In response to the devastating impacts of THE July 10th flooding, we are compiling a list of CURRENT farm and rural resources. We will keep this list updated as more resources become available and known.

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FARM RESOURCES

• Farm Service Agency: If you have crop insurance contact your local office to report losses.

• Factsheet: Managing Flood Damage in Pasture, Crops, Livestock

• NOFA is collecting info on farm impacts

• Agency of Ag is collecting information on farm damage incurred between July 7 - July 18 (until August 28, 2023). This purpose of the survey is to capture the type and scale of the damage suffered by agricultural producers in the state.

• CCB is collecting info on impacts to licensed cannabis growers

• Agency of Ag: Flood Resources

• Northeast Center for the Advancement for Food Safety (NECAFS): Resources for Flooding

• Distribution Matchmaking Tool - NOFA : connect with other farmers to navigate market disruptions due to the flood

FUNDING & FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE

• Vermont Farm Fund Emergency Loans

• Farmer Emergency Fund

• USDA Disaster Assistance

• Business Emergency Gap Assistance Program (BEGAP): Awards help applicants recoup a portion of their total net uncovered damages.

FARM-SPECIFIC MENTAL HEALTH RESOURCES

Farm First

• Free access to a Farmer Peer. Peers are trained in active listening, troubleshooting, and accessing resources. You can find one by location or discipline at: https://farmfirst.org/peer-support-network

• Free access to a counselor.  While your immediate needs are in the fields, if you need support processing your response you can access a counselor by reaching out to Eva Griffin, the Farm First Resource Coordinator.

• During daytime working hours (8am-4:30pm M-F) call: 802-318-5538

• Outside of daytime work hours call: 877-493-6216

• Email Eva at evag@farmfirst.org

• Free access to resources. On the FarmFirst website, there is a searchable database of resources that can assist you with a variety of services or accessing resources.

• Don't forget to breathe. You can reduce the fight-or-flight response in the body by taking big inhales and longer exhales. Calming down the nervous system will enable you to make better decisions.

COMMUNITY RESOURCES

• Vermont Emergency Management Website 

• New England 511 Road Closures

• Vermont River Levels & Forecast 

• Vermont Alert Emergency Notification System 

• vermont211.org

  REPORT FLOOD DAMAGE TO 211: Residents in Caledonia, Chittenden, Lamoille, Orange, Orleans, Rutland, Washington, Windham and Windsor counties are currently eligible for flood damage assistance through FEMA. State officials urge residents to report any flood-related damage to 211 (https://vermont211.org/ ) in hopes that additional communities, particularly Addison County, will be added to the declaration.

Blue Cross Blue Shield VT and MVP have requested double digit premium rate increases for 2024. Vermonters can submit a public comment to the Green Mountain Care Board until July 24th. Thank you to allies at Vermont Legal Aid for the following information:

Proposed Rate Increase: 

The cost of health insurance is likely to go up in January for roughly 68,324 Vermonters who buy their insurance through Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont and MVP Health Care. How much the price goes up will be decided by the Green Mountain Care Board after the rate review hearings in July. BCBSVT asks to raise their premium prices an average of 15.5% for individuals and 14.5% for small businesses. MVP asks to raise their premium prices an average of 12.8% for individuals and 12.5% for small businesses. 

Public Comment:  

Before the hearings in July, the Green Mountain Care Board needs to hear from Vermonters about how premium increases will affect their ability to access affordable health care for themselves and their families. Help encourage those in your network that would be impacted by this change to submit a public comment so that their voices can be heard in this process!  

The HCA’s Role:     

The Office of the Health Care Advocate acts as the consumer voice in the rate review process. We represent the public in rate review hearings and advocate for affordability in our health care system. It’s our responsibility to tell the Green Mountain Care Board how these proposed rate increases impact Vermonters and their families. To bring attention to these proposed rate increases, we are spreading the word about the public comment process. The Green Mountain Care Board is obligated by law to take public comments on proposed rate filings and take this testimony into consideration during the rate review hearings.  

How You Can Help: 

Please share information about the rate review public comment process over social media or any other way you communicate with your network. We have attached a flyer and newsletter that can aid in this effort.  

If anyone you know needs assistance submitting a public comment, or wants individual advice related to health insurance or access to care issues, contact the Office of the Health Care Advocate’s HelpLine at 1-800-917-7787 or visit www.vtlawhelp.org/health.  

It’s Compost Awareness Week! Sign up before the end-of the week to a free online compost training w. certification provided by the Institute for Local Self Reliance!

Up in the Air! The Agency of Ag passed the January deadline to file a final proposal of rules with requirements for the management of imported food residuals and food processing residuals on a farm (Act 41, 2021). VAAFM staff ensured Rural Vermont that Guidance would be presented at the Vermont Organics Recycling Summit earlier this month. The recording of the May 2nd presentation will be available online here and showcases that rulemaking through amending the Required Agricultural Practices Rule will come, someday. Written guidance that would provide some clarity and accountability of rule and law to those who aim to invest and diversify into this innovative agricultural practice is currently not planned. ANR rules continue to apply until farm specific rules, equal to or better than the ANR ones, have been adopted. VAAFM staff emphasize at VORS to contact them directly if there’s any interest or or need to clarify uncertainties. 

• Stephanie Smith, Deputy Director of Public Health and Agricultural Resource Management Division, VAAFM (stephanie.smith@vermont.gov) 

• Zach Szusukowski, Agricultural Resource Management Specialist, VAAFM (zach.szczukowski@vermont.gov) 

• Steve Cash, Agricultural Water Quality Specialist, VAAFM (steven.cash@vermont.gov) 

Many resources all around compost online here!

