VOLUME XX/ NUMBER 1 / SPRING 2014
Cultivating Connections CENTER FOR SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE
FROM THE DIRECTOR By Linda Berlin, Director I have been the Center Director since March 2009. After reading through the articles in this issue of CC, it dawned on me how many things at the Center have changed over the past five years, a seemingly short period of time. The differences reflect some conscious decisions we have made, but mostly echo how much the world is transforming at a rapid pace. I recall a strategic planning expert recently telling me that organizations are not engaged in long-range strategic planning as much these days because the future is way too unpredictable. Instead, we have to take a shorter view, and be very nimble. I am extremely grateful for the nimbleness of the Center staff! When I arrived at the Center’s doorstep, almost all of our programs emphasized food production. While that is still the focus of the majority of our programs, the objectives, and consequently the ways we approach our work, are more diverse. For example, we are thinking about food
access and food security a lot more explicitly than was the case in the past. Our New Farms for New American program provides a good example of this emphasis. Thinking about food security means that we measure the impacts of our programs using these criteria, which provide important input to our future program development. Climate change is also a significant driver in our current programs. While environmental issues were always a key component of our sustainability focus, considerations related to climate have broadened the environmental focus we once had, and brought greater urgency. Keeping food safe to eat has also emerged as a high priority in recent years. In the past, agricultural food safety was primarily considered in relation to pesticides, and less so in terms of microbial contamination. Definitely not the case these days! We also recently started some work on food waste, driven to some extent by Vermont’s Universal Recycling Law. Our food waste emphasis is on how to produce less waste, which we hope can ultimately help households decrease their food expenses. As the world turns, so do we. In fact, I think we are all learning to pirouette out of necessity. Here’s to hoping that our future turns, as well as yours, proceed with grace!
IN THIS ISSUE From the Director ..............................................1 Upcoming Sustainable Ag. Events ....................2 Commenting on FSMA ......................................3 Fresh from the Field: Program News............ 4-6 Our First Party on the Farm .. .........................7 It’s Okay to Trample!.........................................8 Center at FarmAid 2013 ...................................9 2014 Grazing & Livestock Conference ...........10 Fiscal Year 2013 Financials ...........................11
Cultivating Connections is the newsletter of UVM’s Center for Sustainable Agriculture. Our goal is to encourage people with diverse interests to collaborate in fostering an understanding of agricultural issues that will lead to personal and community-wide decisions that support sustainable farming.
Mark Your Calendar for the
2014 UVM FOOD SYSTEMS SUMMIT UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT CENTER FOR SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE 23 Mansfield Ave. Burlington, VT 05401 sustainable.agriculture@uvm.edu www.uvm.edu/sustainableagriculture
Linda Berlin, Director (802) 656-0669, linda.berlin@uvm.edu
Juan Alvez, Pasture Program Technical Coordinator (802)656-6116, jalvez@uvm.edu
Jennifer Brown, Budget Manager (802) 656-3437, jennifer.brown@uvm.edu
Jennifer Colby, Pasture Program Coordinator (802) 656-0858, jennifer.colby@uvm.edu
Joshua Faulkner, Farming & Climate Change Coordinator (802) 656-5459, joshua.faulkner@uvm.edu
Kimberly Hagen, Pasture Program Outreach Coordinator (802) 656-3834, kimberly.hagen@uvm.edu
Suzy Hodgson, , Local Food Organizer suzy.hudgson@uvm.edu
Cheryl Herrick, Office Manager & Newsletter Editor (802) 656-5459, cheryl.herrick@uvm.edu
Ginger Nickerson, Produce Safety Coordinator (802) 656-5490, virginia.nickerson@uvm.edu
Rachel Schattman, Graduate Research Assistant (802) 656-9140, rachel.schattman@uvm.edu
Ben Waterman, New Farmer, Coordinator (802) 656-9142, ben.waterman@uvm.edu
Ali Zipparo, Youth Agricultural IDA Coordinator (802) 656-9139, azipparo@uvm.edu Issued in furtherance of Cooperative Extension work, Acts of May 8 and June 30, 1914, in cooperation with the United States Department of Agriculture. University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont. The University of Vermont Extension System and U.S. Department of Agriculture, cooperating, offer education and employment to everyone without regard to race, color, national origin, sex, religion, age, disability, political beliefs and marital or familial status. UVM Extension helps individuals and communities put researchbased knowledge to work. Articles may be re-printed with credit given to publication and author.
