Claire's restaurant in Hardwick

Don’t look now, but there’s a whole book about Hardwick.

Yup, that Hardwick. The one in Caledonia County, population 3207 (quasi-official 2008 estimate) median income on the low side for Vermont, home to no celebrities known to Hollywood or Broadway.

But worthy of its own book as The Town That Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food, by Ben Hewitt, a 38-year-old writer-farmer who lives in Cabot. The book was published last March by Rodale Press.

Vitality in local food? Hmmm. There’s a concept that transcends one little town and even one little state. But it certainly seems to be important to the little town of Hardwick, and it may become increasingly important to Vermont. Over the last few years, local small-scale agriculture has been one of the few sectors of the Vermont economy that has expanded and created jobs.

Some see it as an important part of the state and even the national economy in the years ahead.

And some do not. The cover of the current issue of The American Prospect magazine proclaimed, “The Local Food Revolution Doesn’t Stand a Chance.”

Such a conclusion might be expected – and easy to dismiss — from many an establishment journal, especially one close to the corporate world where big commodity farms,  agribusiness processors, their lobbyists, and the lawmakers who direct billions of dollars in subsidies their way feel at home.

But The American Prospect (TAP to its friends) is a highly regarded and generally left of center magazine, not likely to be carrying water (and in this case that would be irrigated water financed by the taxpayer) for “industrialized agriculture.” (Full disclosure: it is also a magazine for which the News Guy has written in both its print and on-line incarnations).

So why does TAP say the local food movement is doomed?

Actually, it doesn’t. Not for the first time in publishing history, a magazine’s cover headline seems to have overstated the findings of the cover story itself. In the article, “Slowed Food Revolution,” writer Heather Rogers does point out the difficulties facing non-establishment agriculture, but never quite proclaims its situation hopeless.

The problems she catalogues are real.

(H)olistic and organic growers,” she writes, “shoulder far higher production costs than their conventional counterparts when it comes to everything from laborers to land. Without meaningful support from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, their longevity hangs in the balance. In the meantime, the USDA showers billions on industrial agriculture. Growers who’ve gone the chemical, mechanized route have ready access to reasonable loans, direct subsidy payments…, and crop insurance, plus robust research, marketing, and distribution resources. Whether organic and holistic growers raise crops…or grass-fed, free-range livestock, they must contend with circumstances made harder by a USDA rigged to favor industrial agriculture and factory food.”

True, or at least true enough, though there are signs that the Obama Administration is moving, if ever so slowly, to help the local food movement. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack even attended the Northeast Organic Farming Association gathering in Burlington last winter, where he said, “like it or not, for better or worse, the organic market has become mainstream.” Last month, the Administration proposed new rules “seeking to increase competition and rein in potentially unfair practices by large meatpackers and poultry producers,” according to a story in the New York Times, which said the move was “aimed at helping small livestock and poultry farmers.”

Besides, not all local agriculture is organic or holistic, whatever that may mean, and some of Rogers’s examples seem extreme. One organic farmer’s eggs, she wrote, cost $14 a dozen, making them tough to sell. But it can be reliably reported that in the Northeast Kingdom one can get locally raised  (though not organic) eggs, laid by chickens who wander around a barnyard, for $2.50 a dozen. That’s more than at the supermarket, but it isn’t outlandish.

Whatever happens to local food production in the future, there is little doubt that it has “saved” Hardwick economically, though Hewitt himself now says he didn’t really think Hardwick had to be “saved,” except, he said,. “economically speaking.” It had, though, “an interconnectedness, where people were able to do for themselves and each other.”

Still, it didn’t have much in the way of jobs or business opportunities until the opening of cheese maker Jasper Hill Farms in nearby Greensboro, Vermont Soy, and Claire’s, a “community supported restaurant” (CSR) which is largely financed by local investors and uses many locally-grown products.

Not that Hardwick has turned into Scarsdale. There’s still at least one boarded up big storefront on the main street. And many if not most of the town residents, it is safe to say, can rarely if ever afford to dine at Claire’s. But so far, Hewitt said, “these businesses are all growing and hiring and have been through the teeth of the recession,” and the town shows definite signs of economic vitality.

Nor, he said, is Hardwick alone. There is the Intervale Center in Burlington, a Rutland area “farm and food link” is coordinating similar entrepreneurship in that area, and “scattered throughout the hills are small scale producers,” clearly more of them than just a few years ago.

Now, in Vermont at least, the local food movement may be about to get some of the official help it needs. Next month, the Legislatively-created Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund, after a year of study and discussion, will “put (its) draft proposals on what the farm and food sector might be like in ten years, out for public comment,” said Janice St. Onge, its deputy director.

St. Onge doesn’t think Vermont will ever be able to “solely feed ourselves,” not as long as Vermonters want orange juice for breakfast. But, she said, “some components can move toward being self-sufficient,” and that self-sufficiency could be economically valuable for the state.

