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.

In 2006, 13 people were murdered in Vermont, a rate of 2.7 people per hundred-thousand residents, the standard measurement for these matters, far below the national rate (5.6 per hundred-thousand that year) and one of the lowest rates in the country.

Kind of high for Vermont, though, The previous year’s rate had been 2.1 per hundred-thousand, based on eight murders. Thing haven’t changed much since. In fact, except for 1993, when for some reason there were 21 murders in the state, the number of homicides fluctuates between the high single digits and the mid-teens, allowing Vermont to uphold its reputation as a safe, healthy, state where, compared with most other states, people do not kill.

A reputation not entirely deserved. Vermonters rarely kill someone else. But they are quite a bit more likely than other Americans to kill themselves.

That same year of 2006 (chosen because it is the most recent year for which reliable suicide statistics are available), when only a handful of Vermonters killed another person, 80 committed suicide, a rate of 13.1 per hundred-thousand, according to the Suicide Prevention Resource Center. Here, Vermont’s statistics are worse than the nation as  whole, where 11.1 people per hundred-thousand population killed themselves that year.

For whatever reason, suicide seems to be a worse problem in Vermont than in the neighboring states. New Hampshire’s 12.2 per hundred-thousand is slightly lower, and still above the national average. But in Massachusetts (7.2 per hundred-thousand) and New York (6.7), the rate is far lower than in most of the rest of the country,

From 1995 through 2006,  the SPRC reported, Vermont had a 13.7 per hundred-thousand suicide rate, with an average of 1.5 suicides a week, making suicide the ninth leading cause of death in the state. It is eleventh nationally.

“Things have not changed that much,” since those statistics were compiled, said Elana Premack Sandler, a Prevention Specialist at SPRC’s Boston office. Vermont remains one of the states where a person is more likely to kill him or her self.

Probably himself. As in most other states, the vast majority of Vermont suicides – 82 percent — are men, meaning that 23 of every hundred-thousand Vermont men take their own lives, making suicide the seventh leading cause of death of Vermont men. The rate for women was 4.8 per hundred-thousand.

As might be expected, older people were most likely to take their own lives. In Vermont, the rate for those over 70 was 19.6 per hundred-thousand (43 for males over 70). But suicide experts in Vermont and elsewhere are increasingly worried about teenage suicides. The SPRC reported four youth suicides in Vermont in 2006, a slightly higher rate than the nation’s as a whole.

As might not be expected, there does not seem to be a correlation between suicide and either income or education. Nationally (this hardly applies in Vermont), non-Hispanic whites are more likely to take their own lives than are blacks or Hispanics.

“Income and socio-economic class does not really enter into it,” said Brian Remer, project manager for youth suicide prevention at the Center for Health and Learning in Brattleboro.http://www.healthandlearning.org/

“There’s a myth out there that people who are poor and down on their luck might be more inclined to take their own lives. It’s more a combination of a lot of different factors.”

The most important of these, he said, is probably “social isolation,” which helps explain why, in Vermont and around the country, suicide is more common in rural areas. Nationally, New Mexico (19.8 suicides per hundred thousand population from 1995 through 2005), Alaska (21), and Montana (20) are the states with the highest rates, Elana Premack Sandler said.

In some of these states, the rate might be affected by the one exception to the general rule that non-Hispanic whites are more likely to take their own lives than are members of a minority group. Not if the minority group is American Indians or Alaska natives. In Alaska, the suicide rate for these two groups is a frightening 45.9 per hundred-thousand.

In these cases, poverty and other pathologies such as alcoholism might contribute to the suicide rate. But Premack Sandler said most experts still regard isolation as the biggest problem.

The same holds in Vermont, said Remer. The suicide rate in rural Essex County in the Northeast Kingdom is higher than Alaska’s – 24 per hundred-thousand. Essex County residents are poorer and less educated than most Vermonters, but Remer said, “suicide rates are probably higher in rural areas because of isolation and the difficulty receiving or getting to mental health services” than to income or education levels. Mental health, he said, “plays a part in about 90 percent of the suicides.”

