U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis announced a $3.4 million grant Tuesday that will enable a new institute at the Vermont Technical College (VTC) to establish certificate and degree programs for careers in agriculture, food production, waste disposal and energy production.
VTC’s Vermont Applied Agriculture and Food Systems Institute will offer education and training programs for specialized careers such as food processing technicians, biodigester technicians and meat cutters. The institute plans to use grant funds to pay for a dairy and food processing facility, an anaerobic biodigester, and the expansion of an on-campus apple orchard to support these programs.
Addressing students at an auditorium on VTC’s campus, Solis said that VTC’s application caught her eye because of its focus on agriculture, and she cited the program as evidence that the agriculture is evolving rather than turning obsolete.
“In some places around the country, people are saying, ‘Oh, we are moving away from that.’ But no, not here, not on this campus and not in this state … that’s why I think this is important, because you are reinventing yourself.”
The grant is part of the federal Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) program, which was allocated $2 billion over a four-year period to fund programs at higher education institutions that quickly educate students for “high-wage, high-skill occupations” — participants must be able to complete the programs in two years or less. TAACCCT, a joint operation between the U.S. departments of Labor and Education, has so far distributed approximately $1 billion of the grant money.
Solis also stressed that the TAACCCT program is intended not just to prepare students for the workforce but also to retrain workers who have been displaced by global trends and are eligible for the Trade Adjustment Assistance for Workers program.
Gov. Peter Shumlin, Sen. Bernie Sanders and several other speakers at the event spoke with optimism about the VTC program’s capacity to support renewable energy initiatives and value-added specialty food production.
Sanders expressed particular enthusiasm for the local food production and the introduction of methane digesters to small farms.
“What an extraordinary step forward when we keep manure out of the lakes and rivers and we use it to create electricity,” said Sanders.