Read Now! The Executive Summary of the PES & Soil Health Working Group's final report outlines their consensus against creating a new program to measure or model units of ecosystem services that would be traded on a market to offset and carry on with pollution across the globe. Instead, the group noticed that there already is a federal Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) program, the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), that is rewarding regenerative agricultural practices but has very few Vermont farms enrolled - so far. The working group will soon launch a pilot Vermont Farmer Ecosystem Stewardship Program to enhance CSP with additional payments after completion of application and planning phase so that farms feel the benefits right away and not years into the implementation phase.

Read the Executive Summary Here

Thanks to NOFA-NH and Seacoast Permaculture for hosting the recent Food and Climate Panel including many Rural Vermont Board members and our Legislative Director Caroline Gordon!  As we see the encroachment of investor backed, market based efforts which sell themselves as addressing climate change and contributing to the economic viability of farms and rural communities - we must recognize and confront these efforts as false solutions, and push for solutions which are driven by communities themselves and which directly affect the reduction of fossil fuel emissions and other environmental pollutants from the principle polluters, and which affect the broader structural changes related to economic, social, and political equity we need for our communities and farms to be healthy and just. 

Phrases, concepts, and programs such as “off-sets”, “net zero”, “natural asset companies” (NACs) or “natural asset trusts”, corporate farmland acquisition subsidiaries marketed as “socially responsible investments” (such as TIAA’s subsidiary Nuveen which the State of VT invested $100 million of VT pensioners’ money into) do not require the reduction of emissions or pollutants, do not require the equitable participation or treatment of local communities in relationship to their lands / waters / natural resources and human rights, and rather than bring accountability to the primary creators and perpetrators of global climate change and inequity, they create further opportunities for them to create new asset classes, further profit economically, and extend further disproportionate influence and control over the lives and resources of communities around the world. This slide presented by the Regenerative Food Network at the 2022 Farm to Plate Gathering explicitly belies the primary motivations and intentions of investors to assign monetary values to “nature’s economy” - an investment opportunity many times the size of the existing economy: 

These are concepts and programs with frightening real world consequences for communities locally and globally.  Equitable tax policies, anti-trust enforcement, essential social welfare policies (healthcare, childcare, eldercare, housing, etc.), improved and cooperative programs for farmers, repairative policies for communities who have been disproportionately and historically harmed and discriminated against, price parity reforms, land reforms and many other efforts which are directed by and center the needs of people and the environment and which reclaim the agency and wealth of the public sector and the local and global commons are what Rural Vermont, our national allies at the National Family Farm Coalition, and our international allies at La Via Campesina understand to be meaningful and appropriate approaches to addressing climate change and a just transition.  

Rural Vermont’s mission makes clear that our work is grounded in assuring the essential needs and health of our communities locally - and human and non-human communities around the world.  Connecting the people we work with, and the issues they face, with global communities and allied organizations and the issues they face is essential to realizing food sovereignty, and is a growing part of our work at Rural Vermont.  Producers and communities all over the world are affected by many of the same global policies and dynamics which marginalize and disempower producers in Vermont.  Two of the primary organizations who work globally which we are members of are the National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC) and La Via Campesina (we are members through NFFC, and pursuing individual membership).  

In November, Rural Vermont staffers Mollie and Graham and board member Nour traveled to Cuba along with a number of Rural VT members as delegates to the 8th annual International Agroecology Encounter, hosted by the National Small Farmers' Association of Cuba (ANAP), and co-coordinated by La Via Campesina North America, the Caribbean Agroecology Institute, and the Cuba / US Agroecology Network.  We traveled to many farms and farming cooperatives, saw presentations from many farmers and researchers, and grew relationships with small farmers, agroecological organizations, and other delegates from all over the world.  

Cuba is a global beacon for cooperativism and agroecology and its many decades of social, economic, and land reforms are also important and unique aspects of Cuba to understand.  Agricultural producers are centered in the Cuban economy and politics - it is a constant refrain that “we want farmers to be able to farm”, meaning that cooperatives and the state substantially support distribution, processing, markets, and other needs connecting food production to its consumption.

However, Cuba is sadly in an economic crisis - largely due to the United States’ reimposed and strengthened sanctions (often referred to in Cuba as the “blockade”), sanctions which have been condemned yearly by a nearly universal vote at the United Nations (aside from the US and Israel) for 30 years.  This blockade - like others like it around the world - intimately and pervasively affects the abilities of everyday people to live sovereign, healthy lives.

In the coming months, look for more community outreach from Rural Vermont around our time in Cuba and getting involved in exchange and solidarity with Cuban farmers.  And look for more information on the formation of a VT Agroecology School - which will continue this thread of internationalism, farmer to farmer based education, and cooperativism.

For some quick introductions to Cuba and Cuban agroecology - see this short film from Belly of the Beast (which includes Rural VT member farmer Tom Gilbert).

Members Critique Power Push to Use Ecosystem Services as a Market Solution for Pre-existing Shortfalls

The last PES (Payment for Ecosystem Services) and Soil Health Working Group meeting finally addressed what had been unspoken - the increasingly clear power dynamic tailoring the development of new programmatic solutions in agriculture addressing climate challenges to the interests of Big $$. Despite the final decision away from outcome-based solutions, the final report seemingly read to satisfy the interests of private investors. These private investors may still glean lessons from the process and continue to push for market-based solutions that are sound, viable, and regenerative while also addressing the complex issues within the agricultural sector. Didi Pershouse, a VT Healthy Soils Coalition member, offered an initial critique that eventually led to several working group members expressing similar concerns.