The localvore advocates try to be careful not to over-promise. Hewitt said there were more important advantages to producing and consuming locally grown food than to see local agriculture as a “fantastic engine of economic growth,” which it may not be.

But it could be as solid (if not fantastic) an engine of such growth as any of the other business bonanza ideas thrown around. The conventional wisdom supports subsidizing (bribing?) out-of-state companies to move in. But statistics show that rather few companies move from one state to another, and it is not at all clear that the jobs created are worth the subsidies paid, or the tax breaks granted (which usually end up raising everybody else’s taxes in the town which hosts the new company). So far, at least, local growers aren’t asking for money, just some changes in regulations.

And as Hewitt said, it’s at least as likely that industrial agriculture, for all its government subsidies, is as close to doom as are the small producers of meat and vegetables raised to sell nearby. Certainly in Vermont, the big mass commodity crop, dairy, will continue to decline, in numbers of producers if not in gallons produced.

In 1947, Hewitt rattled off (he obviously has the number in his head) there were 11,206 Vermont dairy farms. There are now about 1,000. There will be fewer next year and fewer yet the year after. But there are likely to be more farms producing cheese from their own animals, raising vegetables to be sold at a nearby farm stand, and supplying local restaurants like Claire’s or the Bees Knees in Morrisville.

It’s hard to believe that there will be enough of these farms and restaurants to help lead a state to prosperity. But until this year, it was hard to believe anyone would write a book about Hardwick.

A writer of clear prose (not running for governor of Vermont)

The News Guy has been summoned away (though not physically) on other business matters.

(No, they’re not very profitable, either, but can not be ignored).

He will return Friday with substantive (meaning, not just political) information.

But there is just enough time and energy left for one apology and one observation.

The apology goes to Julie Waters, who was called Julie Walters in a recent post. Ms. Waters, in her amusing corrective comment, suggested the News Guy might have gotten her confused with an actual Julie Walters, an actress.

Nope, this was strictly an eyesight malfunction, the existence of actress Julie Walters having been previously unknown in this precinct.

The observation comes after perusing Tuesday’s Burlington Free Press “Comment and Debate” page in which all six candidates for governor answered the question, “What changes, if any, would you make to how we pay for public education, how much we pay and how the public school system is structured?”

Actually, this is one observation in five parts:

–Part One: Is the Free Press aware that no more than 14 people could possible be reading these answers?

–Part Two: As has been mentioned here before, the writing of these answers, simply as writing, is execrable. Any candidate writing these answers him/her self should cease, desist, and hire a professional writer. Any candidate whose answers are already being written by a professional writer should  fire said writer and hire another.

(And Susan Bartlett, or perhaps the Free Press, should hire a proofreader. She said  school costs were rising because of “personal.” Surely she meant “personnel.”)

–Part Three: But to those of the 14 (perhaps eight) who can wade through the stilted prose, all six candidates have some sensible ideas, having to do with consolidation, distance learning technology, bulk purchasing, and other possible efficiencies.

–Part Four: Sen. Peter Shumlin, in his answer as well as on his television advertisements, calls for universal pre-kindergarten education. That can be expensive. Have his four Democratic opponents challenged him as to how he plans to pay for this? If not, why not?

–Part Five: Republican Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie said that “our problem is simple: we spend more than we have.”

No, we do not. The schools are financed from the General and Education Funds, neither of which is in arrears. Obviously, Vermont spends less on schools than it has. Otherwise, it would have nothing to spend on anything else.

Sounds as though Dubie was using evocative language to suggest that the state spends more than it should, more than its taxpayers want to spend, perhaps even more than it can afford to spend on schools. These are all plausible, if debatable, assertions.

But politics ain’t poetry. Its language should be literally accurate, not an experiment in hyperbole.

But give Dubie some credit. That was one of the few simple, declarative English sentences by any of the six.

The top money man

More politics below, but first an update on a post of three months ago (Non-Union Blues, April 28) about the Douglas Administration’s refusal to accept a Project Labor Agreement (PLA) for construction of the new Lake Champlain bridge.

Under a PLA, construction unions agree not to strike and to accept cost saving concessions such as surrendering premium pay for late shift work. In return, the contractor agrees to accept workers chosen at union hiring halls in the region, guaranteeing local residents some of the good-paying jobs on the project.

Last spring, New York State and the Federal Government agreed to a PLA for the bridge. Under pressure from the state branch of the Associated General Contractors, Vermont did not, so there was no public PLA.

The top money Dem

But according to a news release sent out Friday by the Vermont Building and Construction Trades Council, Vermont and New York unions have reached agreement on a private PLA with the prime contractor, Flatiron Construction of Colorado.

