Vermont Farm to Plate program reports $11.5B food-system output, flags $165M infrastructure need

Jake Claro, Farm to Plate network director at the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund, told the Senate Agriculture Committee on Jan. 31 that Vermont’s Farm to Plate Investment Program is established in statute (Title 10, subsection 330) and has become the state’s food system plan.

The plan, Claro said, underpins roughly $11.5 billion in annual food-system economic activity in Vermont and supports about 63,500 jobs statewide; he told the committee his office’s analysis shows the sector has grown since tracking began and accounts for roughly one-fifth of the state’s employment. Claro also told members the network has calculated an immediate infrastructure investment need of about $165 million across five priority industries, with an estimated $130 million expected to come from private sources and additional needs for storage and distribution facilities.

The Farm to Plate program was created by the Legislature in 2009 and reauthorized in 2019. The Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund (VSJF) administers the program and coordinates the Farm to Plate network, a statewide coalition of more than 300 members. Ellen Hayward, executive director of the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund, joined Claro at the hearing and said the network’s work pairs a statutory strategic plan with implementation through coordinated projects and technical assistance.

Claro summarized the program’s scope and the data behind the plan. “You can find the Farm to Plate Investment Program in Vermont’s statute. It is in statute, Title 10, and it is part of the Sustainable Jobs Fund statute,” he told the committee. He said production and processing generate about $4.3 billion of the sector’s annual output, distribution adds about $3.6 billion, and retail and food service add roughly $3.6 billion.

On jobs and establishments, Claro told the committee the food system employs about 63,500 people, a 9.4% increase since 2009, and represents about 20.6% of total employment in Vermont. He said retail accounts for the largest share of those jobs and that food manufacturing employment has grown substantially over the last decade.

Committee members pressed for specifics on how VSJF supports businesses. Claro and Hayward described technical-assistance programs: business coaching for independent retailers, cohort-based workshops for producers to improve wholesale readiness, strategic support for six statewide food hubs, and project-level work such as the “beef-on-dairy” genetics program that links dairy producers with value-added beef markets.

Committee members asked about the program’s priority strategies and funding requests. Claro said the published plan contains 34 priority strategies and more detailed two-page product and issue briefs for specific industries. He told the committee VSJF maintains a spreadsheet that aggregates investment needs and that the plan is intended as a resource for state agencies, philanthropic funders and private investors as well as for legislative decisionmaking.

On infrastructure and processing capacity, the committee heard that dairy product manufacturing is a major processing sector — Claro said dairy processing and cheese manufacturing together constitute a large portion of food-manufacturing output — and that meat slaughtering and processing capacity has increased but continues to face constraints. Respondents to a recent survey of meat processors, Claro said, listed funding and labor shortages as the main barriers to expansion.

Hayward told the committee a training pipeline is coming online to address processing labor. She noted the Vermont State University - Randolph campus program and highlighted Demetrius Reed’s role in developing meat-processing training; she said the new teaching facility is expected to begin operations in March and will expand the pool of trained workers.

Committee members and witnesses also discussed longer-term structural issues: a decline in the number of dairy farms and concerns about land access and rising land values, uneven net farm income (with a majority of farms reporting net losses), and housing constraints that affect employers’ ability to recruit workers.

Claro stressed that the Farm to Plate effort is both a plan and a platform for implementation. “We didn’t want it to be just a plan that sits idly on a shelf. We wanted to make sure that it actually was implemented,” he said, outlining VSJF’s combination of statewide strategy, local projects and partnerships with agencies and private funders.

The hearing was a status update and discussion; the committee did not take formal votes or direct actions during the session. Committee members asked VSJF to provide the spreadsheet of aggregated funding needs and additional detail on state-level investments that support the food system.

Looking ahead, VSJF and the Farm to Plate network identified workforce training, targeted infrastructure investment in processing and distribution, farmland access strategies, and continued coordination with state plans (including the state climate action plan and the food security roadmap) as priorities for the next phase of implementation.