Some, not all, final thoughts

A writer from Lancaster Farming reached out to our group asking if anyone wanted to be interviewed for an article about us. I chose to send an email with my responses to his questions, and it was a great opportunity to reflect on the journey and what I'd learned. I thought I'd share my answers to some of the questions:

What have been some of the highlights on this tour for you so far? What specifically about the classroom instruction to date has made this worth your while so far? What about the farm stops? What particular visit sticks out for you at this point, and why?
The extreme diversity of places we've seen and people we've spoken with really stands out to me. We're visiting every corner of the food system in Vermont, as we visit the physical corners of Vermont as a state. We've met with state organizations, nonprofits, professors, masters candidates, researchers, school garden coordinators, co-op grocery markets, dairy farms, cheesemakers, agroecologists, carbon experts, book publishers like Chelsea Green - the list goes on. It's truly amazing that we've had access to such busy, important people who have been instrumental in advancing Vermont's food system to the point where it is today.

In the classroom, we hear lectures from people who are so knowledgeable about their subjects, and who are so excited to be talking to us. Everyone is so interested in knowing who we are, where we come from, and why we're interested in what they have to say. I think everyone in VT involved with food is so excited that other people from outside VT want to learn about food and make a difference in food systems, and that shows through when they give their presentations. Our instructors also do a great job of debriefing, making connections across lectures/visits, and bringing us back to big-picture perspectives.

My favorite farm visit was Cedar Circle Farm. We visited after 5 days on dairy farms - I had never been to a dairy farm before this trip, so those visits were really eye-opening, but after so many days, I was sick of the smell of manure and ready to talk about produce and policy again. Cedar Circle was such a beautiful place - the greenhouses and produce fields boasted such perfect flowers, greens, and strawberries. They have so many great programs - a farm stand, a CSA, direct sales at 4 different farmers' markets, education programs for both community members and their employees, a commercial kitchen, pick-your-own, and two annual festivals. It was inspiring to see how many different initiatives they take on, and I can't stress enough how beautiful their kale, spinach, and other greens were (I've attached a photo).

What are you learning about VT agriculture that you hope to return and apply to your studies? And how do you feel this trip benefit you and your work in the future?
I'm definitely learning a lot about the production side of food. I grew up in the suburbs of NYC, very disconnected from agriculture or where my food came from, so seeing dairy and vegetable farms has been eye-opening. I've always known that I would need to learn more about production or spend time working on a farm to really understand how to design food policy, so the visits have been really helpful. We're also talking a lot about the importance of support from the VT Legislature, Agency of Ag, and other government organizations and elected officials - if I do work in food policy, I know I will need to be working for or with people who value sustainable food systems, want to support producers, and care about food access for low-income or marginalized populations.

Why is this experience important to you? Why do you believe programs like this generally benefit agriculture in the U.S.
I have a few scattered answers to this one:

• Vermont is doing a great job figuring out the true meaning of collaboration. This program is proof that partnerships among higher education institutions can lead to valuable experiences, relationship-building, and innovative thinking. It's also awesome to have experiential learning available to the general public outside of those institutions. 
• It's been amazing spending so much time with the 9 other people participating in this study tour with me. We learn so much from each other, and we all have such different backgrounds that we bring interesting perspectives to the table and have such rich conversations, whether about food or our lectures or anything not related to food. 
• We're learning a lot about what's working in VT, and many of us have plans bring ideas back to where we live. One participant who's particularly interested in agricultural education has been asking very specific questions and taking note of the most effective ag education programs we've seen so she can teach classes or maybe start a program or organization in her county in Virginia. 
• I think the key here is information sharing. The universities/colleges involved with the consortium are sharing information and best practices with each other, as well as with us. Then we have this innovative information and take it outside of VT - to NY, Philadelphia, Virginia, New Hampshire, Boston, Ohio, and wherever we may end up in the future.

Days 19-20: Cidermaking with Woodchuck and concluding at Shelburne Farms

On our last day of class, we learned about cidermaking at Woodchuck, winemaking at Lincoln Peak, and convenient gardening at Cloud Farm. It was a relaxing, winding-down kind of day, with hard cider and wine tastings leading to a beautiful concluding dinner at Shelburne Farms, where everyone we met with along the way was invited to join us and hear our reflective thoughts on our journey.

