created 30 jobs - 2 years left of funding. Should be 50 at the end.
Electric van
next phase is picking up food at farms and selling at farmers markets. Have to have at least 3 produce farmers at the market. Crop cash. Only works at in-person farmers markets.
Really wants to work on delivery service and being able to take EBT online.
food miles - max 50
surrounding counties involved in both distribution and aggregation
Mass food delivery - just shut down
regional farms could get produce items or a CSA box
dozens of local products and VAP (pasta, yoghurt, chesses)
could use EBT - but had to be home to swipe
$15 delivery fee - would have been nice to have a pickup option
9 miles east farm in Skylarville, VT. Increased numbers of VAPs they were producing when they realized they would go in the hole on produce.
pizza and prepared meals saved the business
Michael would go into large office complexes with coolers and do popup farmers markets in break rooms. $10-15k working with HR depts. Some pre orders - boxed dinners of family of 4-5 selling for $30 with $3-5 cost.
RICO ring - farmers market pickup location.
Idea of meals like soup kitchen without stigmas. 2-3 meals out of $9 pack.
Accessibility of produce - people don’t know how to cook or what to do with them
Michael VT - common pool
Hickory, oak, elderberry - mapping local crops
networking with people who have those to harvest and aggregate. distribute at low-cost.
Traceability - a lot of crops people don’t really know how to use them. Stamping recipes - that’s a path for creating a recipe that’s never existed.
Maine food bank has been partnering with local farms to get veggies from local farms frozen. also made a cookbook for cooking on a budget.
CSA example with recipe suggestions for things that are in your box
Networking with culinary programs to teach young chefs how to cook with these ingredients
Podcast - chefs are trendsetters. Lean into that.
Or showing people how to preserve (e.g. Paw paws + persimmons)
One strategy for local food sovereignty in VT is designing riparien food forest - 1M calories per acre. Technically for wildlife, but can also be basically maintained by people.
Processing out of spec foods into a new product
Processing facilities exist, but they require a high min weight and there’s only one
chokepoints?
labeling - putting value to the local. e.g. switzerland black label = produced within 100 miles
USDA slaughter facilties
what’s the prevention of more slaughters? Very hard. Requirements of USDA inspector.
Maui Nui venison? Wild game is a different set of regulations. Maybe they can only sell fresh in state? But they do deliver processed out of state (e.g. jerky)
State sponsored slaughter facility in st croix and st thomas. $35 to process. Would love to do this in vermont.
unless he can export to NY and MA, industry isn’t sustainable
how do you create a system where you can slaughter a few animals so you can support smaller famers.
In Maine, you can slaughter smaller animals in pretty high numbers
There’s a bill in congress that will put custom slaughter facilties at the same level as USDA facilities.
No reason to comply with inspector findings
Equipment cooperatives can really help with farm costs
Michael can apply state resources and subsidize this for farmers, because of their conservation district mission but most other conservation districts don’t work like them
subsidizing small scale agriculture the way we do big ag, or maybe instead of
A lot of large scale farms are more like REITs, holding onto land, and what they make on commodities don’t matter as much
Profitability of food hubs is another major chokepoint
are other conservation districts thinking like Michael and Jenn? Some are? When constituents hear about it, they want it.
VT conservation district doesn’t have a tax base - blessing and a curse
a lot of conservation districts switched to water quality after the clean water act
smaller farms be able to have an online marketplace to make it easier for restaurants to purchase (+ schools and hospitals)
opportunities to support
open source aggregation software
delivery + packing etc…
develop AI for inspections
feral asset mapping (BLM maybe has done this too identifying fire prone invasives)
allows people to prospect
shared processing - local food processing, but also canning, refrigeration. In NY you used to be able to rent ice house space.
CA has a certified fridge program
disappeared on east coast in the 80s because people went big and had the scale
The more you’re able to artificially create the scale for small producers, the more you can increase their profit margin.
Canada’s the same way - guys who are making money have 10k acres. Only way to get into ag is to get 100 acres and it’s your second or third job.
Interest in getting into timber as well
embodied carbon as a climate smart commodity
need for opensource tech in the forestry sector, especialy for small producers
you get a separate tax status for both ag and forestry in VT
cross laminate timber + black locust + regional processing facilities