TideSmart Talk with Stevoe host Steve Woods (left) was joined in the studio by Former Majority House Leader and Executive Director of Maine Farmland Trust John Piotti (right).<\/p><\/div>\n
Piotti served as Director of the Maine Farms Project, a program of Coastal Enterprises, Inc. (CEI), a statewide community development corporation with a national reputation for innovation and effectiveness.\u00a0 He spent time in Sweden and Brussels exploring European models for using agriculture as a vehicle to advance sustainable community development.<\/p>\n
Piotti became the Executive Director of Maine Farmland Trust (MFT) in 2006.\u00a0 Piotti\u00a0described for\u00a0Stevoe the three main areas that MFT focuses on, those being to protect the farmland, to support the farms and to work to advance the future of Maine farmlands.\u00a0 Under his leadership, MFT won the Dirigo Award for organizational excellence from the Maine Association of Nonprofits in 2008.\u00a0 In 2010, Piotti gave a TEDxDirigo talk, called \u201cMaine\u2019s Vitality\u201d.<\/p>\n
John Piotti is a self-described “community junkie”. \u00a0He chairs the Planning Board and Comprehensive Plan Committee in Unity. \u00a0He also serves as volunteer Executive Director of Unity Barn Raisers, a local community improvement organization that won the 2003 Noyce Award for Non-Profit Excellence.<\/p>\n
Maine Farmland Trust (MFT), a non-profit organization founded in 1999, works to preserve and protect the agricultural lands in Maine. MFT has participated in over 146 land transactions that have preserved more than 27,000 acres of farmland.\u00a0 Since 1999, MFT\u2019s work has expanded beyond farmland protection to also include efforts to help farms be successful, help farmers secure land and inform and engage the public.\u00a0 MFT is also involved with a program called Maine FarmLink, which connects prospective farmers to Maine farmland owners.\u00a0 MFT has developed a clear strategy designed around four program areas: farmland protection; farm viability; farmland access; and public outreach and policy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While in the TideSmart Talk with Stevoe studio, Former Majority House Leader and Executive Director of Maine Farmland Trust John Piotti talks all things Maine farming with host Steve Woods. Piotti described the structural advantages that Maine offers for ideal farming conditions and the two also talked about the future of Maine farming. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tidesmartradio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1781"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tidesmartradio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tidesmartradio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tidesmartradio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tidesmartradio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tidesmartradio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1781\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tidesmartradio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tidesmartradio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tidesmartradio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}