“The PLA will accomplish what Gov. Douglas was sadly unwilling to do – guarantee local residents an opportunity to land a job on this $70 million project,” Vermont Building and Construction Trades Council President Jeff Potvin said in the press release.

It isn’t clear how many workers from the area will get jobs on the bridge project. Potvin acknowledged that Flatiron will “self-perform a large portion of the project,” meaning it will bring its own workers from elsewhere. But it does seem that the more Vermont workers will get bridge jobs with the PLA than would have without it, and that the cost savings will go to Flatiron, not Vermont’s taxpayers.

It will be interesting to see if whoever ends up with the Democratic nomination for governor tries to use this issue in the general election campaign against Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie.

Oh, yes: the governor’s race. Wherein we segue to the significance of the campaign finance reports submitted by the candidates last week.

This significance should not be overstated. The typical voter does not pay attention to which candidate raises more money, being far more interested in which candidate he or she finds appealing.

But neither should the significance be pooh-poohed. First of all, the money itself is important; more is better than less. Second, the reports themselves send signals, however short-lived, that can speed or slow a candidate’s progress. The more money a candidate has, the more seriously he or she is taken by what the eminent journalist Jack Germond called “the political community”—reporters, TV commentators, and, not least, potential contributors, who prefer to bestow their largesse on likely winners.

There is little doubt, then, that last Friday’s headlines provided a boost to Dubie ($943,000 raised, $475,623 cash on hand) and Secretary of State Deb Markowitz, the top collector among Democrats ($523,946 raised, $186,756 on hand).

Also coming out ahead in the perception game were Democrats Matt Dunne ($267,861 and $132,959) and Sen. Peter Shumlin ($418,490 and $207,134.).

The news was not as good for Sen, Doug Racine ($210,158 and $63,097) and it was downright awful for Sen. Susan Bartlett, who reported raising only $70,920 from just 232 contributors, leaving her with only $11,146 in the bank.

As last Wednesday’s post noted, a candidate need not have the most money. She does have to have enough money.

Eleven grand is not enough money.

Bartlett insisted she would not drop out, and there’s no reason why she should. She has nowhere else to go for the next month, and there’s always the possibility of a “miracle,” which in this case would require no supernatural intervention, just a fairly even five-way split in which nobody gets much more than 20 percent of the primary vote on August 24 and anyone could win a squeaker.

But it would take something close to supernatural intervention. That isn’t the way multi-candidate primaries usually shake out.

The situation must be frustrating for Bartlett, who is highly regarded in Montpelier. Even as they pronounce her candidacy hopeless, politicians and legislative onlookers keep noting  that she might be a strong candidate in the general election, and a good governor if elected.

But nobody every claimed that politics was fair, or even rational.

A look behind the raw numbers indicates even better news for Dunne, and perhaps even worse news for Racine, who has only raised $107,742 from 491 contributors in the last year. His total includes the amount he raised before last July’s reporting deadlines. Dunne, who did not announce his candidacy until late last year, raised all his money in the last twelve months from 722 contributors.

That’s not as many as Dubie (an impressive 2,724 contributors in the last 12 months), or  Markowitz (1,070), but substantially better than Shumlin (390) who only kept pace with Dunne by lending his own campaign $150,000.  At the very least, Dunne seems to know how to raise money.

As, obviously, do Dubie and Markowitz. They have also spent the most money. Shumlin actually has a bit more cash on hand now than Markowitz, even after paying for the campaign’s first round of television ads. And while Dubie has far more money in the bank than anyone else, he is also spending it faster than anyone else, much of it on professional fund-raising and other political consulting firms.

All the candidates raised most of their money from, and spent most of it in, Vermont. That may not last. It is not unreasonable to suspect that the big out-of-state fundraising starts now, not reportable until after the election. Some voters, it seems think there is something wrong with raising money beyond Vermont’s borders.

But candidates need money, and have to raise it where they can find it. Asked why he robbed banks, Willie Sutton famously said, “that’s where the money is.” Campaign money is in Boston, New York, Washington, California, and Texas. Dubie has already raised thousands from Texas, and spent thousands there, on Harris Media an Austin political consulting firm serving conservative Republican candidates.

No doubt researchers from all six campaigns are poring over the filings of the other five, hoping to find either a contribution or an expenditure that could prove politically awkward. Two potential entries: Dubie got a $2,000 contribution from the Ely Lilly Co., the Indianapolis pharmaceutical giant. Drug companies are not universally admired these days.

The lieutenant governor also received $1,000 from Dairy Farmers of America of Kansas City, MO, and another $1,000 from its affiliate, Syracuse-based Dairylea Cooperative, Inc. DFA is the milk marketing cooperative that has been the target of several anti-trust allegations, (and at least one continuing investigation) and some Vermont dairy farmers blame it for keeping their prices low.