The Necessary [r] Evolution for Sustainable Food Systems, June 17-18, 2014, Burlington, VT The UVM Food Systems Summit is an annual event drawing scholars, practitioners, and food systems leaders to engage in dialogue on the pressing food systems issues facing our world. The Summit will include keynote addresses from food systems leaders including Rosamond Naylor, Eric HoltGimenez, and Nicholas Freudenberg, as well as panel discussions with scholars and practitioners. The 2014 Summit will focus on local-level responses to globalization in the food system through the following themes: the impact of our geopolitical context on our food system, the biophysical constraints we face for food production globally, and the implications of behavior and culture for our food system. Unlike traditional academic conferences, the Summit is designed to optimize engagement between scholars and practitioners outside of academia. As such, the Summit is open to the public, the organizers are actively seeking participation from regional nonprofits and government, and all sessions include time for Q&A and engaged dialogue with the audience. If you’ve been to the Summit in the past 2 years, you’ll recall that we featured multiple speakers in an afternoon of short talks. It was a great way to highlight a wide range of people who are doing inspiring work to revolutionize the food system. What we heard from the audience is that people liked the variety of speakers, but wanted more opportunities to interact—to really dig into the difficult questions faced by scholars, activists, policy makers, farmers, and eaters of all walks of life. So this year we have re-envisioned the Summit as a day and a half gathering to maximize the opportunity for dialogue, networking, and engaging discussion on the pressing food systems issues facing our world.
P.2 CULTIVATING CONNECTIONS /VOLUME XX / NUMBER 1 / SPRING 2014
PROGRAM NEWS
FRESH FROM THE FIELD
Contributed by Joshua Faulkner, Ali Zipparo, Ginger Nickerson, Jenn Colby, Suzy Hodgson, and Ben Waterman
to appreciate what’s below the soil surface more. Planned grazing (on paper) should be used to work on the farm’s weakest links. “It’s hard to reach a destination without a road map.”, Bartlett says. Plan one to three projects per year, and focus on the greatest places to get the most bang for the buck. Get creative and use fresh sets of eyes. The first thing to plant in a pasture should be fence posts. Subdivide pastures—even two is better than one— and more is better, to allow plants to rest and regrow. The last place to invest farm dollars is in plowing, tilling and planting new pasture, except for extreme cases.
“Hard to Reach a Destination Without a Road Map” and Other Tips from Ben Bartlett Winter is the time for fresh thinking and information exchange, and the Pasture Program team has been soaking up new ideas to share with you. Our 2014 Vermont Grazing & Livestock Conference keynote speaker Dr. Ben Bartlett was very positively received with his themes of low-stress livestock handling, sheep and cattle management, and holistic farming methods. Above all, “Dr. Ben” maximizes the use of solar production through grass farming as a method to save farmers money, manage land responsibly and “enjoy the ride” of farming. Here are some “Bartlett-isms” to share, from past articles and his Vermont conference presentation(s):
Pasture must be viewed as the primary crop for true progress. Bartlett says, “The three most important questions in planning for change in a farm operation are: If there were no limitations, how would you spend your time, what could money do for you, and how will you be remembered?” Managed grazing, most of the time, will provide lower-cost and higher-quality forage. After traveling the U.S. and internationally, Bartlett has observed that graziers need to use new technologies (most are not), need less emphasis on “hot new varieties of plants” and more emphasis on better harvesting systems and management, and they need
Spring on the Vermont Farm in a Changing Climate Adaptation is the name of the game as spring and summer approach. As the last few years have shown us, more intense storms remain central to climate change predictions for the Northeast. Flash floods can damage farm infrastructure, and saturated soil is slow to warm and impossible to traverse. The erosion caused by runoff from these storms not only contributes to water quality problems, but also carries away valuable topsoil. While all impacts cannot be avoided, we can take pro-active measures to help us and our farms adapt. To build farm resilience, evaluate how water moves through your farm. If runoff from upslope is crossing through your cultivated fields or the farmstead area, decide whether a wisely-placed diversion berm or ditch might help protect those areas. Make sure all culverts and ditches are open and free of debris that could lead to clogging. When you are (finally!) able to work the soil this spring, think about leaving a densely grassed buffer strip
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FRESH FROM THE FIELD, CONTINUED
around your fields to filter out soil from runoff. To add another function and benefit to the strip, consider planting some wildflowers or native flowering shrubs to increase pollinator habitat on the farm. Try to keep soil covered at all times, either with mulches or cover crops, which dramatically reduce soil loss. Finally, if a field has any slope to it, make sure you are working and planting across the slope, not up and down it.