We toured Sunrise Orchard and Woodchuck Cidery with Ben Calvi, a cidermaker at Woodchuck. He showed us Sunrise, the 600-acre apple orchard that sells 1/3 of their apples wholesale, 1/3 direct to consumer, and 1/3 to processing for things like hard cider. VT apples are great for hard cider because their high acidity allows them to grow in cold climates, and the acidity is also important for high quality cider. Woodchuck is helping Sunrise finance a new block of planting specifically for cider apples, because there simply are not enough apples in VT to supply Woodchuck's demand for 6 million gallons of cider per year. Touring an apple orchard was important for us in learning about the food system because hard cider is the fastest growing sector of the alcohol industry, as well as a huge aspect of VT's food and beverage industry. Ben also made an interesting point about consumers wanting craft ciders at the same price point as beer, because of similar flavoring and packaging. In reality though, cider is much more similar to wine because of the fruit juice pressing and fermentation process, versus fermenting grains. Yet still, consumers expect low prices for cider, which has proved challenging for the industry. More on Woodchuck - they were established in 1991 as the first commercial-size cider to bring cider to market in VT. They have a staff of 150 - 100 of whom work at the factory we toured in VT. They export to all 50 states, Europe, Canada, and Australia.

On Friday night we stayed in a cabin at Shelburne Farms, and toured the property on Saturday with Megan Camp, Vice President and Program Director of the nonprofit entity of Shelburne Farms. Shelburne is on an incredibly beautiful 1,400 acres alongside Lake Champlain. They focus on agricultural education and connecting people to the land, through children's summer camps, courses and workshops in sugaring and vegetable gardening education, pick-your-own produce, and generally opening their land for families to visit. We met with Josh Carter, Market Gardener, who showed us their vegetable farm and talked about his passion for taking care of natural and agricultural resources, and teaching people to think farming is a good way to live. They also have a solar orchard that produces 33% of their overall energy, as well as a compost operation. We walked through their creamery, where they make their own cheese and send some off to Jasper Hill for aging. Lastly, Megan talked about Shelburne's role in creating and supporting VT FEED, which partners with NOFA and Food Works to promote farm to school programming in VT.

Day 18: Real Food at Middlebury College, and bees as roving indicators of healthy ecosystems

Last night we arrived at Middlebury College, and today we learned about their commitment to carbon neutrality by 2016, their dining services and the Real Food Challenge (RFC), and their educational campus farm. It's obvious that Middlebury students promote an activist culture, and have the potential to make serious changes if they demand it from the administration and Board of Trustees. The students were instrumental in proposing a carbon reduction goal back in 2004, and in 2006 proposed carbon neutrality by 2016. They are also involved with promoting sustainable living habits and a campus-wide energy literacy campaign.

Ross Dining Hall at Middlebury College, which serves about 

7,500 meals per day and generates over $1 million per year.

Beyond sustainability, students play a vital role in real food procurement in their dining halls. Dan Detora of Middlebury Dining Services led us through two of their dining halls, Proctor and Ross, and described their commitments to purchasing local, reducing waste, and working with the Real Food Challenge calculator. They're a self-operated facility, which means they are in control of all their sourcing and food preparation, unlike schools who contract out to companies like Sodexo, Aramark, or Bon-Appetit. From what I can tell on this trip, self-operating facilities like Middlebury and Sterling are significantly superior and tend to prioritize real food, care more about their students' preferences, and support local farmers way, way more than schools that contract out. In terms of the RFC, they currently source about 26-28% real food, and are aiming for 30% by 2016 and 50% by 2020. Those are huge aspirations, but it seems like their values and infrastructure are in place to come close to those goals. They receive deliveries from 50-60 local farms every day, as well as from Black River Produce, a VT wholesale and distribution company. It's clear that as a self-operating facility, they want to and do go beyond the national goals of the RFC.

From left: Dara Scott, Bill McKibben, Helen Youn, Kirk Webster.

