To be honest, the first time many of us heard who Russell Libby was and what he did, we read it in his obituary.
We never realized it, but more and more in these last few years, we have been living in a state shaped, for the better, we believe, by Libby’s activism.
We don’t know for a fact whether Libby ever set foot in Lincoln County, although we suspect he certainly did at one time or another, but we do know the fruits of his life’s labors may impact life in Maine for decades to come.
We refer you to Shlomit Auciello’s tender tribute to the man to help fill in the blanks. The quotations from the people who knew him and worked with him speak for themselves.
Libby deserves a lot of credit for leading the Maine Organic Farmers and Growers Association to the prominence it enjoys today.
Before “organic” went mainstream and “buy local” became a marketing catch phrase, Libby saw where he wanted to go and set his organization and his state on a path to getting there.
Perhaps, the most impressive thing Russell Libby did in his impressive life was to highlight the power of shopping locally.
By highlighting the value of a dollar spent locally, versus the value of a dollar spent just anywhere, Libby helped turn “buy local” into a clear, easily understandable slogan. With this, Libby probably did more for his small-business heavy home state than anything else.
Russell Libby built his life and his life’s work around a positive vision for his local and global communities. By finding common ground between the granola-crunching early advocates of organic farming and the hard-working farmers whose families have tilled Maine soil for generations, he helped build an organization and a mission that serves us all.
It is now our job to carry that work forward.
