Farm To Plate Retrospective

A new Farm to Plate report will be released in the next couple of weeks that highlights what has been learned retrospectively in the past 10 years about the Vermont food system (see the presentation to the legislature here and recording here). Figures show that overall farmland in production in the past decade decreased by 3.2% or 40,000 acres. The decrease occurred especially in dairy by 20% or 105,000 acres. While sales appear to stagnate over time, presenters emphasized that dairy is the most significant agricultural sales sector with over $505 million. Pasture land showed the largest decline with 67,000 acres and the Sustainable Jobs Fund stated a trend of grazing being used less in the dairy industry due to continued consolidation. Positive trends include an increase of acres in vegetables by 17%; oil, seed and grain acreage by 49%; beef farm acreage by 9%, hog and pig by 25%; and sheep and goat farm acreage increase by 8%.