Tonight we heard from a panel of four on the impact of climate change on bees and beekeeping: Bill McKibben, leading climate change activist, Kirk Webster, beekeeper who breeds disease-resistant bees, Helen Young, evolutionary biologist and professor, and Dara Scott, an Irish bee expert. Bees and beekeeping is something I had previously thought of as part of the system, but not as essential as our panelists described it. Bill talked about bees as roving indicators of the health of our plants. We don't know why the number of bees has been collapsing, but it's obviously a sign that big shifts in climate are happening and impacting our ecosystem. This is especially important because Kirk described bees as incredible adaptable creatures, but now we see extreme weather changes definitely affecting them. Dara worded the crisis quite well by saying, "I consider the bee as a sort of canary in the coal mine at this stage." The bee decline deeply affects us as humans, as according to Helen, 75% of all flowering plants rely on pollinators like bees to help them with sexual reproduction. Although the other 25% are wind pollinators, which includes plants we rely heavily on like corn and wheat, the majority of our food crops will not survive if the bees disappear, and we won't be able to rely on the animals that eat those food crops. Pollination is thus critical for human survival, and we are indirectly dependent upon bee pollinators and the health of their colonies.

This conversation was yet another indicator of the incredible interconnectivity of food systems, as well as the importance of agroecology and doing our part in maintaining healthy ecosystems.

Day 17: How agroecology promotes food sovereignty and the right to food

The conversation surrounding food as a human right continued today at the second day of the UVM Food Systems Summit. We heard several presentations, but I want to reflect on the following speakers, who were the most noteworthy to me: Claire Kremen, conservation biologist and ecologist, Anastasia Telesetsky, professor at the University of Idaho College of Law, and Raj Patel, author and activist. As I'll mention at the end of this post, it's important to note that there's no one-size-fits-all solution to the food systems problems we're talking about and hearing about.

Claire reminded us that industrial agriculture is so fundamentally unsustainable - ecologically, economically, and socially. It's not possible to feed the world of the future with industrial agriculture, because it takes fertility out of the soils, produces the wrong mix of foods (too many grains), distributes food poorly, and depopulates farmland. Instead, we need a farming and food system that is regenerative, resilient, and sustainable. Agroecology is a science, movement, and practice that has the potential to transform our agricultural systems. It's knowledge-intensive, rather than input-intensive, and promotes ecological and social interactions. She showed us statistics that proved that biologically-diversified farms are more environmentally friendly, resilient, and efficient than conventional farms, and can sustain ecosystem services and recover unproductive lands. In terms of policies and implementation, we need to promote food sovereignty and right-to-food movements, break, get money of out politics and break the corporate control of food policy, and provide economic incentives for agroecological practices on our country's farms.

Anastasia discussed the intersection of our right to adequate food and our right to a clean and healthy environment. She challenged us to think about the environmental costs of producing enough food to meet basic needs (quantity, calories, commodities) versus high quality, real food. She also mentioned that in 2014, Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Olivier De Schutter acknowledged the role of the environment and production methods in achieving a right to food, and recommended the support of agro-biodiversity, subsidies to sustainability, and increased budgets for agroecological research. Goal 2 of the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals is to end hunger, achieve food security, and promote sustainable agriculture. This can be done through De Schutter's recommendations, as well as tax credits to landowners and farmers to transform industries, encouragement of creative use of underutilized land, and targeted government assistance for incremental implementation of agroecological practices. The "access to food cannot simply be a dream deferred." 

Raj is an incredible speaker. Seriously, if I am ever half as good at public speaking as he is, I'll consider my life a successful one. He engaged the audience well and provided witty soundbites, such as, "Diet Coke Plus says you can have zero calories and drink something that takes like a chemistry set, and flourish as a result," which had the audience roaring with laughter. His presentation was grounded in the fact that our food system is currently in an era of cheap food, cheap nature, cheap workers, cheap fuel, and cheap care. Our global food industry makes $89 billion in profits per year, while its environmental externalities are estimated at 224% of those profits. He urged us that no industrial agriculture model can internalize those costs (echoing Claire).

