From balanced solar siting policies to comprehensive plans and tax programs, municipalities have an important role to play in protecting farmland from being lost to development, helping farm businesses thrive, and ensuring that local ordinances and planning initiatives respond to the diverse needs and goals of farmers in their communities.
There is much that can be done locally to advance farm-friendly policy and planning solutions, often by town boards or committees, but also by individuals who care about agriculture and recognize opportunities for change or action in their communities.
We support Maine towns in the important role they play in sustaining and growing local agriculture by producing and sharing informational resources, engaging in community and municipal outreach and education efforts, and providing direct technical assistance to towns that are looking to advance farm-friendly policies and planning initiatives.
If your town is considering a solar siting ordinance or you want to help your community become more farm-friendly across the board, you can share the resource guides below with your town officials to offer ideas and strategies to support your local farms.
These guides contain tools & strategies, case studies, and examples from across Maine and New England that can help towns adopt policies and planning initiatives that support the farms in their communities.
If you are a member of town staff or a municipal board or committee, please consider initiating a conversation about how your town can use these guides and take steps to support local agriculture. If your town is interested in taking action, contact us below to learn about our municipal technical assistance services.
If you’re a community member, share this guide with your town officials! There may be ordinances being developed or planning processes underway in your town that impact agriculture, and these guides can serve as an important resource.
Not sure who to send it to? Points of contact to look for on your town’s website include: town clerk, town/city manager or administrator, planning director, community/economic development director, select board or town/city council chair, and the planning board chair. Your town may also have a conservation commission, climate committee, and/or comprehensive plan committee working on issues that impact farms and farmland.
Cultivating Maine’s Agricultural Future: A Policy and Planning Guide for Towns (Second Edition) provides municipalities and communities with:
An update to the original 2011 publication by Maine Farmland Trust, American Farmland Trust, and the Mainewatch Institute, the Second Edition of this guide was produced by Maine Farmland Trust in 2024 in collaboration with the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry. The Second Edition is the result of insights and contributions from numerous town officials, farmers, partner organizations, and other municipal and agricultural stakeholders across the state and region.
The Second Edition of Cultivating Maine’s Agricultural Future is chock-full of information! In an effort to make this resource more user-friendly, you have the option to download the full guide or download selected sections as standalone documents.
Navigation tip: The Table of Contents is hyperlinked and each page number is also hyperlinked back to the Table of Contents - this design feature will help you navigate more easily to different parts of the document.
Download: Inventories and Information Gathering
Download: Municipal Tax Programs
Download: Municipal Planning
Download: Local Ordinances
Download: the 2011 First Edition. The original 2011 guide remains a useful resource. The Second Edition maintains much of the original content, while also expanding upon and updating the facts and figures, guidance, tools/strategies, and town examples with more recent information and to reflect current issues relevant to creating farm-friendly communities in Maine.
Balancing Solar Development and Farmland Protection: A Solar Siting Guide for Maine Towns is a resource for municipal officials and community members that are interested in exploring how solar energy generation and agriculture can co-exist in Maine in a mutually beneficial manner through solar siting strategies that minimize impacts to farms and farmland. This guide provides towns with general agricultural solar siting guidelines, example strategies from solar ordinances adopted by towns across Maine and New England, and in-depth case studies on the approaches three Maine towns took in developing a solar ordinance for their community.
MFT produced this guide in 2022 in collaboration with the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry (DACF) as an early release section for the Second Edition of Cultivating Maine’s Agricultural Future. MFT and DACF hosted an informational forum in November 2022 for municipal officials to explore how towns can support solar development while minimizing impacts to valuable agricultural resources. Watch the recording of that forum.
Download: Balancing Solar Development and Farmland Protection: A Solar Siting Guide for Maine Towns
Is your town interested in taking action to support local agriculture?
We want to hear from you! Maine Farmland Trust offers free municipal technical assistance and outreach on a variety of local policy tools and planning strategies that can help towns support farms and farmland protection efforts in their communities.
Some examples of technical assistance include helping town committees to craft and enact solar ordinances to protect important agricultural resources, or collaborating with town comprehensive review committees to survey local farmers and share key learnings and strategy ideas to consider in their multi-year planning process. Learn more about MFT’s Municipal Outreach and TA Services.
If you’re a town official, contact us below to let us know what topics your town is considering and where you could use support!