Public Comment to the PES WG

Caroline Gordon for Rural Vermont 1/10/23

After 3 years of PES and Soil Health Working Group process a question arose for Rural Vermont. In how far was the PES WG process aware of/ and influenced by Wall Street interests around developing new market assets through monetizing ecosystem services? Throughout the process, the Small Farmer stakeholder group, that Rural Vermont is part of, was advocating for the PES WG process to be a democratic one that is farmer-led. We celebrate that advocacy effort in the unison approach towards improving the Conservation Stewardship Program, an idea that emerged from our group. Before the PES WG closes today, I want to flag that there was a strong continuous push towards establishing a new outcome based solution and that it’s questionable, while not explicit, in how far that push has been informed by private investor networks with access to large capital from international markets like RAIS, the Regenerative Food Network and others. Another indicator for the predominant macroeconomic framework projected often by the PES WG was demonstrated in the way farmer participation was facilitated. Rural Vermont recommended to “Facilitate a Participatory Decision-Making Process with Farmers” in May 2021, submitted with support form Cat Buxton, the White River NRCD, CLF, CAFS and Cedar Mountain Farm. That initiative was not discussed by the PES WG but reduced to a survey that measured the farmers’ “willingness to accept” - a terminology used in the capitalizing nature context. Following the farmers survey around WTA, program development options did not aim to meet that minimum bar of what farmers seek to gain from a PES program.  When the PES WG decided against the approach to develop a new outcome based program the farmer input was not helpful anymore. I echo Didi Pershouse who flagged earlier today eloquently how that power dynamic towards market solutions is now being reflected in this critical draft final report and it is a huge relief that the group has been able to address that so constructively today.
While the PES WG will be more or less resolved now, I want to encourage all of us to be more aware about the context of private investors seeking to develop trillions of dollars in assets by capitalizing on nature and how that affects Vermont, our public interests, and those on the ground. Moving forward please join Rural Vermont in dialogue with lawmakers to share what you learned about the complexities and difficulties surrounding agricultural programming, for example surrounding cost share agreements (and so much more), and seek to keep this discourse a public one so that any policy decisions can be farmer-led. I know that most of the working group members entered this process with an open mind, like Didi, Jill, Maddie and Scott shared, they didn’t see a pre-set understanding of what PES means. Along those lines, research like the report from NEED (Coleman, A.F., Machado, M.R. (2022). Ecosystem Services in Working Lands Practice and Policy in the U.S. Northeast: Successes, Challenges, and

Opportunities for Producers and Extension (1st ed). Kansas City: Extension Foundation. ISBN: 978-1 955687-11-9.), about Ecosystem Services in the working lands across the northeast has identified over 1,300 existing programs that benefit ecosystem services that are outside of the commodifying nature context that could be understood as PES programs for that reason - even though they are practice based. 

Before I close, I’m excited to share that:

1. Very  soon the qualitative analysis of farmer participation that the Conservation Districts organized with support from UVM and others will be released. Retrospect that documentation will support to advance CSP and the broader effort to take farmers' expertise seriously in addressing other pre-existing shortfalls of existing programs at the root moving forward. 

2. Join Rural Vermont during a NOFA-NH panel discussion on January 18th at around the concerns raised today: Food and Climate Panel: Carbon Market Pitfalls & Better Strategies for Regenerative Organic Farming Practices — Rural Vermont

The PES and Soil Health Working Group reached a consensus at their thirty-first meeting on November 1, 2022, at the VAAFM Williston office to enhance the federal Conservation Stewardship Program with a Vermont enhancement (see photo). This milestone decision now leads the way to finalize the pilot approach recommendation from the Working Group. This approach was chosen after the group expressed a preference for enhancing existing programs. Goals include to enhance payments and enrollment and thereby increase the ability to access more federal funds in the future that could be used to develop a Vermont specific enhancement program. 

“This approach would support farms to enroll their whole farm into the CSP program and have their cropland, pastureland, production area, and associated agricultural land be assessed against performance-based stewardship thresholds. State supplemental payments under this approach would initially support farms in their first year of engagement with the CSP program through the ‘resource assessment’ phase, which is a valuable exercise for farms and promotes comprehensive stewardship planning on the farm. Additional state supplemental funds would then compensate farmers for committing to increased stewardship upon execution of the CSP agreement. Finally, additional supplemental payments will be released by the state annually for successful implementation of the CSP plan, which will support engagement in the program over the five years of the agreement.”

Draft Approach 6: USDA-NRCS Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) With a Vermont State Enhancement (VSE)

For more information please visit the DRAFT pilot approach here and the meeting summary or recording.

For the first time since 2019, Rural Vermont members gathered in person together in Bethel for the Annual Meeting Celebration! The night was dedicated to Carl Russell- farmer, horselogger, poet, Rural Vermont Board Member Emeritus, co-owner of Earthwise Farm & Forest, and beloved friend, family, and community member who passed this spring. Memories, laughs, tears, and photos were shared commemorating Carl’s life. Thanks to a generous donation of mutton from New Grass Farmstead and the hard work of our caterer Willy Walker, we enjoyed shepherd’s pie and an assortment of salads, bread, and more. Drinks were enjoyed, compliments of Babe’s Bar, and beautiful music was played throughout the night by Spencer Lewis. Members enjoyed block printing cards and posters designed by Erok Gillard, including a new design inspired by Carl. There was an incredible silent auction with many incredible items and experiences, including longhorn earrings, overnight stays on farms, handmade knit hats, an original Bread & Puppet banner, an icelandic sheepskin, and more. After a wonderful dinner, members voted to elect new and returning board members. We are excited to welcome new members Amanda Andrews, Earl Hatley, and Stephen Leslie, and returning members John Cleary and Silene DeCiucies to the Rural Vermont Board of Directors! Our policy staff shared Rural Vermont’s current work on an agroecology school, our Quarterly Member Forum series, raw dairy and slaughter workshops, and much more. Thank you to everyone who contributed to and attended our 2022 Annual Meeting. Your support and presence made this a night to remember!