Raj spoke about the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, a commitment of international governments, donors, the private sector, research institutions, and other development partners to address agriculture-led growth and malnutrition in Africa. They essentially aim to beat hunger through business and science by providing private sector solutions that limit African countries' food sovereignty, promote dependence on the World Bank and Western corporations, and prioritize nutrition over the right to food through nutrient fortification. Raj described the New Alliance as a model that "premises itself on an investment, on something that provides a return, and it's a very slippery and dangerous slope." He used Malawi as an example, and showed us their three major commitments: improving their score on the Doing Business Index to top 100 countries, increasing the dollar value of private sector investment in agriculture and value-added agro-processing, and increased private investment in commercial production, sale of inputs, and produce and value addition. Raj pointed to this slide, and said, "You might say: Where's the nutrition? Where's the food?"

Well, the Soils, Food and Healthy Communities Project (SFHC) is a farmer-led organization in Ekwendeni, northern Malawi, which uses agroecological methods to answer that very question. Through farmer research groups, information sharing, growth of plants other than staple crops like corn, and Family Recipe Days, where men and boys learn about cooking and food preparation from women in the community, SFHC has shown improvements in child nutrition, food security, healthcare, and soil management for smallholder farming families. They have many peer-reviewed scientific publications about their work, which result from a participatory research model in which farmers do their own experiments and teach other farmers about their findings.

So anyway, if there's anything I've learned since arriving in Vermont it's that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to food production, food security, and food sovereignty. Every region has varying climates, types of soil, and lengths of growing seasons. Every region also has different demands from the people, different levels of interest from policymakers, different median levels of income, and most importantly, different values. SFHC seemed to do a great job of approaching food security from a community level, using agroecological methods, real relationships, and hard work.

Day 16: Valuing food as a human right, and why we need to transform our food system

Today was the first day of the UVM Food Systems Summit, and keynote speaker Smita Narula did an excellent job introducing us to the summit's theme, "The Right to Food: Power, Policy, and Politics in the 21st Century." She provided us with a big-picture perspective on transforming the food system, particularly through a human rights-based approach to food. By thinking about food as a human right, not a privilege, we can shift the conversation and drive policy toward a sustainable, nourishing, just food system. Though I must admit her 75-minute presentation was somewhat vague in what actual action we can take to create changes, she did a damn good job of summarizing what's wrong with our current food system and why it needs to be transformed, using incredibly powerful and inspiring language.

With the "right to food" as the theme of the summit, Smita defined this term as a concept with four main tenets: accessibility, adequacy, availability, and sustainable production. (1) Accessibility to food is nondiscriminatory and takes into account both physical access, which means proximity to food and access to transportation, and economic access, which means affordability without tradeoffs. (2) Adequacy means food that is nutritious, safe, culturally appropriate, and meets dietary needs. (3) Availability refers to both having adequate food in nearby stores, but also availability of the resources necessary for producing food, including land, seed, water, and basic equipment. (4) Lastly, the food to which we all have a right must be produced and sourced sustainably.

http://www.uvm.edu/foodsystems/?Page=summit.html&SM=summitmenu.html

Smita described food insecurity as a daily, perpetual struggle that connects hunger to obesity, and our food system to poverty, racism, classism, and gender inequality. People are impoverished by the design of our system, not by chance, and a gross imbalance of power embeds injustices and dispossession of resources into our society. Instead, we need a political and economic system where people can provide for themselves in dignified, healthy, sustainable ways. Rather than allowing markets and corporations to control the center of food conversations, we need to focus on farmers, foodmakers, distributors, and laborers, while prioritizing local production of real food, not commodities.

My biggest takeaway from Smita's speech is that our food system is not the only system that needs a radical transformation, if we want to live in a world where every human being has the right to consume (and produce) healthy, nourishing, good food. This relates well to the conversations we've had on this trip surrounding values, going back to the very first day with Paul Costello at the VT Council on Rural Development and Chuck Ross at the VT Agency of Agriculture. Although in those conversations we talked about VT's traditional values, such as community, local economies, and conserving nature, Smita's frame of food as a right also boils down to values. If we want to think about food as an essential human right that everyone in the world must be able to enjoy, we have to place food at a higher value than corporate power, profits, growth, efficiency, and cheap labor.

