goal: engaging municipal leaders in food system advocacy; building coalitions […]

In June, 2020, the Collaborative began interviewing stakeholders about changes to their operations in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. The three completed case studies serve as a record of that extraordinary time, illustrating how local groups were able to adapt and what they learned about what's needed to ensure resiliency in the face of future […]