tion and marketing knowledge. There are over 100 growers on the list. They are commercial producers as well as hobbyists, but all share a common love and curiosity for the art and trade of log-based mushrooming. To join the “Mushrooms” list, follow the instructions found at http://www.uvm.edu/it/mailinglists/ . Logs should be waking up soon! For more information about woods-based shiitake, contact Ben Waterman at (802) 656-9142 or ben.waterman@uvm.edu.
Log-Grown Shiitake Guide is Published After three years of workshops, research and hands-on collaboration with regional mushroom growers, we finally published the comprehensive production and marketing guide, “Best Management Practices to Log-Based Shiitake Cultivation in the Northeastern United States.” Throughout the guide, experienced growers share their numerous tips and tricks of the trade, and researchers summarize their results on production methods. For example, one study found that yields are higher the sooner inoculation occurs after log felling. Researchers believe the reason is that logs have optimum moisture levels for shiitake mycelium close to the time the log was cut. The more time one waits, the more the log loses moisture or the greater chance for the log’s bark to loosen. To obtain a copy of the guide, download it for free on our website at http://www.uvm.edu/~susagctr/resources/ShiitakeGuide .pdf . If you do not have access to an internet connection to download the guide, please call Cheryl Herrick at (802) 656-5459 to request a complimentary hard copy in the mail while supplies last.
Youth Ag. IDA: 17 New Vermont Farm Businesses Started As we approach the end of our first round of the Youth Ag IDA program, it is exciting to report that 17 new farm businesses were or will be started, as a result of the program. Varying in size, type and mission, we have a diverse list of new agricultural business that will be contributing to Vermont’s economy, landscape and farming tradition. With so many opportunities to reach out to our next generation of Vermont farmers, we thought we would give a list of some of our farms, so you can keep an eye out for their products and services. Pickering’s Greenhouse CSA, Honey Uncappings, Promised Acres Apiary, Cammack Faverolles, Mad Teamster Custom Farming, Moore Maple, Dancing Moon Farm, Champlain Valley Farm, Spring Haven Farm Beef and Livestock, Frye Farm and Forest, Little Hill Farm, and Country Hill Maple.
Relative to other agricultural or forestry production systems, shiitake mushroom growing as an agroforestry practice is relatively new, and research is still needed in many areas. Three years ago we created an online forum, the UVM “mushrooms” list serve, to allow growers to identify research needs and share anecdotal producP.4 CULTIVATING CONNECTIONS /VOLUME XX / NUMBER 1 / SPRING 2014
FRESH FROM THE FIELD, CONTINUED
Beginning of the Season Water Quality Testing for Commercial Growers – got Total Coliform? Do you know the quality of the water you are applying to your fruits and vegetables? Because water touches almost everything on a farm, and can be a source of both direct and cross (or indirect) microbial contamination, making sure that the quality of the water used for preand post-harvest applications is appropriate for the type of use is a critical step for any farm to ensure the safety of their produce. It is good to test your water quality at the beginning of the season, before peak use, so if there are any problems, you have time to address them. E.coli levels are used as indicators of the presence of pathogenic microbes. Positive levels of E.coli do not mean you have microbes that can make people ill, it merely indicates the presence of fecal matter in the water. Currently in Vermont, water that is used for preharvest applications such as frost protection, fertigation, (application of fertilizers or soil amendments through an irrigation system) , chemical application or irrigation, can have levels of up to 235 MPN of E.coli. Water that is used for drinking, washing hands, equipment or contact surfaces, cooling or cleaning produce, must be potable, that is it must have 0 Total coliform and 0 E.coli. For more information on how to test your water quality go to: https://www.uvm.edu/sustainableagriculture/?Page=w hatwedo/producesafety/gapresources.html and scroll down to the factsheet titled “VT Water Testing.” You can get test kits from the Vermont Department of Health. Request kit NU for sampling potable water and kit Ag for water used for irrigation and pre-harvest applications. Follow the instructions exactly. When taking samples do not wash out the sample bottles first, and if you are taking the sample from a faucet, remove the aerator first.
