Peter Burmeister: Local foods culture merits recognition and support

Editor’s note: This commentary is by Peter Burmeister, an organic livestock and poultry farmer and processor and a psychotherapist in Berlin.

[L]ost in all the recent rhetoric about the disadvantages and lack of opportunity of life in Vermont is an in-your-face fact that few commentators, and even fewer of our politicians, seem to recognize.

That fact is that thousands of energetic, well-educated young people, from everywhere in the USA and many foreign countries, have chosen life in Vermont so they can participate in the local food/organic food culture. Others converge on the state each spring and summer seeking employment on organic farms. By any measure, this population comprises “the best and brightest” among us.

I just returned from a morning at the thriving Barre Farmers Market, held each Saturday at the Granite Museum. From very humble beginnings, this weekly event has become a magnet for discerning shoppers that are interested in purchasing good tasting, healthy food while meeting other like-minded folks and socializing, enjoying the upbeat friendly atmosphere.

The outstanding fact is that the majority of the young budding entrepreneurial vendors are not originally from Vermont. They have moved here, seeking the wholesome, supportive lifestyle that only this state can provide.

While Gov. Shumlin and others in state government are courting investors from Asia to build high-tech facilities in Vermont and are offering huge monetary incentives for them to do so, the local food culture continues to expand on its own, with virtually no support from the governor or his Agency of Agriculture.

Instead, every legislative session includes debates regarding the very tentative future of Working Lands and Current Use, programs that are essential to a thriving agricultural economy. Instead of “carpet bombing” all the small farms in the state with new fees in order to attempt to improve water quality, state government should be providing small agriculture the kind of monetary incentives and tax breaks that are offered to faceless companies like GlobalFoundries, an entity that is owned lock, stock and barrel by a dictatorial petty Middle Eastern sheikh.

If you are skeptical about any of the above, I invite you to attend the very next farmers market in your town. Talk to the vendors and let them tell their stories. When you do so you may begin to understand that, while computer chips and defense materiel can be manufactured anywhere in the world, it’s only in this state that nutritious food bearing the label “grown in Vermont” can ever be produced.

So let’s drop the naysaying and lamenting and instead wholeheartedly support the in-migration of the thousands of young foodies that have so much to offer our economy and our culture.