Our Vision

Our Vision is for a Vermont local food system which is self-reliant and based on reverence for the earth. It builds living soils which nurture animals and people with wholesome, natural products supporting healthy, thriving farms and communities. These communities in turn work to encourage and support current and future farmers, continuing our Vermont heritage. This abundant and generous way of life celebrates our diversity and interdependence.

Who We Are

We are Vermont's community of family farmers, neighbors and citizens committed to supporting and cultivating a vital and healthy rural economy and community. We believe family farms and the local food that they provide are at the heart of thriving communities and environmental sustainability. Economic justice for family farmers is the foundation of a healthy rural economy. Towards this end we strive for fair prices for farmers and we work to counter corporate consolidation of agriculture and the food supply.

What We Do

ACTIVATE our Farm Policy Network, which is a group of Vermonters actively engaged in the democratic process and committed to preserving our rural heritage and promoting local food systems.

EDUCATE by providing information and resources to farmers and the public about issues impacting our rural communities.

ADVOCATE through collaborative efforts locally, statewide, and nationally to ensure that policies made will strengthen family farms, sustain rual communities, and promote local food sovereignty.

History

In the 1980’s farmers found themselves caught between rising costs and plunging prices. For farmers it was a period of crisis in many ways comparable to the Great Depression of the 1930’s. In 1985, 1,173 farms went out of business every week across the United States, and in Vermont, while the rate of farm loss was not quite as swift, the landscape was noticeably changing. New golf courses, shopping malls and subdivisions were appearing where there were once pasturelands and green hills and valleys nestling those familiar red barns and old silos.

In addition to failed federal policies, falling milk prices, and rising costs, Vermont farmers saw their property taxes soar in the early 1980’s. It was in this period of crisis that Rural Vermont was born. Founded by Anthony Pollina, Rural Vermont was set up to assist farmers with their legal and financial problems, but it shortly became something more powerful – Rural Vermont became a means for farmers to speak out.

Rural Vermont went on to reform the Current Use Program also known as Vermont's Agricultural and Managed Forest Land Use Value Program in which taxation is assessed on the productive value of land rather than being assessed on the value for potential development. For more information on the Current Use Program contact the Vermont Department of Taxes at 802-828-5869 or by e-mail at vttaxdept@tax.state.vt.us

Reforming the Current use program was a huge feat for farmers and for Rural Vermont however, milk prices continued to drop and federal policies continued to support corporate interest and drive farmers out of business. In 1986 Rural Vermont demanded that the state take some responsibility for the crisis occurring within its own borders and organized a series of milk dumping actions to protest the federally mandated price cut attributed to a milk surplus. As a result of these actions, Vermont’s farmers won a first in the nation $.50 per hundredweight direct payment from the state to make up for the federal price cut.

In addition, Rural Vermont went on to help create the Northeast Dairy Compact, which controlled dairy-pricing policy at the regional level. It included the six New England states and created a Commission of farmers, consumers and dairy processors in the region who, since 1997, set a price for fluid milk above the federal price, which is often 25% below the farmer’s cost of production. For many farmers, it meant the difference between losing their farms and being able to hang on. The Compact was not renewed and so expired in 2001. However, there is some debate over reestablishing a Nation wide program modeled after the Compact. To learn more about the NE Dairy Compact visit www.themilkweed.com

For dairy farmers caught in an economic crisis attributed to an overproduction of milk – the introduction of a genetically engineered hormone designed to boost milk production in cows could only exacerbate the illogic, and unfairness, of the system. Vermont farmers saw this right away and along with Rural Vermont were the first to organize against the introduction of rBGH as early as 1988.

In 1994, the result of years of public education and advocacy by Rural Vermont, Vermont became the first state in the country to legislate mandatory labeling of dairy products made from cows injected with rBGH. The law was in effect for a year before it was blocked by a lawsuit filed by the International Dairy Food Association (IDFA). IDFA claimed the law infringed on a company’s right not to speak. Rural Vermont fought the lawsuit, but the mandatory labeling law was ultimately lost when a Federal Appeals Court ruled in IDFA’s favor in August 1996

Short of mandatory labeling, Vermont does, however, have the strongest voluntary labeling law in the nation. Companies must be able to back up their claims that their products are rBGH free.

Rural Vermont also worked on campaigns against free trade agreements aware of the detrimental effect they would have on family farmers all around the world. When the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) were being negotiated in the early 1990’s Rural Vermont began to organize against them. To learn more about the detrimental affects of US trade policies on family farmers please go to Food First

In 2004 Rural Vermont successfully passed the Farmers’ Right to Know GE Seed Labeling and Registration Act. This law puts the USDA organic standards’ definition of “genetically modified” into Vermont statute, and requires that GE seeds be clearly labeled as such. This year Rural Vermont is working hard to pass the Farmer Protection Act, which in a nutshell will protect all Vermont farmers from liability risks associated with GE crops.