In the springtime when soils are saturated many people get positive levels of Total coliform, because small amounts of soil can enter their wells or springhouses, especially if there are small cracks in the casings of old structures. A good rule of thumb is to draw your water samples when the weather is dry and not after a heavy rain. Make sure you are inspecting and maintaining your springs, wells and irrigation systems annually, changing filters and any other serviceable parts. Visually inspect the exterior of your wells and springhouses - is the soil around them gouged out due to heavy rains? Are the covers on tight? If your test results indicate levels that are higher than the standard levels, you can contact Ginger Nickerson, gnickers@uvm.edu for advice.
New American Farmers: Working with Buyers Early to Make the Right Planning Decisions January through March we held weekly meetings with farmers from Burundi and Somalia who are now aspiring to operate vegetable businesses in the Burlington area. These growers tend to experience the same catch-22 we see new farmers experience across the state. Without capital investment it is impossible to generate returns. However, farmers are reluctant to invest capital without predetermined certainty there will be returns. How can a farmer escape this conundrum? Follow the new American farmers’ lead. In order to minimize risk, they have diligently sought out markets first. Together with our partners at AALV New Farms for New Americans and the Intervale Center’s beginning farmer program, we facilitated conversations with buyers who identified crops they would buy during or at the end of the growing season. This gave the growers confidence,
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FRESH FROM THE FIELD, CONTINUED and made their production planning much more focused and efficient. We would never have known there is a specific demand for white eggplants, or a likelihood the farmers could sell 1,000 pounds of shallots without talking first with buyers!
Contact Ben Waterman at (802) 656-9142 or ben.waterman@uvm.edu for more lease information or to schedule a phone call or visit to your farm to discuss key considerations in leasing.
Contact Ben Waterman for more information about lessons learned from new American farmers . (802) 6569142 or ben.waterman@uvm.edu.
Reducing Food Waste at Home
Lease Agreements: No Substitute for Trust and Communication Late winter and early spring are always busy times for both farmers and landowners working together to finalize good lease or farmland use agreements. Through the Center’s Land Access program, we provide facilitation and technical assistance with leases to make sure all parties have the information they need to make sound decisions. We recently compiled a sample lease agreement that contains provisions from various leases that have been used over the years. Most importantly, we emphasize that while lease agreements can address the common issues, there is no substitute for trust and open communication that can be developed over time as the farm tenure arrangement progresses. In other words, a 200-page lease agreement makes the arrangement no more successful than a 2-page agreement. A good lease provides for a process through which farmer -tenant and landowner can communicate on a regular basis over the years about environmental stewardship, potential land or infrastructure modifications or any other issue specific to the arrangement. For more common sense tips for crafting lease agreements, see the blog article “Developing a Lease Agreement You Can Relate To” at http:// newfarmerproject.wordpress.com/2014/01/28/developing -a-lease-agreement-you-can-relate-to/
Wasted resources, food insecurity and climate change are all good reasons the Center is developing ways to help with food waste reduction at the household level. Here are some tips anyone can put into place to reduce waste in their own kitchen.
Plan your meals before you buy – don’t be tempted by sales that aren’t part of your plan
Decide portions and adjust recipes for your family .
Store leftovers in air-tight containers or plastic bags, label, and freeze
Once a week , plan a meal around a “sweep” of your fridge and cupboard to eat a smorgasbord with items near their “best before” dates.
Make smoothies with fresh fruits and vegetables beyond their prime. Freeze first and use later. Bananas may have black skins but the fruit will be perfectly fine to blend. Fresh fruit and vegetables account for the largest percentage of food we waste by weight.
Just like stores do, revolve the items in your fridge so the oldest dates are front and center so you’ll use them first
Instead of tossing out that last bit of the parsley or carrots or even cheese, it’s possible to make more with less. Soups and sauces are great ways to stretch out little bits of protein, vegetables, herbs and spices.
