Vermont food hubs outline growth, gaps and infrastructure needs to House Agriculture committee

BURLINGTON, Vt. — Representatives of six Vermont nonprofit food hubs told the House Agriculture, Food Resiliency, & Forestry Committee on a day-long panel that their organizations have become essential to connecting local farms to schools, hospitals, retailers and food shelves — but that the network faces mounting infrastructure and funding challenges.

"By the end of the hour and a half here, our hope is that you will understand everything there is to know about food hubs in Vermont," Jake Claro, farm to plate director at the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund, told the committee as he opened the panel describing the hubs' roles in aggregation, storage, logistics and marketing.

The committee heard that the six hubs represented — ACORN (Middlebury), Center for an Agricultural Economy (Hardwick), Food Connects (Brattleboro), Green Mountain Farm Direct (Newport/NEK), Intervale Center (Burlington) and Vermont Farmers Food Center (Rutland) — collectively move millions of dollars of local and regional food and provide services that many producers and small customers cannot access through national distributors.

"We're stronger together," Lindsay Burke, executive director of the Addison County Relocalization Network (ACORN), said, describing ACORN's online wholesale marketplace, cross-docking and its Pharmacy Food-as-Medicine program. Burke said ACORN opened a physical food-hub operation in Middlebury in fall 2022 and now offers short-term cold storage, weekly distribution and last-mile delivery.

John Ramsey, executive director of the Center for an Agricultural Economy in Hardwick, described the organization's production and processing work, including the Vermont Food Venture Center and Farm Connects trucking service. "Our trucks are going out six days a week — back roads, snowstorms, floods — picking up that product," Ramsey said, noting the hub's role in first-mile pickup and last-mile delivery to rural stores, co-ops and institutions.

Richard Nelson (Food Connects) and other hub leaders emphasized that consolidation in the national distribution industry has left gaps small and mid-size producers cannot fill. Jake Claro told the committee that national consolidation by broad-line distributors has made access harder for smaller regional producers and that local hubs help fill that void by aggregating and moving source-identified product from Vermont farms.

The hubs outlined three primary public-value roles: supporting farm viability by increasing market opportunities; improving food access through partnerships with schools and food shelves; and building resiliency for supply shocks and emergencies. Claro said the collaborative network sells or distributes about $19,000,000 in local and regional food annually, serves over 400 farmers and food businesses and reaches more than 850 customers across institutions, retailers and food shelves.

Panelists gave examples of programming and scale: - ACORN (Lindsay Burke) operates the Middlebury food hub and a Pharmacy Food-as-Medicine program; it reported two full‑time and two part‑time staff for the food-hub operations and an AmeriCorps member shared with a local partner. Burke said ACORN uses a weekly sales cycle with an online wholesale market and a modest markup to retain farmer margins. - Center for an Agricultural Economy (John Ramsey) operates multiple processing facilities, reported about 15 staff dedicated to food-hub work (38 total staff), and described Farm Connects logistics that aggregate and move frozen and root-crop products to schools and hospitals. Ramsey said the center purchased roughly 75,000 pounds of root crops last year to process into ready‑to‑use cuts for institutional buyers. - Food Connects (Richard Nelson) reported nearly $4,000,000 in revenue last year and sales to more than 300 wholesale customers across 13–14 Vermont counties and neighboring states; the organization has invested in a 17,000-square-foot facility and recent cooler/freezer expansions. - Green Mountain Farm Direct (Catherine Cusack) is a non‑asset holding hub serving mainly the Northeast Kingdom and northern counties, with seven permanent staff and partnerships that rely on Farm Connects for trucking and storage. - Intervale Center (Travis Marcotte) described a long-running hub in Chittenden County that is also testing feasibility of processing/incubator kitchen space and providing storage and cross-docking for producers and distributors. - Vermont Farmers Food Center (Heidi Lynch) described a Rutland campus that has expanded infrastructure and secured over $3,000,000 in investment to add refrigeration, kitchens and distribution capacity.

Farmers who rely on the hubs described three common services hubs provide: sales and invoicing support, short-term storage and cold-chain handling, and regular pickup and transport. Anna (Blue Ledge Farm) said the hub’s invoicing services are a "tremendous amount of time savings for a small farm," and that Farm Connects pickup enables distribution to regional customers that a small farm could not otherwise reach. Eli Hirsch of Honeyfield Farm explained that a hub's letter of commitment helped his operation secure a larger farm site and scale its wholesale business.

Speakers also flagged several pressure points: - Funding cuts and program uncertainty. Catherine Cusack said loss of a Local Food for Schools (LFS) funding round reduced some school purchasing power and forced hubs to absorb administrative costs previously offset by credits. Panelists warned that federal and other program funding intermittency jeopardizes relationships and procurement plans with schools and institutions. - Capital costs for infrastructure. Food Connects and others described expensive cooler/freezer and vehicle needs (Food Connects cited roughly $500,000 for recent cooler/freezer additions), forklifts and related warehouse equipment. - Market access barriers at large retailers. Ramsey and others said chain retailers can require staff to stock shelves and that vendor approval and logistics are a significant barrier for small producers and small distributors. - Industry consolidation. Panelists said consolidation of national distributors has reduced access for small producers to traditional routes to market, increasing the need for hubs that will aggregate and route product regionally.

Panelists urged continued collaboration across hubs and with private distributors to expand reach, noting many hubs already cross-dock product and run backhaul strategies so trucks are loaded in both directions. "There's a lot of collaboration where comparatively we are all small organizations compared to broad liners," Burke said.

The panel closed with hub leaders asking the committee to consider support that would help shore up capital investments, ensure stable funding for school procurement programs and recognize the operational role hubs play in maintaining regional food security. "We are taking action every day to realize state goals for farm viability, food access and resilience," Jake Claro said. "But we are doing this with limited resources while managing capital-intensive infrastructure and volatile program support."