Check out photos from the event on Facebook!

It’s been three years since the Payment for Ecosystem Services Working Group picked up their legislative charges. The group is running out of time, recommendations to the legislature are due by January 2023 and in many ways the direction of program development is still undecided. The group started its process with a vision for a paradigm shift regarding how agriculture is valued in Vermont. At Rural Vermont, we are advocating that PES in Vermont rewards land stewardship that greatly benefits ecosystems AND that these rewards have a meaningful economic value to the farm. Over the past year, the working group has explored how to anchor payments to measurable outcomes (such as soil health or carbon sequestration) through measurement, modeling or observation. It’s desirable to find direct scientific links between land stewardship and ecosystem services, but these approaches will create more work for farmers. Effectively, they would be compensated for the additional work they will be doing to create measurements and records rather than cashing rewards for the actual beneficial land stewardship. In addition, farmers and working group members identify existing shortfalls like a lack of knowledge of existing programs, a lack of overlap and coordination between state and federal programs, the need to duplicate paperwork to enroll, limited amounts of cost-share funds, and limited technical assistance to implement conservation practices with a need to train more staff.

Now, the Small Farmer Group organized by Cat Buxton, that Rural Vermont is part of, developed and shared a draft programmatic proposal that is based on combining and advancing existing programs. The group envisions an online platform that streamlines all program enrollment. This approach aims to ease access to existing programs while also investing into conservation planning through more technical service providers. More efficient technical assistance would support farmers transitioning to advance their land stewardship. The program would issue payments for ecosystem services based on tiered stewardship levels.

The PES Working Group took a poll earlier this week on all programmatic options currently on the table. While there’s neither a clear winner nor a decision made at this point, a majority of the members expressed a preference to assess how to combine existing programs and or how to enhance them instead of issuing a new stand alone program. As a next step, the PES WG is planning to gather more feedback prior to settling on recommendations in November.

Save the date! We look forward to hearing from you, join our next virtual Rural Vermont Quarterly Member Forum on 12/14/22 from 7-8:30pm to share your thoughts on Payments for Ecosystem Services. 

In the meantime, check out the Small Farmer Group DRAFT PES proposal:

• Programmatic Proposal, long text draft here

• Side by side with all options

• Research proposal for $1M currently allocated here

On September 20th, the Payment for Ecosystem Services and Soil Health Working Group (PES WG) reconvened after a summer break that began in June to consider options on how to invest the $1M in funding secured in the State’s budget. There are five options on the table, and the group is open to creating a hybrid option. Noticeably, none of the options presented meet what farmers indicated they are willing to accept on an annual basis. A decision will need to be made soon on how to spend the $1M already allocated to develop a pilot program. Rural Vermont supports a proposal that would invest the funds to further research how to best streamline existing programs and financial incentives with improving the interface operability of various programs and under consideration of service providers, as well as piloting farm teams that advance whole farm planning together with farmers.

The roadmap for the PES WG throughout the end of the year includes discussing how to best mix and match options for program development throughout September, soliciting feedback in October and starting to shape the cornerstones for the final report to the legislature at the end of November (report due on January 15th). At the September 20th meeting of the PES WG, all options that the smaller summer team discussed were presented and initially discussed. Those include: 

• PES based on CASH soil health test

• PES based on increased TA and in field observations

• PES based on observation modeling

• PES based on modeled soil carbon

• PES based on carbon measured by soil tests
  

One option on the table is to compensate farmers for generating soil health data - with no explicit link to ecosystem services, nor payments for improvements of the same. Rural Vermont is concerned that such a proposal not only doesn’t enhance ecosystem services here in Vermont, but it would pave the way for whomever has the data to sell the information as carbon credits elsewhere! We say NO to FALSE SOLUTIONS to CLIMATE CHANGE as nothing changes when carbon emissions are offset!

More information about farmer survey results from UVM

35 farmer interviews were conducted by a UVM research team for the PES Working Group with an emphasis on acceptable compensation levels and additional bureaucratic burdens for farmers. Farmers like Paul Doton (CRWFA) expressed independently that they feel overburdened and frustrated by the process of enrolling and implementing multiple different programs and practices without sufficient technical and financial support. In a letter to the PES WG sent on 9/19/22, Paul Doton states:

“Fundamentally, we have too many programs to navigate, and they don’t work together - in fact in many ways they negate each other.”

While we’re waiting for the PES WG website to feature a link to the report, you can view and download the full UVM report on farmer interviews now on UVM scholarworks. 

Nearly all farmers surveyed indicated that they would weigh administrative workload with perceived program benefits. Aside from the pre-existing focus on soil health, existing programmatic shortfalls and opportunities have not been discussed. Farmers flagged a need for more access to technical assistance, which is in alignment with a Vermont Farm To Plate priority strategy # 12 that recommends funding at least 25 more full time technical assistance providers. The UVM report suggests that a PES program should at the very least compensate farmers for paperwork burdens on a per acre basis. Farmers also voiced concerns about how undifferentiated per acre payment rates across different farm types would favor the participation of farms with more acres and those which were less intensively managed. The PES Working Group originally envisioned a program that would facilitate a “paradigm shift” in agriculture.  We support Paul Doton’s expressed vision in this week’s letter to the PES WG:

“What I would like to see come out of the PES Working Group is for farmers to have a clearer picture of what is involved with getting help to begin with, including knowing upfront what the criteria is, what the procedure will be, and having streamlined access to funding.  We should be figuring out how to put programs together to get maximum benefits to the farmers and to ecosystem enhancements.  Let’s give farmers options, not mandates.