P.6 CULTIVATING CONNECTIONS /VOLUME XX / NUMBER 1 / SPRING 2014
OBSERVATIONS FROM THE PASTURE PROGRAM
Nature is a Force to be Cooperated With, Not Controlled (or: Farming Practices in Sync with Natural Systems Will Always Keep You in the Green) Kimberly Hagen, Grazing Specialist
What’s in a crisis? Almost always there is a lesson to be learned. The trick is to pay attention, or make the observation about what is going on and make the necessary changes to move forward in a positive wy. It could mean some slow slogging for a while to move out of the present situation, but it’s often the best, and sometimes the only, way out. As a grazing specialist my eyes are trained on the status of the past, present and future of the livestock’s feed on that farm. So many times- by the time a farm has been recommended to me or a farmer has called me for a consultation, it’s because they’ve hit a hard place and are not sure where to make the next move, except for one that has no immediate cost to it. Unfortunately there is a cost, it’s just not always so obvious. Maybe it’s obvious that what I am talking about here is pasture,. The most common practice, and this has been the case for more than a few generations, (in most parts of the world ) is to let your animals out of the barn onto THE pasture – the same one, day after day. Sometimes there are two, a night pasture and a day pasture, but still basically a continuously grazed piece of land. So what happens? Well, the season starts out with promising lush growth, the animals graze and graze on that early spring/summer forage that bolts out of the starting gate racing to the sun. Milk production is high and other livestock pack on the pounds getting fat and glossy. But then the days get hotter and drier, and the forage slows way down. But still the animals graze and graze, and since the forage is not so plentiful, they scrounge, biting down on the same plants again and again, getting closer and closer to the ground. By early August, the pasture is nothing more than a holding pen and exercise yard, and completely void as a functioning viable part of the feed program.
Purchased feed could be fed – but that has a price. Pasture could be rented at another farm – but that also has a price, including the inconvenience of transporting animals either by walking or by trucking. Not great choices by any stretch of the imagination. Animals can be culled, which will lower the feed costs, but might not be in the long term interests of the farm. An immediate fix will probably require some combination of all three options. But none of these options is a long term answer, and will become increasingly expensive as a management practice if repeated numerous times. The window where the pasture actually contributes substantially to the feed intake of the animal will decrease over time and depending on the circumstances, within a few years, may find that grazing is finished by the end of July or even June. There is another choice – changing the grazing management – but it will not provide a quick fix, like the other options mentioned and here is the slow slog I was referring to earlier. As Allan Savory has so eloquently written – and spoken about as well – after his years of observing how it all works in the wild, observation is the key. This is not something you do once and are finished, but an ongoing deep conversation and connection with the animals and plants on your farm. Good grazing management – as a colleague wrote a few years ago in a wonderful paper- is both art and science. It requires developing strong observation skills by walking through your pastures, observing how your animals graze, and how the plants are responding to being grazed. You get down on your hands and knees, push the plants aside and see how much bare ground there is between plants, how many insects there are, how much worm and beetle activity around the manure. How does it all work? Or for that matter, is it working? All of this requires a silo’s worth of patience and more, but the rewards are well worth the wait. And the funny thing is, you might find that all those jokes about how to lose a million dollars – “just keep farming”…..don’t really apply any more.
The greater the fertility in your soil, the longer you can hang on with this practice, but it eventually catches up. The plants turn into mini-versions of themselves and, lacking the energy or reserves to replenish, remain stunted in their growth. At this point the choices narrow quickly – any feed already harvested could be fed out, but that leaves nothing for the coming winter months. CULTIVATING CONNECTIONS /VOLUME XX / NUMBER 1 / SPRING 2014 P.7
EVENT PROFILE
2014 VERMONT GRAZING & LIVESTOCK CONFERENCE
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1. Keynote Ben Bartlett discussing low-stress handling. 2. A participant learns and practices low stress handling techniques. 3. Jenny Nelson from Senator Bernie Sanders’ Office welcomes guests. 4. Ray Covino from CT-NRCS demonstrates the effects of different pasture management techniques with a rainfall simulator 5. Blue Ribbon 4-H’ers show “How to Make Your Swine Shine!” 6. Pasture Program and Conference Coordinator Jenn Colby.
