At 20, Center for an Agricultural Economy Vital to Moving Local Food System Forward

Assisting in Flood Recovery (Twice) was a Natural Extension of the Mission

Hardwick, Vermont—(August 22, 2024) Devastating flooding here in July here felt eerily like a sequel released just one year after the catastrophic flooding that hammered the region in 2023. Families lost homes. Farmers lost crops. Critical infrastructure washed away—again. And again the Center for an Agricultural Economy, a trusted resource and source of support for the community, scrambled to assist.

“We are deeply connected to the people and farms in our region and already serve as a resource for community support, so pivoting to meeting immediate needs in the wake of disaster was really a natural extension of our mission. What we didn’t envision was reliving the scenario a year later,” said Jon Ramsay, Executive Director of CAE.

CAE was well positioned to help with flood recovery because it already had in place a comprehensive support system including partnerships with farmers, food shelves, schools and community gardeners. It had a built-in network of community members through the local farmers market it hosts and a public space for community groups to gather. In the aftermath of the flooding in 2023 CAE provided over $30,000 in grocery and meal vouchers for those impacted; facilitated over $500,000 in Vermont Farm Fund Business Builder and Emergency Loans and served as a hub serving 700 meals a week. This year CAE assisted in similar ways.

As CAE turns 20 this year, the nonprofit’s response to the flooding illustrates what a critical partner it has become to not only the agricultural economy, but also to the entire community, something that the institution views as one interconnected mission, not two, and something that has made CAE a problem solver and doer effecting real change by often doing the unseen and unsung work that no one else is willing to do. To celebrate, CAE will hold open houses at all of its facilities on Saturday, October 5, and welcomes the public to come learn about the work CAE is doing to support local agriculture and the community. Check www.caevt.org/fun for locations and information.

Making the math work

At the heart of CAE’s wrap-around mission is the nonprofit’s approach to helping farms to find a way forward. Take small Vermont dairy farms for example. Increasingly, small dairy farms have folded across the state, a trend that’s persisted for decades. In the past ten years alone, the number of cow dairy farms has gone from 880 to 485, a 45 percent drop.

Much of the reason for the decline has to do with the numbers. For many the math doesn’t work for remote small-scale dairy (and other small operations) for the same reason many people in the region still lack high-speed internet or cable TV—the cost/benefit isn’t there to bring the crucial infrastructure to them. Sending a semi truck from a facility four hours away down a five-mile dirt road to reach one farm doesn’t make sense, and it probably couldn’t get there on many winter days, even if it tried. This is where CAE is making a measurable impact on Vermont's local food system economy.

CAE is there to make the math work by filling gaps from assisting with business plans to get an idea off the ground to offering loans when most banks wouldn’t take the risk. And when there’s product to sell, CAE operates trucks that gather, consolidate and distribute all kinds of products from farms and gets them to its aggregation and distribution hub, saving time, money and lessening the impact on the environment. In all, CAE directly assists more than 100 producers in getting their products to market.

“What we do at CAE is find ways to make a system work. We are a very hands-on interwoven essential cog in the local food system. Some farms rely on us to get all their products to market. This is a huge responsibility for their viability,” Ramsay said.

Taking a drive down the maze of dirt roads surrounding Hardwick with Ramsay proves his point. Down one dirt road, there’s Jasper Hill Farm famous for artisan cheese aged in its ultra-modern cheese cave; down another is Snug Valley Farm, a former dairy that transitioned to grass-fed beef, pork and pumpkins powered by wind and solar power; around yet another bend is Hill Farmstead Brewery, a mecca for artisan beer aficionados from a family with roots in this soil eight generations deep. And the tour goes on, from locally made ice cream infused with herbs at Wilson Herb Farm to salad greens grown year-round and fresh bread made entirely from locally grown grain. These are just a few of the more than 450 operations supported in some way by CAE. Taken together the producers help maintain 10,000 acres of working farmland, which preserves Vermont’s iconic landscape, provides hundreds of jobs and feeds local communities.