And while there are no statistics about rural attitudes as such, suicide experts are convinced that the stigma attached to mental illness, which seems stronger in rural areas, prevents some people from dealing with the problems that can lead to suicide.

“The stigma is a big thing,” Remer said. “If a son or daughter exhibits unusual behavior, parents often think, ‘maybe they inherited this condition from me,’ or ‘I’m a bad parent, or people will think I’m a bad parent.’ We know this is not true. Mental illness often has a chemical or genetic base, and people can get real help from therapy and medication.”

Bill Lippert, the Democratic State Representative from Hinesburg who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, noted that though there were “twice as many suicides as murders in Vermont” (actually, more than twice as many), every murder garners a massive headline, but the issue of suicide is generally not receiving the same level of public awareness because there’s still the stigma attached to mental illness.”

But mental illness is only one aspect of the suicide discussion that many experts and activists are reluctant to discuss. The other is the method, though the data are clear. People can take their lives using all kinds of devices including poisons, knives, and suffocation. But in Vermont and nationwide, more than half of all suicides shoot themselves.

That’s what Aaron Xue did last year. He was 15. He apparently was given a gun (or perhaps guns) by another youth, who took them from his home in Essex, where Aaron also lived. Aaron’s mother thinks it should be simple to pass a law that would make it less likely that teenagers could take loaded guns from home. She may be wrong.

The old bridge

Thanks to a decision made by the government of the state of Vermont – mostly the Douglas Administration but with the support of leading legislators – the new Lake Champlain bridge will cost Vermont taxpayers somewhat more than it might.

Thanks to that same decision, no Vermont worker is guaranteed to get one of the 150 or more jobs – some paying more than $47 an hour including benefits – on the $61 million project, the largest construction project in the state in some time.

Finally, thanks to the decision, strikes, labor jurisdictional disputes, or other work stoppages could interrupt progress on the new bridge, scheduled to be completed by July of 2011.

The decision was the state’s refusal to participate in a Project Labor Agreement (PLA). Under a PLA, construction unions agree to certain concessions, such as surrendering premium pay for late shifts and allowing flexibility in computing overtime. This holds down the price of the project.

They also agree not to stage strikes, slowdowns or other work delays, a provision especially important when officials – and the public – are impatient to finish the job.

In return, most of the workers are selected from union hiring halls, meaning union members get priority, though non-union workers are commonly chosen also, simply because the job requires more workers than there are union members in any area.

In this case, the federal government signaled its approval of using a PLA. The state of New York agreed. The unions made the necessary concessions.

Vermont said no.

To recap: The PLA would (1) Not cost anyone a penny; (2) Save the state and its taxpayers some hundreds of thousands of dollars according to the one study devoted to the question; (3) guarantee scores of Vermont workers high-paying jobs for 15 months.

And the state said no?

“It’s a philosophical opposition to unions,” said Sen. Vince Illuzzi, the Orleans County Republican who supports the PLA.

Not so, said John Zicconi, the spokesman for the Agency of Transportation, who said Vermont officials “didn’t think one (PLA) was necessary.”

Zicconi said Transportation Secretary David Dill told New York officials Vermont would consider the PLA if “nonunion shops were treated completely equally with the union shops,” a condition that he said was not met.

“Our non-union shops should have been on a level playing field,” Zicconi said. “That was the key issue to us.”

It was the key issue, Zicconi acknowledged, because the Agency was subject to “strong lobbying” by Vermont’s construction firms, organized as the Associated General Contractors of Vermont. Almost all of Vermont’s contractors are non-union shops, and obviously intent on staying that way. Both Zicconi and AGC officials said that under a PLA no non-union Vermont contractor could possibly get chosen as a subcontractor to do any work on the bridge.