P.8 CULTIVATING CONNECTIONS /VOLUME XX / NUMBER 1 / SPRING 2014
OBSERVATIONS FROM FARMING & CLIMATE CHANGE
UN REPORT ON CLIMATE CHANGE: WHAT DOES IT MEAN IN VERMONT? By Joshua Faulkner & Suzy Hodgson
The end of March brought us the long-anticipated Fifth Assessment Report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This report, developed by a group of 837 researchers from around the world who assess and summarize the scientific literature on climate change, appeared to have more of a food and agriculture focus than previous reports. In general, findings were troubling if not unexpected. For example, the authors concluded that climate change will potentially affect all aspects of food security, including food access, utilization, and stable prices. Such effects were expounded upon, with considerable emphasis placed upon declining crop yields matched with increased global demand. Amid these discouraging findings, the pressing need and challenge of adaptation kept surfacing. In particular, one conclusion in the food chapter presented itself as a glimmer of hope: “A range of potential adap-
tation options exist across all food system activities, not just in food production…More observational evidence is needed on the effectiveness of adaptations at all levels of the food system.” Here at the Center, we are bolstered by this, as such calls-to-action align with our mission and ongoing work with local farms and communities. We continue to strive to find sustainable solutions that ex-
plicitly recognize the need to adapt Vermont’s food system to our own climate change challenges. A few of the projects at the Center that work to address climate resilience and adaptation:
Expanding on-farm water management education and research focused on appropriate technology, including efficient micro-irrigation and responsible drainage practices.
From the Fifth Assessment Report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: “Impacts from recent climate-related extremes, such as heat waves, droughts, floods, cyclones, and wildfires, reveal significant vulnerability and exposure of some ecosystems and many human systems to current climate variability.” Global temperature increases of ~4°C or more above late-20th-century levels, combined with increasing food demand, would pose large risks to food security globally and regionally.” “Climate change has negatively affected wheat and maize yields for many regions and in the global aggregate.”
Investigating and re-conceptualizing farm ponds as ‘resilience centers’ by diversifying their utilization for drought and flood mitigation, providing ecosystem services, and food production.
Collaborating with UVM’s Agroecology and Rural Livelihoods Group on the Vermont Farm Resilience in a Changing Climate Initiative, which is a participatory action research project involving farmers and service providers to develop long-term strategies to help Vermont farmers and communities adapt to climate change.
Examining the use of ‘multi-functional buffers’ to increase a farm’s resilience to flooding, reduce erosion, and enhance habitat and ecological function, all while providing an economic return (e.g., woody perennial crops such as berries or biomass).
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PROGRAM PROFILE:
YOUTH AGRICULTURAL INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT ACCOUNT PROGRAM SEEKING PARTICIPANTS FOR SECOND YEAR By Ali Zipparo Do you know of a young person, age 14-21, who is ready to prepare for a future in agriculture, and lives in Grand Isle, Franklin, Chittenden, or Addison County? Following the great success of our first group of participants, the Center for Sustainable Agriculture's Youth Agriculture Individual Development Account (Youth Ag IDA) program is excited to announce another round of recruiting! We are seeking youth who are involved with or interested in agriculture, to participate in a one-year program that will help her or him save money towards the purchase of a business-related asset and provide the education needed to acquire important business management skills. Young farmers will exit the program possessing both seed capital and financial literacy skills: key components in establishing an independent enterprise or assuming more of a management role in the family farm operation. The program provides structured financial literacy training, business management coaching and mentoring from qualified farm business management specialists and established farmers. What does this program look like? Our participants will attend a year (approximately 10-20 hours- depending on preference) of fun, informative, hands-on learning experiences, complete approximately ten hours of online coursework, complete a business plan, and save money. Upon successful completion of the program, up to $500 of the participant's savings will be matched at a rate of 2:1 (up to a total of $1,000 in match funding!), giving young farmers two program dollars for every dollar they save toward the purchase of a productive farm asset. This means that the young farmer