Day 15: VT land conservation, big picture systems terms, and food hub viability

Paul Foteyn's house on Lake Bomoseen.

I didn't post last night because we had our second "down day" (and so we weren't required to post). The President of GMC, Paul Fonteyn, invited us to his house on Lake Bomoseen, and it was a beautiful, relaxing day filled with boating, paddle boarding, swimming, and a delicious local/organic barbecue. We left GMC this morning and are back at UVM, ready for the VT Food Systems Summit tomorrow, which will bring together several hundred people to discuss the right to food.

This morning we chatted with Philip at GMC's farmhouse about Vermont's history through a land conservation lens. We talked about the conversion of New England woodlands to agricultural land during colonial times, which led to a history of soil loss, intense resource expansion, and water pollution/depletion. He told us about George Perkins Marsh, Sir Albert Howard, Lady Eve Balfour, and others who explored other landscapes, such as in Europe, to help them understand the "travesty to the landscape" back in New England. These discoveries, along with the Morrell Act of 1863 that established land grants and land grant institutions and the introduction of county fairs, helped lead to agricultural improvement in the mid-1800s. Philip also talked about the significance of the Soil Conservation Service (now known as the National Resource Conservation Service), land trusts, organic organizations, the back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s, and the Clean Water Act of 2008 in conserving VT resources, particularly soil and water.

GMC's Campus Farmhouse and front garden.

We then switched to a bigger picture conversation, in which we identified key terms from the last two weeks and tried to group them together to better understand the "systems" aspect of food systems, as well as how to make proper connections among the places we've seen and people we've spoken to. I enjoyed this activity primarily because it'll help me flush out what's important and be able talk about food systems and food policy with people who are unfamiliar with most of the terms. Some examples include food insecurity, food sovereignty, nutrient-dense, local/regional economies, rural revitalization, value-added, farm-to-institution, food hub, cooperatives, food justice, sustainable agriculture, diversified farming, organic practices, waste management, carbon sequestration, genetic engineering, labeling, social capital, and food miles.

For tonight's post we were asked to expand on one term and tease out where we've discussed it so far on our study tour. Food hub stands out to me the most, as it is a term that is becoming more and more critical in food systems conversations. According to the USDA, the National Food Hub Collaboration defines a regional food hub as:

"a business or organization that actively manages the aggregation, distribution, and marketing of source-identified food products primarily from local and regional producers to strengthen their ability to satisfy wholesale, retail, and institutional demand."

Intervale Food Hub baskets.

I want to talk about regional food hubs through the frame of scale, as we've seen a wide variety of food hubs so far. Vern Grubinger discussed the market aspect of food hubs, as they can deliver local food at lower costs than farms would sell on their own, because of the aggregation. Further, they allow small-scale farms to compete with large-scale farms, because in the aggregation they act as a single large-scale operation. Hubs work with a variety of different farmers and types of products, so they can provide different types of consumers with a wide variety of products.

Intervale Food Hub truck, which distributes food 2x/week to
community delivery sites.

The VT Food Venture Center (VFVC) discussed food hubs broadly as operations that aggregate, process, distribute, and sell food. Examples include online farmers' markets and multi-farm CSAs, especially if there's a central location for aggregation and distribution, such as a warehouse or truck. VFVC was unique because they connect people who want to start food hubs, do market research on the supply and demand in a certain region, and help build relationships. They also mentioned VT examples, including the Mad River Food Hub, Green Mountain Farm Direct, Rutland Area Farm Food Link, and the Intervale Center Food Hub, which we visited as well.

The Intervale Food Hub (IFH) is a multi-farm year-round weekly food share that aggregates products from 30 local producers and distributes to customers at community delivery sites, such as workplaces, college and corporate campuses, schools, or churches. Their prices are comparable to local, organic products at a grocery store, and they distribute mainly produce, staple foods, and some value-added products. Their producers range in size from 1/2-acre greenhouses to 50-acre vegetable farms. The food hub is unique compared to other CSAs because it aggregates products from several producers and appeals to new types of customers through a convenience factor - the products are thoroughly washed and small quantities are packed in bags so the food is ready to cook/eat. The packages also include menu planning, recipe development, and cooking tips to attract the average consumer who might not normally be knowledgeable about CSAs or farm-fresh food.

