Supporting homegrown food

Schools in Westbrook and School Administrative District 6 should be looking at a program in Gorham that brings locally grown food to students and considering how they might get similar programs started in their schools.

The program, called the Maine Harvest Lunch, brought food grown by local farmers to the cafeterias at Gorham elementary schools and the middle school last Wednesday. As a part of the program, representatives from the Cumberland County Soil and Water Conservation District came to classrooms to talk to students about the importance of eating locally grown food. Farms in Gorham, Buxton, Scarborough, Cape Elizabeth and Saco participated in the program.

Unfortunately, local farms are a dying breed. Buxton farmer Ken Moulton recently had to erect a for sale sign on the 200 acres he had been working since he was 8 years old.

Moulton’s 35 milking cows produce about 1,750 pounds of milk a day. Moulton receives about $15 for each hundred pounds of milk, which equals about $1.29 a gallon. That’s the same price he got for the milk 30 years ago.

“I can’t keep going to lose money every year,” said Moulton.

Unfortunately, Moulton’s story is not unique. Buxton and Gorham were once mostly farmland. But that’s been changing.

As roads and refrigeration for trucks have improved, local farmers have had to compete more and more with farms located in warmer climates, where the growing season is much longer. Farmers here have also had to deal with increasing land values because of the demand for housing in the communities around Portland. That makes it difficult to expand farms by purchasing nearby land.

The program in Gorham lasts for only one day, which alone will do little to combat the market forces bearing down on local farmers. But if other school districts were to adopt similar programs, and Gorham were to expand its program to offer locally grown food for a week it would aid local farmers even more.

Children enrolled in local schools might begin to understand that the remaining farmers in their community, like Jeff and Bonnie Hawkes who own a vegetable market on Main Street in Gorham and a 150-acre farm in Buxton, depend on them to buy their food.

Connecting to the ‘pike

The Gorham Town Council is right to be looking for a solution to solving traffic congestion that would be created by the Gorham bypass before it’s even built.

Considering the glacial pace at which any road project seems to move, the town should be letting the Turnpike Authority know what it wants sooner rather than later. It took 30 years to get money for a bypass. Hopefully, connecting that bypass to the Turnpike can move a little faster.

The problem with waiting for a bypass to be built is that it could just move traffic congestion in Gorham Village to other roads, like Route 25 in Westbrook and routes 22 and 114 in South Gorham. Those are roads that don’t need any more traffic.

Westbrook has wanted to improve Route 25 (William Clarke Drive) for years. Those improvements are in a holding pattern right now waiting for money. Meanwhile, cars continue to travel and people continue to cross an unsafe road.

Hopefully, for once, the town, state and federal governments can solve a regional traffic problem all at once.

Brendan Moran, editor