LOCAL FOOD IN VERMONT: MIXED MESSAGES

By David Timmons

Standing in a cash register line at a University of Vermont commissary, I'm pleasantly surprised to see a sign listing the benefits of local food: taste, nutrition, energy conservation, and community. I glance down at the bottle of Vermont apple cider in my hand, and mentally pat myself on the back. But looking around at shelves full of national-name packaged foods and snacks, I wonder how much of the food for sale could really be from Vermont. The local food sign and the shelf stock don't convey the same message.

The answer to the question of how much Vermont food might be local depends on how one looks at it. On one hand, agricultural production in Vermont is strong. In 2002 (at the last USDA Census of Agriculture), Vermont farmers raised $473 million of agricultural products (farmgate value), or $767 per Vermonter, more than the U.S. average $696 per capita. This suggests Vermont farmers could feed Vermont. A 1976 study by Burrill and Nolfi also found that Vermont had enough farmland to raise a typical American diet. Using the 1976 land-use figures and 2002 population and land-availability numbers, we find that Vermont still has enough land for food self sufficiency, despite population growth and loss of agricultural land since 1976 (though self sufficiency will not long be possible if farmland loss continues). Historically, most important food crops were raised in Vermont: beef and potato production in the state peaked in 1840, pork, wheat, and bean production peaked in 1850, oats peaked in 1880, corn (for grain) and apples in 1900, chicken and pears in 1910, cherries and strawberries in 1940, and eggs in 1960 (dairy production is currently near its all-time high). Vermont is clearly capable of feeding itself.

LIBERALS AND CONSERVATIVES: RELICS OF THE PAST

By Thomas Naylor

When former Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards and Illinois Democratic Senator Barack Obama recently spoke to packed houses in Burlington, they provided glaring evidence that there is “nothing new under the sun” in mainstream U.S. two-party politics. Both delivered speeches laced with pseudo-liberal blather, Obama delivering a “call to action” similar to Howard Dean's 2004 “Take Back America” campaign. As Edwards and Obama recited one liberal Democratic cliché after another, a discerning listener couldn't help but be struck by how completely irrevelevant the terms “liberal” and “conservative” have become in today's 21st century world. Those who openly identify themselves with either of the terms are anachronistic and out of touch with reality.

Agriculture: Civilization's 'Great Mistake'

By Kirkpatrick Sale

From about 12,000 to about 8,000 years ago, agriculture became the established way of life for the great majority of the world's people--and when I say “way of life” I mean that in the fullest sense. Agriculture was not simply a way of getting food, satisfying one basic human need. Agriculture cemented in the human mind the psychology by which people understood their world: it was we who chose what seeds to plant and where, what forests to cut down, what weeds to pull, what fields to fire, what waters to divert, in short what species were to live and die, and when and how. Agriculture was a superb demonstration that humans could control nature (or believe they could); that humans could literally domesticate nature and place it under regular and systematic human will and design.

REPUBLICANISM AND SIZE

Part 2 of 3 Parts (continued from the March 2006 issue)
By Donald Livingston

So Americans thought to escape monarchy by choosing federation, and declared each state a sovereign republic. But a problem still remained. Each state might have satisfied the first four conditions of republicanism mentioned above, but none satisfied the fifth. They were all too large for republics, and they were too large because the territories they inhabited had been drawn not by republican criteria but by the British Crown. The territorial boundaries of each American State were artifacts of monarchy. So there was the real threat that each American state could become centralized, thereby destroying self-government in the smaller “republican” political units within it. In a word, because of its size, there was the real danger that each individual American state would in time become a monarchy.

V is for Vermont Victory Gardens

By Anita Kelman

Gardening has become a very popular hobby in the United States in recent years. Although some people who garden plan on providing their family with food year-round from their venture, most do so to enjoy the freshest produce available as a supplement to what they purchase at stores or Farmers' Markets. In general however, gardens, beyond a small ornamental planting, tend to be restricted to more suburban locations with larger lots. Exceptions to this have of course been found in community urban gardens, located in places such as New York City and Washington D.C. In truth however, gardens are a viable option even on a small city lot such as can be found in Burlington or Montpelier.

Vermont Commons: Celebrating Our First Year

One year ago this month, we published the very first issue of “Vermont Commons,” a monthly newspaper and multimedia forum championing Vermont independence – political, economic, social, and spiritual.

Ian Baldwin, our publisher, began our debut editorial last April with this prophetic observation, one that holds more true now than one year ago:

Vermonters, Americans—indeed, all the world—stand at a widening divide.

Not between red and blue, right and left, conservative and liberal,
capitalist and socialist, and other such worn political coinage.

LETTER: CHALLENGING THE NATIONAL ANIMAL ID PROGRAM

By Jeff Bickart

U.S. Dept. of Agriculture
USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service
NAIS Subcommittee
1400 Independence Avenue, SW
Washington, DC
20250

Dear NAIS Subcommittee:

Last week I learned about the National Animal Identification System from a commentary and an article published in Small Farmer's Journal. I have since read through your entire NAIS website, and have also studied that of the Vermont Agency of Agriculture.

I can hardly express adequately my dismay and anger at your plan to implement a mandatory animal ID system. It demonstrates unlimited and conscience-less contempt for rural citizens, and for our traditions, independence, and liberties. It shows once and for all that the national agricultural bureaucracy (i.e., the USDA) is, with the active encouragement, participation, and material support of “the [corporate part of the] industry,” bent on the final destruction of the small family farmer and homesteader.

A Bright Future for Farming: Vermont Can Lead the Way

By Vern Grubinger

The commerce of food, and therefore farming, is dominated by oligopolies. At every level—from sales of agricultural inputs, to purchasing of raw commodities, to processing of food into branded products, to retailing of food to consumers—a handful of enormous corporations control a majority of the transactions.

For example, major suppliers of chemicals and seeds for farmers are Bayer, Dow, DuPont, Monsanto, and Syngenta. Purchases of raw products produced from farmers are dominated by Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, ConAgra, Smithfield, and Tyson/IBP. Food manufacturing giants that create most of the branded products on store shelves are Coca-Cola, Mars, Nestlé, Pepsico, Philip Morris, and Unilever. And finally, a huge share of these products are sold to consumers at stores owned by Ahold (Stop and Shop, Giant, Tops), Albertsons (Hannafords, Shaws, Star Market), Carrefour, Kroger, Wal-Mart, and a few others.