A mural at VFVC depicting food systems: production,
aggregation, processing, delivery, and consumption.

In terms of scale, the IFH delivers small packages from a variety of small farms twice a week to 20-25 delivery sites for customers up to 30 miles away. Clearly, this is a very local/regional model that probably wouldn't work for more than a couple hundred customers or much more than their 30 small producers. It's an excellent way to open up new markets for their local producers, as well as a way to introduce new customers to local farmers, but the profit margins are small and subsidies are needed to keep it running. 

Day 13: The true meaning of "outdoorsy" and "down-to-earth"

Philip Ackerman-Leist's home, courtesy of Natalie Bekkouche.

Yesterday we traveled to Green Mountain College (GMC), toured their campus farm (Cerridwen Farm), had dinner with some students, and met Philip Ackerman-Leist, Director of the GMC Masters in Sustainable Food Systems and an instrumental leader in the VT Higher Education Food Systems Consortium and planning this study tour. For today's blog post, we were tasked with reflecting on the farmers' lifestyles we've seen and comparing them to our own.

As we've visited farms and gardens over the last two weeks, we've seen a wide array of lifestyles and models of farming. We've seen family-run dairy farms where the family lives on the farm and wakes up at 4am to milk and feed the cows, we've seen college farms where students live on campus and wake up at 6am to do morning farm chores and professors or farm managers come from off campus at sunrise, we've seen school gardens or vegetable farms carefully tended to during the days, and today, we had the wonderful opportunity to harvest wild greens and eat dinner at Philip's homestead.

Philip and his wife Erin live in a remote house that they built on Tunket Road in Pawlet, VT with their three children. Though I haven't spoken to him about his experiences as a homesteader, I know he wrote a whole book about it called Up Tunket Road. From what I can tell, he writes about the complexities of living a simple life somewhat separated from modern life in terms of its economic systems, food systems, social systems, electr(on)ic systems, and water systems, among others. After driving up a long, bumpy road and spending a few hours at his house, it's clear that he and his family grow and harvest an overwhelming amount of their own food and use a herd of devon cattle that provide milk, beef, and manual labor. Their house is definitely untraditional and I could tell almost all of the structures and systems were built by hand. I had a lovely time at Philip's, enjoying the beautiful early summer weather, wildcrafting and learning about plants I previously thought of as inedible weeds, and chatting with his family, neighbors, and our group, knowing my phone was on Airplane mode and that I was in a space independent of the technology I am essentially attached to most of the time.

I've thought a lot about my own lifestyle over the last two weeks, and the lifestyle to which I grew up accustomed. I've definitely been in a sort of culture shock, and am forced to think about the different kinds of lives people lead. I believe 100% that the farmers we've met are connected to their land and surroundings in a way I've never experienced and am not sure I ever will experience. They lead sustainable lives in many ways, using renewable energies, being aware of their carbon footprints, eating food either they cultivated or from neighbors they know well, and supporting their local economy when buying what they can't provide for themselves. In the house I grew up in, we ate processed foods, relied on gas for hot running water and electricity, had lots of technological gadgets, boasted a bright green, manicured lawn complete with white fertilizer every few weeks, and drove our gas-guzzling Chevy Suburban down the road and all over town to buy groceries and other goods from people we didn't know. Growing up in a NYC suburb, I always considered myself more outdoorsy and/or down-to-earth than my friends - we'd go hiking and camping a few times a year, we always took more adventurous vacations than my friends (who'd sit on a beach somewhere), like skiing or ranching and hiking in Montana, and we paid attention to food labels and cooked vegetables often.

I'm realizing it's incredibly hard to write down a description of my own upbringing in a way that any reader will truly understand, and compare it to the farming lifestyles we've seen, but I can admit that my definition of outdoorsy and down-to-earth has changed. The word "sustainable" hardly crossed my path before my siblings and I went to college and learned about environmental issues, and as we talk about sustainable food systems and sustainable agriculture, I know I must lead a more sustainable lifestyle that is more connected to our land than the one I've known all my life.