        We need to complement federal programs, avoid state-level duplication of efforts, and to build improved communication between agencies and agriculture service providers.”

Along these lines, we expressed support via public comment for investing into more service providers, whole farm planning, tiered stewardship levels and the development of an online platform similar to VT Health Connect that would streamline existing programs and financial incentives in a consumer friendly manner during the ongoing PES WG process. 

More on PES Small Farmer Group

Rural Vermont is part of the PES Small Farmer Group that supports an approach that would invest the $1M in research and focus groups with agriculture service providers. Goals are to inform and further develop programmatic improvements that enhance and streamline existing programs and financial incentives to improve soil health, enhance crop resilience, increase carbon storage and stormwater storage capacity, increase biodiversity, and reduce agricultural runoff by also lowering bureaucratic burdens on everyone involved. (See White River NRCD proposal here)

The PES Small Farmer Group includes NOFA-VT (Maddie Kempner), the VT Healthy Soils Coalition (Cat Buxton), Guy Choiniere (Choiniere Family Farm), Stephen Leslie (Cedar Mountain Farm, Cobb Hill Creamery), The White River Conservation District (Jennifer Byrne) Rural Vermont (Caroline Gordon) and more allies and supporters from the farming communities across the grassroots (on farm) and tops (organizations). 

The group met throughout the PES WG process to include farmer voices in the decision making process around program development. Aside from promoting educational outreach to farmers to ensure a transparent public process, the group advocated for farmer surveys to inform key elements of program design. Farmers developed and submitted their own visions and ideas with support from the group, such as the CSP+ proposal that Guy Choiniere co-developed and Stephen Leslie’s vision for a VT Soil Health Protection and Restoration Act based on whole farm planning with service providers (read a comparison of these and more farmer concepts submitted here).

From August 4th through the 6th, Graham and Caroline represented Rural Vermont at the National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC) Summer Gathering in Gloucester, MA.  It had been nearly 2 and half years since our Coalition last met in-person in Birmingham, AL - and it was a joy and relief to be working and sharing time together face to face again!  Gloucester is a particularly potent place for us to all meet as NFFC has a shared leadership with the National Atlantic Marine Alliance (NAMA - formerly “Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance”), an organization of community based fisherfolks facing similar challenges as small family farms, which is based in Gloucester.

Rural Vermont has been a long time member of the National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC), and has been reinvigorating its relationship with NFFC over the past few years.  NFFC’s mission is, “to mobilize family farmers, ranchers, and fishers to achieve fair prices, vibrant communities, and healthy foods free of corporate domination.”  Though Graham is Rural Vermont’s representative on the NFFC Board of Directors, and sits on its Executive Committee, all of our staff have different touchpoints with NFFC based on our different domains of work and issues.  NFFC and all of its member organizations are incredible partners to, and resources for, Rural Vermont.  These relationships provide not only invaluable stories, friendship, and information about the greater context of our work across geographies and demographics which directly informs our actions and perspectives (from local to international); but also enable us to grow power collectively in unity and across differences, contributing to campaigns and movements for more transformative change that we would otherwise be more isolated from.

At this meeting we made time to talk about critical issues facing our communities and how to address them together, in particular we discussed the upcoming Farm Bill and how to strategically advance racial equity throughout our work. NFFC 2023 Farm Bill Platform includes as priority campaigns: 

• ending the dairy crisis through a pricing reform with supply management and price floors; 

• farm justice issues like debt relief for BIPOC and family-scale farmers and improving agricultural credit terms, and farm foreclosure moratorium;

• an anti-land grab campaign that includes strengthening land access for BIPOC producers, tracking corporate land investments and more.

NFFC has also offered its solidarity and support to Rural Vermont in pursuing potential changes to federal law in the Farm Bill or otherwise to protect itinerant slaughterers and on-farm slaughter.

The Payment For Ecosystem Services and Soil Health Working Group was created by the legislature in 2019 to explore a State-wide system for valuing the ecological benefits generated by land managers. Rural Vermont is participating in and encouraging farmer participation in the process and, in 2021, has promoted farmer discussions hosted by the Conservation Districts, and submitted a sign-on letter to the working group recommending to facilitate a democratic decision-making process with farmers. In 2022, the working group hired a UVM research team to, among other tasks, conduct a farmer survey with a focus on payment levels. Part of that research were 31 interviews with farmers that UVM conducted. To date we are missing the delayed qualitative analyses of the farmer discussions in 2021 as well as the farmer interviews in 2022 that could reveal a diverse range of farmers perspectives on what a Just Transition in agriculture could look like through payment for ecosystem services in Vermont.

The analysis of the 2022 UVM survey was presented to the working group in June and is available online here. Take some time to look into the survey results. Rural Vermont regrets that the survey was not broad enough to inform the direction of program development like payments for practices vs. outcomes, or assess the potential for improving existing programs to achieve desired outcomes. Instead, the survey had a focus on gauging the feasibility of paying farmers for conducting soil tests, and what payment levels would be accepted as compensation.  The PES working group agreed upon a vision and objectives for program development before the summer break (final objectives here; program design poll here). The proposed pilot program would compensate farmers for the additional workload required, including data gathering and associated paperwork, soil sampling, and consultations when they meet standards based on the measured outcomes in the soil (e.g., improved carbon sequestration), in the field (e.g., more diverse cover crops to support biodiversity), and at edge of field (e.g., increased stormwater retention). 