It’s easy to paint a romanticized portrait of these entrepreneurial businesses hidden down winding roads in the craggy Northeast Kingdom. The reality is something different. What makes these farms charming is also what makes it tough to survive.

“These smaller operations are vital to the health of the regional economy and to the health of Vermonters,” Ramsay said. “They provide jobs; they provide healthy food to Vermonters and they preserve the state’s working agricultural landscape. But they can’t do it alone.”

Plans for expansion

As it celebrates its 20-year anniversary, CAE is expanding in a way that will vastly improve its efficiency with construction of a net-zero solar powered 12,500 -square-foot space, the Food Hub, to complement its existing facility the Vermont Food Venture Center. The Food Hub in Hardwick increases CAE’s capacity to aggregate and distribute the locally produced foods that come from across the state to markets within Vermont and beyond. The Food Hub, scheduled to be on line by the end of 2024, will replace the current one-bay operation that is smaller than many residential garages and has been stretched beyond its capacity, requiring complicated logistical choreography to run efficiently.  

“This new facility in Hardwick is a testament to CAE’s two decades of achievements and commitment to ensuring the long-term success and health of the local food system and the community,” said Andrew Meyer, CAE Founding Board Member.

The new facility will free up space at Vermont Food Venture Center, a CAE-owned space where food businesses can process their products in shared-space commercial kitchens. In addition, there will be more breathing room for CAE’s Just Cut program, which processes produce that is sold to schools, hospitals and food shelves, a key part of its community support mission. Last year, over 174,000 pounds of potatoes, carrots, cabbage, beets and other locally-grown produce purchased from 20 regional farms went through the Venture Center.

Just Cut is one example of how CAE is involved in creating programs and projects in response to community need. Atkins Field in the center of Hardwick is a 15-acre property CAE owns with community garden space, a timber frame pavilion open to the public and where the weekly farmers market is hosted.  The non-profit also hosts Grow Your Own workshops where community members share skills and knowledge with each other around growing, cooking and preserving local food. CAE partners with schools and students in place-based education work that includes student-led community meals. Many of its partnerships and programs have grown out of response to listening sessions with community members and in their cumulative economic impact. CAE’s programs are an economic engine facilitating thousands of transactions annually culminating in over $15 million in local food system economic impact annually.  Occupying the new Food Hub allows CAE to continue to increase the economic impact of its work. While the work to support local food and agriculture is perhaps CAE’s the most visible, particularly when it comes to its distribution work for statewide-recognized operations like Strafford Organic Creamery and Butterworks Farm, CAE prides itself on doing the unsung and difficult behind-the-scenes work that fills gaps and supports even the smallest operations and to listening to community members to meet their needs, often in partnership with other organizations.

“The work we do is gritty, hands on, not always easy,” Ramsay said. “No other food hub or local food organization in Vermont is intersecting with so many things—support for farmers, social issues, food access, and physically moving, processing, packing and distributing food seven days a week. We take our commitment to supporting the whole community seriously, and that means a holistic approach that reaches deeply into the community and helps it thrive in every way.”

About the Center for an Agricultural Economy: Founded in Hardwick, Vermont, in 2004, the Center for an Agricultural Economy supports rural communities and working landscapes by building a more interconnected local food system. CAE’s food sovereignty and place-based education programming is rooted in the local northern Vermont community, while food hub enterprises and a revolving loan fund operate statewide. Through CAE’s five program areas and three (physical) places, more than 450 farms, food businesses, local businesses and institutions, as well as thousands of community members are impacted. Taken together the producers CAE works with maintain 10,000 acres of working farmland which preserves Vermont’s iconic landscape, provides hundreds of jobs, and feeds local communities.

IMAGE CAPTION: Valerie Woodhouse (pictured) and Eli Hersh own and operate Honey Field Farm, a 25-acre organic vegetable farm in Norwich, Vermont. They work with three of CAE’s programs; the Vermont Farm Fund to help invest in their new farm, Just Cut to provide reliable wholesale outlets and Farm Connex to move their products to existing markets. Photo by Elizabeth Rossano.