{"id":13479,"date":"2013-02-22T05:32:17","date_gmt":"2013-02-22T10:32:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/?p=13479"},"modified":"2013-02-22T18:43:57","modified_gmt":"2013-02-22T23:43:57","slug":"v-t-n-h-s-farm-to-plate-test-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/2013\/02\/22\/v-t-n-h-s-farm-to-plate-test-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Vermont: New Hampshire’s Farm To Plate Test Case"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Dyn, Inc.<\/p>

Manchester's Dyn, Inc has a farm to table menu for their employees<\/p><\/div>\n

Lawmakers in New Hampshire are considering a program that would convene industry, nonprofit and UNH representatives involved in the state’s local food and agriculture industry. The group would be charged with researching and reporting back to the Department of Agriculture.\u00a0The bill’s sponsors are using Vermont as a model.<\/p>\n

In fact, New Hampshire\u2019s SB141<\/a> is based almost word-for-word on Vermont\u2019s farm to plate bill, which passed that state\u2019s legislature four years ago. The major difference is funding, says Senator Martha Fuller Clark, the prime sponsor of the NH bill. While Vermont has allocated $100,000 annually first from federal stimulus funds and then from their general fund \u2013 and more recently appropriated another $1.17 million in grant funding for businesses and technical assistance programs which will be distributed using the Farm to Plate guidelines — the New Hampshire bill will not have an appropriation at all.<\/p>\n

Advice for NH, From Next Door<\/strong><\/p>\n
    \n
  • The key to success is giving all stakeholders — from pig farmers to foundations to lawmakers — ownership over the strategic plan. \u201cIt takes time, and it has to be built into the planning process itself,\u201d Kahler says.<\/li>\n
  • \u201cI think what would be terrific is if the Legislature in New Hampshire gave its blessing to that planning process, and then make a small allocation of funding available in exchange for the group presenting back to them. And that would then give that group the ability to leverage foundation dollars, and way more money, to actually get the plan done, and then present it back to the legislature.\u201d<\/li>\n
  • But if the Granite State can\u2019t invest funds, Kahler says, \u201cat the very least having the Commissioner of Ag and her staff engaged to whatever degree they can would be a good first start.\u201d<\/li>\n
  • Vermont was uniquely situated to implement a farm to plate program because of their Sustainable Jobs Fund \u2013 a nonprofit created by the state\u2019s legislature in 1995.\u00a0 That organization, which has both state and private funding, was able to provide infrastructure and administrative functions for the farm to plate project.\u00a0 Kahler says she hopes an organization like the University of New Hampshire\u2019s Sustainability Institute can serve that function for New Hampshire.<\/li>\n
  • In the meantime, Kahler warns, don\u2019t stop moving forward with public policy or regulatory bills that would help an industry or subsector to grow, while you build a strategic plan. \u00a0You can always go back and make modifications.<\/li>\n<\/div>\n

    Do we need state funds?<\/strong>
    \nEllen Kahler is executive director of Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund, which administers the Farm to Plate project. She says Vermont\u2019s investment in the project has “allowed us to leverage twice as much in private foundation funding,\u201d by showing that Vermont lawmakers were serious about stimulating jobs and the economy in the local food sector. The state\u2019s investment also meant the legislature could require an annual report back on the project\u2019s process.\u00a0 Kahler says because the funds are contingent on that progress, the legislature is able to create an accountability \u201cfeedback loop.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Vermont was the first state to create a statewide farm to plate program, and is the only state to make a budget appropriation for it. \u00a0Rhode Island has created a smaller-scale five-year plan similar to Vermont\u2019s; Connecticut is more than a year into the strategic planning process; Massachusetts is in the \u201cplanning to plan\u201d phase with funding from private foundations; and food funders are trying to move forward with a plan in Maine.<\/p>\n

    While Fuller Clark says while New Hampshire is \u201cin no position to invest money in new programs,\u201d there\u2019s a possibility this bill could allow the Department of Agriculture to target some of their resources to \u201cgrow the local movement.\u201d<\/p>\n

    How Vermont’s Program Works<\/strong>
    \nVermont\u2019s Farm To Plate project is administered by the Sustainable Jobs Fund, a 501(c)3 that was created by the state\u2019s legislature in 1995.\u00a0 Over the first year, the VSJF hired a six-person research team, and committed staff and interns to conduct a comprehensive inventory of the state\u2019s local food ecosystem \u2013 documenting weaknesses from the state\u2019s dairy infrastructure, to nutrient management.\u00a0 That process included a \u201cstakeholder outreach\u201d program that took input from 1,200 people and over 100 organizations, cost about $300,000, and took two and half years.\u00a0 The resulting plan, Kahler says, is over 1,000 pages long. \u00a0Those 1,000 pages contain 25 goals. To give you a sense of them, the first goal reads \u201cincrease local consumption\u201d of local food; goal nineteen reads \u201cincrease business planning and technical assistance\u201d for producers and processors of local food. Kahler says their overarching ambition is to double the amount of local food consumed in the state from 5 to 10 percent.<\/p>\n

    The Vermont planners were committed to including just about anyone with a stake in the local food movement. \u00a0They ended up with what comes off as a mess of bureaucracies, known as the Farm to Plate Network. That includes six working groups, eight task forces, and five \u201ccross-cutting teams,\u201d made up of individuals from the private sector, government agencies, nonprofits, educational institutions and capital investors. But, Kahler says, all those players are working together on \u201cthe big projects that no one organization can do alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

    For example, a Meat Processing Task Force, made up of seven or eight organizations, meets once a month.\u00a0 They\u2019re trying to reduce bottlenecks at slaughterhouses that reduce profitability.\u00a0 By cooperating, she says, they can go after new funding from the private sector and foundations that wouldn\u2019t be available to the organizations individually.<\/p>\n

    Has It Worked?<\/strong>
    \nTo measure impacts of the project for farms, farm labor and agricultural production, VSJF is waiting for 2012 Census of Agriculture data. In the meantime, the network has raised $262,410 from private foundations. Last session, the Vermont legislature appropriated an additional $1.17 million for a related project called the Working Lands Enterprise Fund. Kahler says that money is flowing in because funders and the state \u201care seeing real results in terms of new jobs and new businesses.\u201d She says the project \u201ccreates real momentum and energy, and everyone wants to be a part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Lawmakers in New Hampshire are considering a program that would convene industry, nonprofit and UNH representatives involved in the state’s local food and agriculture industry. The group would be charged with researching and reporting back to the Department of Agriculture.\u00a0The bill’s sponsors are using Vermont as a model. In fact, New Hampshire\u2019s SB141 is based […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":12803,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[472],"tags":[537,480,437],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13479"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}