Rural Vermont engaged through public comment and shared that some farmers have a preference for financially rewarding the soil health practices they already do or adopt to do and to gauge options for combining or improving existing programs to lower bureaucratic burdens on farmers (while also highlighting that such analysis was a critical part of the 2019 legislative charges). While staying vague, it is positive that the PES WG aims in their objectives to streamline existing data acquisition through programs and to “coordinate with, be additive to, and be compatible with existing funding programs to the greatest extent possible.” An outcome based program was the preference of the watershed alliances who initiated the legislation in 2019. In contrast, a 2021 NOFA white paper “Farmers Share Experiences and Challenges Adopting Healthy Soils Practices - A Report from the Northeast Organic Farming Association on Two Years of Collaborative Work” states: 

“Incentives for healthy soils practices adoption were the second most-discussed topic. Recorded commentary shows a preference for payment for practice, while a smaller number of farmers suggested that payments should be outcome-based.”  

We acknowledge that farmers are also represented on the working group, with Scot Megnan (FWA), Paul Doton (CRWFA), Ed Pitcavage (Philo Ridge Farm). In addition, Maddie Kempner is representing NOFA-VT and Cat Buxton, who is officially representing the VT Healthy Soils Coalition, also serves on the Rural Vermont board. A few farmers also submitted and presented their visions for program development directly to the group - learn more here. As part of the small farmer group facilitated by Cat Buxton, Rural Vermont continues to engage with the process and to gauge opportunities to include visions like those of Stephen Leslie and CSP+, that the White River Conservation District worked on with Guy Choiniere. 

It is unclear to Rural Vermont at this point what the missing qualitative analyses will reveal about farmer preferences and trends that may compare or contrast to the PES WG objectives. Noticeably, the PES WG lists as “farmer engagement” in their objectives to “partner with existing agencies and initiatives across the state to increase public understanding and appreciation of the role agriculture [plays] in healthy landscapes and the importance of ecosystem services for a healthy environment and quality of life.”

Rural Vermont works collaboratively to ensure that the processes and outcomes of any “PES” programs in VT are equitable, informed by a diversity of farmers’ voices, adequately consider varied ecological outcomes, and are situated within a greater context of a transition to an agricultural and food system that is economically, ecologically, and socially just.

Send us feedback and your thoughts on Payments for Ecosystem Services and the PES WG to caroline@ruralvermont.org. 

Through Rural Vermont’s membership with the National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC), we have been a member organization of La Via Campesina as long as it has been present in North America. La Via Campesina is the global movement of peasant agriculturalists numbering in the hundreds of millions, and some say it is the largest grassroots movement in the world. It is composed of member-based grassroots organizations across the globe, who work collaboratively to grow collective and local food sovereignty through agroecology.

Agroecology is the systematization of ancestral, indigenous, peasant, farm worker, and migrant ecological knowledge applied to food and farming systems. Agroecology is the basis for food sovereignty, the right of peoples to collectively build and defend their own food systems, based on ecology, culture and social justice.

Before, during, and after the opportunity to visit an agroecology school in Morelos, Mexico, Mollie at Rural Vermont has worked with the Agroecology, Seeds, and Biodiversity Collective of the North American region of La Via and local partners to co-organize an Each One Teach One Agroecology Encounter here in Vermont at the Center for Grassroots Organizing in Marshfield. The event last weekend celebrated and explored the emergence of a new agroecology and movement building school in VT, as a part of a growing network of schools across the Americas in partnership with La Via Campesina and numerous local partners  This work builds off of existing and successful models of agroecology schools in Central and South America, based on farmer to farmer technical agroecological education, popular political education, and traditional ecological knowledge, while being rooted in the specific and unique needs of local communities.

This Encounter marks the beginning of a long term school and movement building process here in Vermont, inspired and influenced by the global movement.  Due to town limitations on the number of people we could have in attendance at the encounter and the “speed of trust” nature of this initiative, we’ll continue working with local farmers, farmworkers, organizational partners, and Rural Vermont members to grow this process, with support from collective connections to the greater movement and our international partners and friends.

We spent the weekend listening, learning, and growing relationships that have sown seeds we hope will grow strong in the coming months and years as we co-create this opportunity here. Be in touch with Mollie to learn more.

We celebrate the publication of the UVM survey before the summer break. The “Results of the 2022 Vermont Farmer Conservation & Payment for Ecosystem Services Survey” will inform the development of a PES program for Vermont.Vermont made historic investments in soil health this session and included $1 million for the development of the state’s Ecosystem Services program in the FY 2023 budget.

We are proud to share that our current Board Member Noah Nour El-Naboulsi made significant contributions in his lead role as UVM Research Assistant in development and rollout of the surrey. More grassroots farmer participation in program development has been an advocacy goal of Rural Vermont and allies since the working groups existence in 2019. Find the report here.

Background about the Payment for Ecosystem Services Working Group and Rural Vermont advocacy and organizing in the realm:

The related Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) Working Group was established in 2019, had their timeline extended twice and is now approaching the final phase for submitting a programmatic proposal by the beginning of the 2023 legislative Session. The PES working group is charged to present a legislative proposal that outlines how the state can improve soil health, enhance crop resilience, increase carbon storage and stormwater storage capacity, and reduce agricultural runoff through either modifying existing incentives or creating a new, so-called PES, program.  This work goes back to an initiative of three farmer watershed groups, The Champlain Valley Farmer Coalition Inc., Franklin-Grand Isle Farmer's Watershed Alliance and the Connecticut River Watershed Farmers Alliance, who were “working together to launch a pilot project hiring farmers to produce better ecosystem services across Vermont.” Upon this initiative, the collaborative working group process was created to develop a program. 

