Photo: Riley Robinson/Staff.
Organic farmers Kayleigh Boyle and Doug Wolcik stand in a hoop house at Breadseed Farm in Craftsbury, Vermont.
‘I have long believed this is a bipartisan issue,’ says John Klar, a Vermont farmer who in 2022 ran for a Vermont state Senate seat as a Republican.
One reason I like the Christian Science Monitor is that it’s so good at searching out stories of divided Americans coming together. Today’s example features a diverse group of Vermont farmers promoting sustainable practices and eat-local values.
Stephanie Haines writes, “Kayleigh Boyle and Doug Wolcik knew all the reasons not to farm in Vermont: the short growing season, the hilly terrain, the dirt roads that make it hard to get products to market.
“Even the size of most farms here is a problem. For decades, farms across the United States have gotten larger as agricultural policies pushed growers to consolidate and scale up their operations. Vermont’s farms, however, have stayed relatively small. According to conventional wisdom, that means unprofitable.
“But small was what the couple wanted. Ms. Boyle is from Vermont, and while studying at Emerson College in Boston, she worked an office job connected to the local food movement. But she quickly realized she wanted to be outside with her hands in the earth.
“Mr. Wolcik graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he studied sustainable agriculture and community food systems. He, too, realized he wanted a life close to the soil.
“They met while working at a nonprofit farm outside Boston and soon discovered they shared a dream about buying their own acreage to grow food and flowers. They weren’t interested in a massive operation. Instead, their vision included no-till growing methods, hand tools, and a desire to build a ‘human scale’ production system.
“They also wanted to make their living entirely from their farm – something increasingly difficult to do in New England. Over the past 60 years, the region has lost 80% of its farmland. …
“They spent years saving money and scouring Zillow listings and USDA soil surveys online. They eventually found a 16-acre property at the edge of Vermont’s rural Northeast Kingdom, complete with a house and a flat, 2-acre plot that got a lot of sun. In September 2020, they decided to take the plunge.
“And they’ve thrived. ‘We’ve just far exceeded any expectations that we set for ourselves,’ says Mr. Wolcik. ‘We’re selling everything we can. We can’t even grow enough. There’s such demand for it, from restaurants to retail to wholesale to markets,’ he says. ‘We can’t produce enough product fast enough.’
“Some of this is because of the couple themselves: Ms. Boyle’s sense of marketing, Mr. Wolcik’s attention to detail and innovation, and the experience and high standards they share as growers.
“But it is also because, when they bought these rare flat acres, they joined a community actively building a new storyline around farming, food, and resilience in New England.
“Here, in this part of little Vermont, statewide population 648,000, a coalition of farmers, nonprofits, and residents is eschewing mainstream beliefs about what makes agriculture successful and what it means to create a prosperous economy.
“Instead, they are building a system in which farmers are able to make a living and residents can eat healthy food grown nearby. They are intentionally moving away from a global supply chain vulnerable to market shocks – everything from pandemics to tariffs to natural disasters. …
“Across the country, communities on all sides of the political spectrum are reimagining the way Americans produce and value what they eat, tapping into a simmering belief that something is amiss with how detached, both economically and nutritionally, we have become from this fundamental human sector. …
“Subsistence farming gave way to commercial dairying and gardening for market. Refrigeration, and the resulting large-scale grocery stores, meant individuals didn’t need to spend their time growing food. Urbanization and competition from out-of-region farms followed.
“Still, what we think of as the modern food system is largely a phenomenon of recent decades. This includes a global supply chain, factory farming, and ultraprocessed foods, which now make up more than 50% of the calories in the American diet, according to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. What people tend to think of as the ‘local food movement’ is also relatively new.
“[Although fascination] with locally grown organic foods became popularly associated with progressives – and was regularly criticized as elitist – there was also an emerging libertarian and conservative desire for a different, more localized sort of food system.
“ ‘I have long believed this is a bipartisan issue,’ says John Klar, a Vermont farmer who in 2022 ran for a Vermont state Senate seat as a Republican, a bid that fell short. ‘If there’s one thing that should bring Americans together, it is local, healthy food.’
“To him, the small farm is inherently conservative – a rejection of what he sees as dangerous globalism. It is a return to self-sufficiency, and far more environmentally and climate friendly, he says, than the traditionally liberal causes of electric vehicles and solar farms. …
“ ‘Both sides have been lulled by modernization of agriculture and the technological sirens,’ says Mr. Klar. ‘But both sides are coming back and coming together. These things don’t lend themselves to the red-blue dichotomy.’ ”
More at the Monitor, here. No paywall. Lots of cool pictures.
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