Steven Kerr, Secretary of Agriculture

State of Vermont

116 State Street, Drawer 20

Montpelier, VT 05620

Dear Secretary Kerr,

As you may already know, hundreds of Vermont citizens have recently completed a challenge to eat almost totally local foods for anywhere from a week to an entire month. Many restaurants, schools, bakeries, food stores and farms participated in this effort. The local food challenges have kindled the desire in many to continue to eat foods predominantly grown, raised and produced within a 100 mile radius.

The challenge also uncovered many missing foodstuffs that at one time were plentiful in the State of Vermont. With policy changes and new agricultural programs, many of these holes in the food shed could be filled so that more of Vermont’s citizens could choose to eat a much more local diet than they do now.

It should be noted that those who organized, participated in and supported these challenges were doing so out of a true belief that foods grown locally have many advantages when compared to the typical, transported and packaged American diet. The benefits of eating a seasonal, sustainable and local diet include:

• Substantial energy savings, as foods that are raised locally and sustainably require much less fuel to grow and transport.
• Preservation of our family farms and rural landscape, which contributes to quality of life for Vermont citizens and the Vermont brand as it relates to tourism and exports.
• Growth and stability of the Vermont job market in agriculture and food processing.
• A strengthened sense of community as food consumers become more involved with those that grow and process their foods.
• Healthy Vermont citizens, as eating a “modern” processed diet leads to many food related diseases such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

Given the potential benefits to Vermont’s citizen, agriculture and business communities, we are calling on the State of Vermont to get involved. In order to once again provide many of the food staples that were taken for granted 100 years ago, the State of Vermont needs to invest in and promote the development and expansion of key food production and processing segments. Some of these fundamental areas include:

• Cooking oils. Save for a modest supply produced by Butterworks farm, the state and surrounding areas produces no cooking or salad oils. Vermont could be producing its own sunflower and pumpkin seed oils, amongst others.
• Grains. Currently there is only a modest supply of flour coming from a few farms. Though some oats are grown in the state, no equipment survives locally to hull and process the oats for human consumption. Investment needs to be made in the expansion of acreage devoted to grains, as well as equipment for harvesting and processing those grains.
• Nuts and seeds. There are no locally grown and processed nuts or seeds available for sale that could be found. There are varieties of pumpkins that can be grown for their seeds as well as their flesh.
• Processing facilities. In addition to facilities for processing oats, it would be nice to see plants for processing crops such as barley to be used in our local beers, as well as canning and freezing facilities to preserve the Vermont harvest for its citizens during the winter months.
• Milk and butter. As strange as it sounds, it is not that easy to walk into a grocery store and buy affordable Vermont milk and butter. As the larger dairies have been acquired by national companies, they begin to mix their Vermont milk with that from other New England states. There are high end Vermont organic brands, but these can be out of reach for many families. Cooperatives need to be formed that will help give Vermont dairy farmers a fair price for their milk and Vermonters the ability to buy their milk and butter at an affordable price.
• Slaughtering facilities and regulations. Regulations developed for massive industrial chicken and cattle farms with unhealthy animals need to be revised to fit the smaller farms in Vermont. While a mobile chicken slaughtering unit is a first step, it may well prove to be too expensive for many family farms. Additional regulation revisions and creative problem solving needs to be applied to make it economically viable for farmers to raise, slaughter and sell their animals for a profit to local consumers and restaurants.
• Subsidies. Many of these new crops and processing cooperatives will need financial incentives, at least to get started. Instead of pooling the majority of the state’s subsidies to ever expanding dairy farms, lets spread those monies around to promote the sustainability of thousands of small family farms and processing facilities producing things that local citizens can afford to buy.

To have a sustainable and affordable intrastate food market, locally produced staples such as grains, meats, cooking oils and processed foods need to be available within the state. While there are a handful of grassroots efforts to solve some of these needs, significant and rapid change can only be accomplished on a State level via legislation and Department of Agriculture policy. “Buy Local” Radio ads and promotional campaigns are not enough. A combination of regulation changes, incentives, subsidies, organizational assistance and direct support for cooperatives are required to make a shift of this magnitude.

Thank you for supporting our grow, produce, process and eat local campaign.

Sincerely,

Vermont Localvores

cc: Governor James Douglas

David Lane, Deputy Secretary for Ag Development