Rural Vermont and allies secured seats at the table for representatives of the Vermont Healthy Soils Coalition (VHSC) and diversified farmers. Cat Buxton, who also is a current Rural Vermont board member and the co-founder and board member of the Vermont Healthy Soils Coalition is part of the working group representing VHSC. Cat is also facilitating a group around small farmers and other stakeholders who inform the working group process with programmatic proposals like CSP+ and through public comment. Rural Vermont had also partnered with the White River NRCD and the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems at Vermont Law School to provide an overview of the working groups progress and recommendations on how to move forward early in 2021. Advocacy goals for Rural Vermont always included to ensure any development of a new program is not creating insurmountable bureaucratic costs and burdens for farmers that hinder enrollment or doesn’t pay off for them. Reasons why Rural Vermont took stake in the legislative charges that outline a process based on the assessment of existing programs and financial assessments as well as the opportunity to change or combine those to ease enrollment, and set more functional incentives that would address soil health, enhance crop resilience, increase carbon storage and stormwater storage capacity, and reduce agricultural runoff. Through public comment and sign-on letters (e.g. “Recommendation to thePES & Soil Health Working Group to Facilitate a Participatory Decision-Making Process with Farmers, May 24, 2021) Rural Vermont and allies called upon the working group members early on to ensure the process of program development is led democratically by the working group and based on farmer input. In the future, a good implementation of the Environmental Justice Policy (signed into law as Act 154, 2022) now mandates such “meaningful participation” of those most affected by policy decisions. With this in mind, we celebrate the efforts made to involve farmers strategically in program development and to allocate capacity to UVM to undertake a survey with Vermont farmers on the issue. Stay tuned for a summary of the report in our From The Statehouse Blog soon. 

Resources:

• UVM report “Results of the 2022 Vermont Farmer Conservation & Payment for Ecosystem Services Survey”

• Meeting notes and materials, recordings and registration for upcoming meetings of the PES WG here: PES WG MEETINGS AND MATERIALS | Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets (vermont.gov)

Back in the field, Rural Vermont’s Legislative Director met with Jon Cohen, farmer and owner of Deep Meadow Farm - a 50 acre organic produce farm in Ascutney. Caroline caught Jon planting sweet corn - check it out:

On May 11, 2022, Olena Borodina, representing the Civil Society, on behalf of Nyéléni Europe and Central Asia Food Sovereignty Network, addressed the 33rd session of the FAO Regional Conference for Europe. Borodina spoke to the numerous crises and resulting struggles the Ukrainian people have endured, especially the small-scale farmers, pastoralists, small scale and artisanal fisher people, Indigenous Peoples, migrant and agricultural workers, consumers, and NGOs she represents, and how their experience demonstrates the importance of strengthening local food systems. She explains:

“Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. "Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems. It puts the aspirations and needs of those who produce, distribute and consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of markets and corporations." The differences between these two concepts are accentuated in times of war and social or political unrest. On one hand, the primary need becomes the simple right of access to food and water that determines the very existence of human life. In a period of military conflict, humanitarian aid that provides food and water to those most in need is based on food security.”

This February, NFFC National Program Coordinator Jordan Treakle and Mollie Wills, a grassroots organizer from NFFC member group Rural Vermont, joined delegates from five additional North American La Via Campesina (LVC) member organizations to attend a Youth Encounter in Mexico. The Youth Articulation is an autonomous organizing space within La Via Campesina where people aged 35 and under strategize to advance food sovereignty within our local communities, policy circles, and food systems. The first in-person North America Youth Encounter since 2019, the gathering offered an important opportunity to discuss the issues and realities we face as youth and strategize opportunities for action

We were hosted in Mexico City by the youth of La Unión Nacional de Organizaciones Regionales Campesinas Autónomas (México UNORCA). Conversations were lively as we debated core and emerging themes within La Via Campesina and beyond, including agrarian reform, peasants’ rights, popular peasant feminism, and identity diversities (sexual, gender, cultural, etc.). We found common ground in our struggles, and agreed that unity in diversity can only be achieved by working together on shared strategies - work  based on relationship-building, trust, and communication. We reiterated the power and importance of grassroots leadership, movement building, and youth participation in policy making. 

This youth gathering took place as La Via Campesina celebrates its 30th anniversary fighting for peasant rights, agroecological practices, a people’s trade agenda, and food sovereignty. LVC has grown into the leading voice for farmers, peasants, fisherfolk, and rural communities in international policy and in the United Nations system, advancing a common vision for justice in our food systems, and grounding community efforts to put that vision into practice.  

After engaging with Mexican youth for contextual analysis, debate, and agroecology exchanges in Mexico City, we traveled to the Universidad Campesino Sur, a peasant agroecology school in the state of Morelos. Here we began a strategic planning process to further define the priorities and goals of the LVC North American Youth Articulation, including the continued need to strengthen the relationships and trust between youth in Mexico, Canada, and the U.S. We also had the opportunity to visit agroecological farms in the region, and learn about the history of Mexican Revolutionary Emiliano Zapato and agrarian land reform in Mexico. 

Above all, the experience reminded us that as youth, we are the future of agriculture. Our realities across North America differ greatly, yet we are united by our shared struggle. Our work on food sovereignty proves to be more fundamental and universal than ever as we face an uncertain and rapidly changing future. In tumultuous times, it is our relationships, trust, and solidarity with each other that lay our shared foundation for a Just Transition to a livable future. 

By Mollie Wills and Jordan Treakle

A delegation of La Va Campesina members gathers in Morelos, Mexico at the memorial of Emiliano Zapata, a peasant revolutionary instrumental in agrarian land reform.

