Elizabeth Burrows
Democratic Candidate for Vermont Senate in the Windsor District
What do you believe is the role of state government, if any, in ensuring that everyone living in Vermont has the food they need to thrive?
I believe the role of state government is to support functional systems that work together to, at minimum, prevent a loss of access to basic needs such as housing, healthcare, food, safety, and education.
State government should also have a role in helping to solve the disconnect in how food is distributed. Schools should always have access to food grown by Vermont farmers (and schools should always have an educational component that highlights where food comes from). Grocers and hospitals and other institutional settings should be able to have direct access to Vermont-grown food, and have that access be prioritized over food that has been grown in another part of the country. AI should not have any role in how products are priced or made available to consumers.
What would be your policy priorities to move Vermont toward food security for all?
Support small distributors as vital to the Vermont economy and important counterparts to farms. Support food hubs that create collective distribution by small and mid-size farms. Create simplified pathways for small and mid-size farmers to be able to find small and mid-size (aggregated) distributors.
Invest in enabling local and regional markets and processors to create more direct connections between consumers and producers. Define “local” specifically for our state as being within a distinct distance range to allow for consumer certainty of quality and freshness, farming practices, and environmental stewardship.
Support “Food Is Medicine” programs that allow doctors to prescribe local, farm-grown foods or CSA memberships, which both support local farms and cut healthcare costs.
What do you believe are the root causes of hunger, and what should the state do to address those underlying factors?
One glaring cause of hunger is, of course, poverty. It’s easy to make that connection, and we candidates could talk all day long about what we need to do to alleviate conditions that cause hunger, especially as it becomes more widespread thanks to federal cuts in funding.
But another root cause of hunger is lack of easy access to nutritional food. When a town’s general store does not have an easy way to stock local farmers’ goods because those goods are prioritized for markets outside our state, it is a problem. When a town has one chain grocery store that only stocks produce that has been grown in another part of the country and is unable to stock what is grown right around the corner, it is a problem. Both of these exist everywhere in our own state. It’s a glaring symptom of a broken food distribution system.
How would you help strengthen the state’s agriculture and food economy to ensure Vermont farms can continue to grow the food we all need?
Besides continuing to support the programs our state has already initiated (such as Universal School Meals, Crop Cash and Crop Cash Plus, Farm Share, funding for the Vermont Food Bank and Vermonters Feeding Vermonters),
Foster young/new farmers’ success in entering the farming business by improving land access through programs like land banks and alternative ownership models. These already exist for other residential land uses, but could be applied to farming in programs such as cooperative ownership/farming. We could also make better actual use of the Current Use program by allowing land tenureship or cooperative land tenureship.
Stop land speculation by investors. Allow farmers to add business ventures related to what they already do/produce. Include farm lands as real components of disaster prevention plans.
Focus resources and support on family farms and farmers. Distinguish and define in statute small- and mid-size farms. Continue to refine Vermonters’ rights to grow food.
Invest in regenerative farming, and support farms that include carbon sequestration as part of their practices. Ask farmers themselves to define specific practices that could be classified as such. Help farmers invest in on-site infrastructure that increases productivity while reducing waste and energy use.
Public banking could be something we investigate as a way to support small and mid-sized farms. The consolidation of our country’s banking system has had a dire impact on farming in places like Vermont, where it’s more difficult for smaller, non-corporatized farms to secure loans for agricultural infrastructure, like equipment (and repairs), seeds, tractors, barns, mills, and storage facilities. Problems like this are often in the background and unseen by most people, but are increasingly intractable for small and mid-size farms.