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Monday, September 18 - You can read and sign this letter
at Gaylord's farmstand on Rte 100 south of Waitsfield,
Hartshorns farmstand on Rte 100 North of Waitsfield, and
at Little Hands farm at Rootswork in the Schoolhouse
Market/East Warren Schoolhouse on the corner of East
Warren Road and Roxbury Mountain Road. Please be
sure to sign it by Sunday, September 24 as we plan to
send the letter off to Steve Kerr on Monday, September
25. September 25, 2006
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,
The Mad River Valley Localvore Project
cc: Governor James Douglas
David Lane, Deputy Secretary for Ag Development |