April 17th was the International Day of Peasant Struggles, and May 1st is International Workers Day - in many parts of the world it is known as Labor Day.  This International Workers Day, we can share our solidarity, celebration, and commitment to human rights, dignity, and deep structural change with our local and global communities: from our local farm workers and Migrant Justice, to our international peasants in La Via Campesina, who are entering their 4th decade of organized collective struggle!  

Migrant Justice has been organizing for two years to get Hannaford’s to commit to the Milk With Dignity program. On May 1st, May Day, which is International Workers’ Day, there will be more than 30 actions at Hannaford’s stores around the northeast region. See more information at their website and in this Email Blast.  Farmworkers in VT face particular challenges with accessing and / or affording healthcare, housing, childcare and other essential services - and many face the constant threat of deportation. Milk with Dignity promises better standards of living and work for farmworkers as well as a better financial return for farmers.

Throughout April, La Via Campesina is calling upon its members and allies to plant native and indigenous trees in their farm, neighborhood, backyard or garden – as a symbol of our collective existence, persistence and resistance.  They are calling for mobilization at the June World Trade Organization ministerial meetings in Geneva.  We share our solidarity with this message from La Via Campesina on its 30th anniversary:

“The world is in a difficult place at the moment. The food crisis continues to deepen while hunger and social injustices worsen each day, further aggravated by a COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, conflicts, wars, and financial speculations. It highlights the absolute failure of the transnational capital and agribusiness system enabled by free trade agreements and industrialized monoculture soaked in toxic agro-inputs. This industrial system displaces peasants and degrades the environment and productive resources while supplying our countries with expensive, imported and unhealthy foods. Rising global food prices and costs of farm inputs push peasant communities everywhere deeper into hunger, poverty and debt.

We, La Via Campesina – the peasants, indigenous peoples, rural populations, agricultural workers, and youth in urban and rural areas, propose and promote Food Sovereignty as a solution to build the national productive capacity. Food Sovereignty is a principle rooted in the peasant and family farm sector through supportive public policies, guaranteed prices, credits, and other support forms—including direct marketing between producers and consumers and genuine agrarian reform.”

Full statement from La Via Campesina…

Call for mobilizations in the face of the WTO ministerial meeting - June 2022 in Geneva, Switzerland

Since the creation of the WTO in 1995, La Via Campesina has been denouncing the neoliberal and free trade policies that are destroying the peasantry and destabilizing local food systems worldwide. From Seattle (1999) to Cancun (2003), from Hong Kong (2005) to Buenos Aires (2017), we have been fighting against the imposition of a free trade order in the service of big business and billionaires. On the 10th of September 2003, while protesting outside the WTO ministerial in Cancun, Mexico, peasant from KPL -South Korea Mr. Lee Kyung-Hae sacrificed his life by stabbing himself. That tragic incident exposed the destructive effects of WTO and its trade liberalization efforts on the lives of millions of peasants globally.

Our mobilizations have made it possible to block the free trade negotiations. After our big mobilization in Hongkong 2005, the Doha Development Agenda which started in 2001 has been in limbo and there are no new major WTO agreements ever been adopted, especially in agriculture. However, The WTO was established based on the Marrakesh agreement in 1994; it still forces countries to open their markets to multinational companies and prevents the implementation of ambitious public policies in favor of peasants’ economy. In addition, bilateral and regional free trade agreements have multiplied.

Neoliberal policies and the imposition of free trade have greatly weakened peasantry around the world. They push countries to give priority to export crops and to depend on imports to feed their populations. They increase the grabbing of resources by multinationals, to the detriment of peasants and local communities. They contribute to the exacerbation of climate crisis by fostering monoculture plantations, deforestations, overexploitation of soils and water and dwindling our biodiversity.

Today, with the pandemic of COVID-19, with the extreme events linked to global warming and with the war in Ukraine and other places, it is clear that making people's food security dependent on international trade and TNCs is criminal. This must stop. The WTO must get out of agriculture. Food sovereignty must be the basis of agricultural and food policies in each country and at the international level. 

In June 2022, the WTO ministerial meeting will meet in Geneva. The WTO is struggling to seek relevance again in a world battered by inequality, hunger, extreme poverty, wars and a once-in-a-century pandemic. La Via Campesina calls on civil society to mobilize to denounce this criminal organization and defend people’s food sovereignty. We have reiterated in our International Day of Action against WTO and Free Trade Agreements that for us– the global peasant movement of peasants, indigenous people, farmworkers, migrants, fishers and pastoralists – the only permanent solution that we have historically advocated for is that WTO and FTAs stay out of any agricultural discussions. Food cannot be subjected to the whims and fancies of a free market where only those who can afford it can eat it.

The UN Human Rights Council will also meet at the end of June in Geneva. This will be an opportunity for peasant movements from all over the world to affirm that the alternative must be based on peasants' rights and to demand procedures for the implementation of the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other Rural Workers (UNDROP).

End WTO! Food Sovereignty and Peasants' Rights now!

The University of Vermont is inviting livestock farmers to a national-level survey on transboundary animal disease prevention, to gather behavioral attitudes that drive the adoption of biosecurity at the farm level.

The livestock industry is vulnerable to threats of an infectious outbreak of diseases, such as the foot-and-mouth disease and the African swine fever. These diseases are of a national and international threat to animal farming and have dire economic consequences. Decision making and human behavior at the farm level are at the heart of disease prevention, management and control.

The survey takes around 15 minutes to complete and to compensate for your time on a successful completion of the survey, you will be entered into a draw for a chance to win a $100 Amazon gift-card. 

Your participation is important!

If you have any questions please contact Richmond Baye:

Richmond Silvanus Baye
PhD Candidate | Research Assistant
SDPEG | CDAE | University of Vermont
Email: richmond.baye@uvm.edu
Phone: 802-310-7434