From the Director – The Importance of Local Food & Sustainable Food Systems
I came into planning from agricultural economic development, farm sustainability, and sustainable agriculture policy. My emphasis was improved access to local food for the benefit of consumers and farmers alike. This summer’s food safety concerns in the industrial food and agriculture sector underscore for me the importance of buying local and, from a planning perspective, making sure town plans and zoning (and state rules for that matter) don’t make it harder for farmers to both earn a sustainable living and connect with those to whom they sell.
Thirty years ago, I founded the Baton Rouge Economic and Agricultural Development Alliance, which included the creation of the Red Stick Farmer’s Market. This November the market will celebrate three decades of opportunity for farmers and consumers alike. The mid-90s was a period of farmers market and direct-to-consumer resurgence, but it wasn’t easy. In Baton Rouge we frequently ran into regulatory hurdles in part because rules weren’t scaled to local production and producers. There was also a bias against small producers. We overcame most of these, but these barriers led me to lead the federal policy coordination work of the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture, which has now evolved to become the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. I subsequently had leadership roles in agricultural economic development in counties in Maryland and New York.
One of the things that drew me to Vermont is its strong farm-to-plate culture and broad support for family farming. The scale of agriculture here lends itself to a local and regional market focus. During the pandemic we saw how important this focus was to our local and state food security. There’s not a lot we can do at the regional scale to directly impact local food access and food security beyond advocating for it and supporting local food planning. But there are concrete things towns can do to support local farms and food because of their zoning authority. I was honored to participate in the development of the Vermont Farm-to-Plate Local Planning for Food Access Toolkit, and I encourage town planning commissions and local committees focused on food and farming to give it a look. I also participated in the development of the Vermont Food Security Roadmap, which is a higher-level document but one with excellent information.
If you’re interested in discussing what your town can do to support local farms and food in its planning, let me know! It’s one of my favorite areas of planning and something that can make a real difference in the lives of farmers and consumers alike.