But according to the “Due Diligence” report on the advisability of the PLA done by Arace & Co. consulting firm of Warwick, N.Y., non-union contractors win at leas”t 30 percent of all (contracts) under PLAs.”

The report also concluded that a PLA on the bridge “has the  potential to produce cost savings for the Federal government and the taxpayers of New York State and Vermont.  We estimate potential savings of approximately $1,756,032.”

Vermont’s share of that would presumably be several hundred-thousand dollars.

Besides, there do not seem to be any Vermont firms that could possibly win a subcontract for any of the work that would have been covered by the PLA. Zicconi and AGC sources said they hoped Vermont firms might get subcontracts for line-striping the road, installing the guard rails, or providing concrete.

But according to Michael Morelli of the Ironworkers union and other union officials, the less expensive contracts for line-striping and guard rails were not part of the draft PLA. And the concrete material, which is likely to be handled by a non-union Vermont firm, is considered supply, not construction contracting. It isn’t part of the PLA, either.

In fact, so many of the arguments in opposition to the PLA are so demonstrably incorrect that Illuzzi’s contention that state officials are motivated by “philosophical opposition” can’t be dismissed out of hand.

For instance, both builders and state officials repeatedly told lawmakers and reporters that the PLA would force non-union Vermont workers to “join a union.”

It would not. The workers would have to pay union dues while on this particular job. But they would not have to become union members, and they could stipulate that none of their dues money go for political activity. In the meanwhile, they and their families would enjoy the generous health benefits of the union plans.

And in disputing the consultant’s estimate of $1.7 million in savings, Zicconi said that would depend on whether the unions made concessions, and on the report’s assumption that union workers were more efficient, “and I don’t buy that.”

But the unions have already made the concessions. And the efficiency issue, according to Ed Acer of the consulting firm, based on findings that union workers are “more likely to be more productive and safety-conscious” because they are “graduates of rigorous state-certified apprentice programs,” accounted for $112,000, or .005 percent of the projected savings.

“That’s a rounding error,” he said.

A PLA would not have cost Vermont contractors a penny. All workers on the job will have to be paid the New York State prevailing wage, which is much higher than Vermont’s. A Vermont laborer, said, John Donahue of the Laborer’s union, earns about $12 an hour, usually with no benefits. The New York prevailing wage, he said, is $37 an hour, $23 in pay and the rest benefits. Even after deducting union dues (about $2.22 an hour) the worker earns a lot more under the New York system.

That, of course, could reveal a practical, rather than a “philosophical” reason Vermont contractors oppose the PLA. They may not want their workers to get a taste of the higher wages and benefits that unionization brings.

Labor leaders could be exaggerating when they say that without the PLA no Vermont worker might be hired. The general contractor, Flatiron Constructors of Colorado, is not likely to bring all 150 or more skilled workers with it. But Morelli of the Ironworkers said Flatiron was known for “self-performing” a great deal of its work and bringing some of its work force with it.

Efforts to reach Flatiron were not successful.

And Donahue might have been bluffing when he threatened labor unrest.

“We’re not going to stand by,” he said. “There could be picket lines and everything.”

But they are correct when they say that without the PLA there is no guarantee either that Vermonters will get any of these good-paying jobs or that there will be no delays because of labor squabbles. Under the draft PLA, 84 percent of the jobs would have been apportioned through local hiring halls in New York and Vermont, though non-union contractors could “drag-along” their own employes to make up the rest.

The final irony here is that there could be a PLA after all. Vermont’s refusal only scuttled plans for a public PLA. But the unions and Flatiron could negotiate a private agreement. Flatiron has operated under PLAs in the past. It was the general contractor for the replacement of the Mississippi River bridge in Minneapolis that collapsed in 2007. That jog was finished ahead of schedule and under budget, and it was conducted under a PLA.

A Flatiron official was in the Albany area yesterday,  perhaps negotiating.

Under a private PLA, though, the taxpayers will not save the money. Flatiron will add it to its bottom line.