participant will then have that $1,500 to use for an asset purchase. Participants will develop basic skills necessary to leverage their equity, manage capital productively and be a successful entrepreneur. Even more importantly, participants will leave the program armed with increased confidence, their business plan and the skills that can help them put that plan into successful action, as they join the vibrant agriculture and food systems community that makes Vermont such a great place to live, grow, and appreciate the local bounty. Wondering what our first year was like? Our participants put in a lot of hard work that overwhelmingly paid off. Some of our young farmers gained unintended benefits like time management skill building, improved written communication, and opportunities for public speaking. Opportunities for public speaking? Yes, you read that correctly. Our young farmers were featured in two episodes of Across the Fence, and were interviewed on Vermont Public Radio’s Vermont Edition, impressing audiences and media professionals alike. Thanks to the generosity of wonderful funders, we were also able to offer scholarships to workshops, conferences and other educational meetings, taking advantage of countless opportunities offered through the program. Because the program is situated with the larger context of UVM Extension, our program coordinator is clued into the rich and abundant educational resources found throughout Vermont and New England, passing along useful notices about events and programs to the participants. Our farmers attended NOFA’s winter conference, farm financial workshops, a sugaring event, several UVM Extension and NOFA field days, the Annual Vermont Grazing and Livestock Conference, and The New England Meat Conference, among others. We even had two on-farm workshops, specially designed for our IDA program- one focused on vegetable production and on-farm energy, while the other looked at livestock production and grazing. Our first year was an unimaginable success, providing key lessons for developing the next program round. Our next group will continue the success of this new kind of programming, increasing the effectiveness and viability of our next generation of Vermont’s farmers! Applications and more information can be found on our website at www.uvm.edu/sustainableagriculture. The deadline for applications is May 15, with the program kicking off in June. Please, email Ali Zipparo with questions: azipparo@uvm.edu
P.10 CULTIVATING CONNECTIONS /VOLUME XX / NUMBER 1 / SPRING 2014
PROJECT PROFILE:
UNIVERSAL RECYCLING LAW KEEPS NUTRIENTS AND SAFE FOOD IN VERMONT SOIL AND FOOD SYSTEM By Suzy Hodgson & Ginger Nickerson
The Vermont legislature recently passed the Universal Recycling Law (Act 148) to divert food waste (among other things) from reaching the state’s landfills. According to the Chittenden Solid Waste District, in Chittenden County, food waste accounts for one third of our trash. This waste not only has economic costs in terms of food dollars wasted but also in cumulative environmental impacts related to waste collection, disposal, and management and even wider social implications in terms of food access and injustice. Many of us are driven to ask: How can we be throwing out a pound food each day at the same time that one out of 7 Chittenden County children is food insecure? The answer provided by the law is a hierarchy of steps designed to both reduce the amount of food (and other organic material) that needs to be disposed of, and to divert it to its most beneficial use. At the top of the list is source reduction, which means reducing the amount of food that is wasted overall. This is important because wasted food means not only the loss of a particular food product, but also the pointless expenditure of resources that went into its production, processing, transport and storage, as well as a missed opportunity to address hunger and access to healthy food. Further down the hierarchy of steps for organic matter in the Universal Recycling Law, after reducing waste, are diverting: 1) good quality food to people in need, 2) food to livestock 3) organic matter for composting and anaerobic digesters and 4) energy recovery. Because the reduction of waste has such important implications within the food system, Universal Recycling is of great interest to Center staff and partners. We’ve got two staffers working on different elements of its implementation. In order to assure that food being diverted for human or animal consumption is as safe as possible, Ginger Nickerson, the CSA’s Produce Safety Program coordinator, has been working with the Food Cycle
Coalition (the Farm-to-Plate Working group on im plementing Act 148) to provide research and educational materials to produce growers, food rescue organizations, livestock farmers and compost businesses to make sure that good quality fruits and vegetables and other organic matter stays in our local food system. Local Food Organizer Suzy Hodgson, with funding from a local family foundation, is working on a project to understand how households living on a limited budget address food waste. Educating families and individuals about how to reduce food waste can result in economic benefits throughout the food chain and may enhance food security for lower income households. To learn more about these efforts go to:
Webinar on Research Opportunities http:// www.vtfoodatlas.com/network/food-cyclecoalition/activity/47
ANR General Background and Resources http:// www.anr.state.vt.us/dec/wastediv/solid/ act148.htm
Resources on Composting from the Compost Association of Vermont:http://www.compostingvermont.org/Res ourceArchive.html .
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The University of Vermont and State Agricultural College CENTER FOR SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE 23 Mansfield Ave. Burlington, VT 05401
This is our last print issue of Cultivating Connections! Please send us an email at sustainable.agriculture @uvm.edu if you’d like to join the many folks who receive it electronically.