VVBGA technical advisor briefs House committee on Vermont vegetable and berry sector needs, risks and resources

Vern, a technical advisor with the Vegetable & Berry Growers Association (VVBGA) and University of Vermont Extension, told the Vermont House Agriculture Committee that the growers she works with are diverse, growing vegetables, berries, ornamentals and greenhouse products and that membership in the VVBGA now totals about 400 farms.

Her presentation summarized a 2023 membership survey and other outreach: 77 farm owners or managers responded to the survey; 92% of respondents grow vegetables, about 88% use greenhouses or high tunnels, and 68 reporting farms recorded combined product sales of roughly $42,000,000. "Pumpkins are vegetables," Vern said when clarifying how product categories are counted. She emphasized that roughly one-third of growers are certified organic, one-third are “functionally organic,” and about one-third follow more conventional practices.

The nut graf: Committee members heard that the two top challenges for growers are extreme weather and farm labor, and that growers want more direct technical support, applied research and grant opportunities to adapt. Vern said direct technical support is ‘‘number 1’’ in farmers’ list of needs and highlighted grants from the Agency of Agriculture (crop block grants, Working Lands Enterprise Initiative) and other programs that have supported website development, member mapping and cold-storage or wash/pack projects.

Most important facts: Vern said the VVBGA membership includes more than 400 farm members and about 60 commercial members (suppliers and service businesses), with roughly three-quarters of farms located in Vermont and the remainder along border areas in neighboring states and Quebec. She described market channels: direct-to-consumer outlets (CSAs, farm stands, farmers markets) remain central, while direct-to-store relationships and regional cooperatives such as Deep Root provide routes into natural-food supermarkets. Vern said only about one-eighth of farms focus primarily on wholesale, and larger wholesale operations remain relatively uncommon but critical for supplying larger buyers.

On climate and infrastructure, Vern said repeated flood events and intense rainfall are pushing more growers toward high tunnels and greenhouses as adaptation tools; she described the management complexity and benefits of tunnels (irrigation control, pest management, season extension). She also noted that some farms in flood plains remain important production sites but that growers are weighing when land risk becomes too high to continue using low-lying fields.

Workforce and programs: Vern described the contribution of H-2A workers to the region’s horticulture labor supply and said extension has worked with growers and partner agencies (including NRCS and Farm Service Agency) to help farmers access federal and state funding and technical assistance. She said extension recently added staff to help growers navigate grant opportunities and that small and mid-sized farms commonly rely on off-farm income; roughly one-tenth of farms reported 10 or more full-time employees in the survey.

Scaling and markets: In response to questions from representatives, Vern said that substantially increasing acreage statewide requires more than pushing small farms to grow; it needs people with the skills and appetite to run large wholesale operations, more contiguous land, and investments in pack/processing and storage infrastructure. On where produce is sold, she estimated — without a precise dataset — that perhaps a quarter to a third of produce leaves the state, with the remainder sold to Vermont customers.

Examples and transitions: Vern illustrated farm diversity with examples presented in her slideshow — small CSAs on rented conserved land, intergenerational transfers facilitated by Vermont Land Trust models, and larger growers with multi-town operations. She described recent grants used to rebuild wash/pack sheds and expand cider processing capacity, and noted that many farms operate on conserved land where conservation easements can complicate future financial valuations and transfers.

Committee next steps and follow-up: Committee members asked for grower recommendations. Vern said she will raise the request at the VVBGA board meeting and present the board’s recommendations to the committee. No formal votes or committee actions were recorded during the briefing.

Ending: The briefing provided legislators with a survey-based snapshot of VVBGA membership, highlighted near-term needs—applied research, targeted grants, and infrastructure assistance—and emphasized climate adaptation and workforce challenges as major barriers to scaling production and stabilizing farm businesses.