Working Lands grantees describe how grants helped expand local food and forest supply chains

The Working Lands Enterprise Fund heard presentations from three 2024 grantees on how grant awards helped expand local agricultural and forest supply chains.

Elizabeth Sippel, enterprise initiatives program manager, told the board that "we were able to award 65 offer 65 grantees awards in fiscal year 20 24, and that was through 6 diverse funding opportunities." She said award sizes in that year ranged "from 6,000 to 250,000." The board heard three recipient accounts chosen to illustrate supply-chain infrastructure and small-farm diversification investments.

Annie Myers, owner of Myers Produce, described how a $90,000 supply-chain infrastructure grant helped the regional distributor build digital and cold-chain capacity. "We sold just under $5,000,000 worth of food from the Northeast" in 2024, Myers said, and described a fleet of five box trucks and three vans, about 20 staff, a 10,000-square-foot warehouse, and relationships with more than 75 regional farmers and producers. She said more than 55% of the food the business sells is produced in Vermont. Myers said the grant paid for a combination of an off‑the‑shelf platform (Airtable) and custom work from a developer team to create inventory, routing and customer-relationship functions. The software, she said, will let Myers offer different pricing tiers by market and reduce manual data entry, which the business had been handling with Google Sheets and QuickBooks.

Rose Thackeray, who identified herself as a Northfield farm owner, described a small-farm diversification and transition grant of about $9,000 that paid for a vacuum sealer and label printer to enable retail-ready poultry parts. The grant, paired with enactment of Act 93 (the poultry parting law referenced in the meeting), "gave us that boost at a time of the year where cash flow is really low," Thackeray said. She said her farm processes about 2,000 meat birds a year under the agricultural exemption and was able to part about 500 birds (roughly 25%) in its first year offering parts. Thackeray said her whole-bird average price is about $5.25 and the average price for parts is about $10, and that the new equipment allowed the farm to expand retail sales (including a parts CSA) and produce labeled packages for direct retail customers.

Mark Goodridge, joining virtually, described a $225,000 supply-chain infrastructure award to extend 3‑phase utility service 1.3 miles to Goodridge Lumber in Albany. He said the project, which he estimated came in "at close to half a million dollars," replaced aging diesel generator power and will cut diesel use by about 13,000 gallons a year. Goodridge said the company expects an 8–10 year payback on its contribution and projected annual gross savings of roughly $33,000; he also said the utility contributed about $55,000 and Efficiency Vermont about $15,000 toward the line-extension costs. He described the electrical extension as enabling future added-value operations on the yard, such as a possible dry kiln.

Board members and presenters discussed practical constraints and next steps. Myers explained that the grant-funded software combines a commercial Airtable subscription with custom development and will require ongoing monthly fees and a support retainer. Thackeray described how the timing of Act 93 and the grant payment (90% upfront) allowed her farm to begin offering parts immediately when demand peaked. Goodridge emphasized that the grant made the line extension feasible for a small family business and said without it the project would not have happened.

The presentations were framed as success stories intended to show how Working Lands investments can support distribution, processing, and energy infrastructure that underpin local production and markets. No formal board actions or votes were recorded in this portion of the meeting.