A new strategic plan for promoting Vermont agriculture and local food was issued Monday by the Vermont Agency of Agriculture and Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund.
The plan draws on the work of 120 focus groups with experts from industries including beef, dairy, sheep and goat, maple, vegetables and berry producers.
More than 1,500 people provided input, said Ellen Kahler, executive director of the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund.
The 206-page plan is intended to help policymakers direct the state toward a system that takes into account environmental sustainability, supporting future farmers, food security and other issues. It includes 15 goals, 34 strategies and 276 recommendations on the state’s food and agriculture system.
The primary goals are to increase sustainable economic development, create food and farm-sector jobs, improve the soils, water and resiliency of the working landscape in the face of climate change, and improve access to healthy local food for all Vermonters.
It also addresses the needs of Vermonters who can’t afford or gain access to local food.
“Explicitly redressing racial inequity and the historical disenfranchisement and exclusion of Black, Indigenous, people of color from business and land ownership is also essential to local food system development in the coming decade,” the report says.
In recent years — as milk prices have dropped and market forces have made it more difficult to operate small agricultural operations — the Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets has made it a priority to look for ways for farmers to diversify, take advantage of extended markets, and operate more efficiently. The Covid-19 pandemic intensified some of those pressures by showing how supply chain interruptions could hinder supplies in the supermarket.
The conditions of the pandemic also increased interest in local meat and produce. According to the new plan, local food purchases rose from $114 million, or 5%, to $310 million, or nearly 14%, of the $2.2 billion spent on food in the state every year between 2011 and 2020. One goal outlined in the plan is to see that proportion rise to 25% of all in-state food prices, by dollar value, by 2030.
The report lays out useful strategies for helping farmers take advantage of marketing and other expertise to strengthen their financial positions, said Rep. Carolyn Partridge, D-Windham, chair of the House Committee on Agriculture and Forestry.
“This would have taken years to accomplish had we tried to do it in our committees,” she said.
The plan covers the period of 2021 to 2030, but Agriculture Secretary Anson Tebbetts said the strategies are designed to be taken up immediately.
“It is a 10-year plan, but I would not want to leave the impression that we’re going to wait to the end of the decade to kick off some of these issues,” he said.
The report is the second part of a comprehensive food systems plan that the agency released in January 2020, and prioritizes many of the recommendations in the earlier plan, said Jake Claro, Farm to Plate director at the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund.
Lawmakers had asked the Agency of Agriculture in 2019 to create the strategic plan.
“If you’re going to travel any place different and do things different, you map out a plan,” said Sen. Bobby Starr, D-Troy, chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee. “This strategic plan gives us in the Senate, anyway, a real road map of how and what we should be doing to move into the future.”
