Revitalizing Vermont’s Rural Economy

NWWVT has been working with the Vermont Working Landscape Partnership to develop an Action Plan to create rural renaissance and focus our economic development efforts on our greatest asset – our working landscape. Vermont has a tremendous opportunity to build our working lands economy – farming, forestry, and value-added processing – into a cornerstone of job creation and rural revitalization. Vermonters overwhelmingly agree that our state’s identity is closely linked to the working landscape. We must act boldly now to ensure that this character is maintained for future generations.

Many of the pieces needed for a Renaissance of our farm and forest economies are in place. More and more people in our regional market are looking for sustainably produced products. We have both the experience and the innovation ready to build the enterprises needed for a blossoming of the farm and forest industries that will keep the character of the land for future generations. We must bring these pieces together and support them with a significant investment.

We have already built the foundation for this important work. Recent efforts, such as Farm to Plate, have defined the needs. The Vermont Working Landscape Action Plan defines how we can pull all of the opportunities, policies, and new plans into one unified, efficient and effective effort.

The Key Elements of our Action Plan are:

Investment for Growth – Significant, sustained, and coordinated public investment into farm, food, and forest enterprise development will spur growth across this entire sector. As state leaders adjust our public investment priorities, $15 million/year for the next 10 years should be dedicated to this strategic effort.

Leadership from State Government – The Vermont Agriculture and Forest Products Development Corporation will oversee a newly chartered and public-private fund serving as a center point for this special strategic investment. The Vermont Agriculture and Forest Products Development Fund will unite efforts of VEDA, VAAFM, VSJF, VHCB, and others to leverage start-ups, growth enterprises and infrastructure development. In addition, a state planning office and Governor’s Development Cabinet can find and remove barriers to growth and improve communication for this priority across state government.

Incentives to Designated Areas – A new, voluntary Working Lands Designation would offer land owners and communities an incentive to keep valuable working lands in productive enterprise. Similar to the Vermont Neighborhood designation, it would deliver priority for public investment, special tax policies and tailored regulatory programs to key areas.

The full report with the Action Plan can be found here: http://vtrural.org/programs/policy-councils/working-landscape/vwlp-action-plan-elements. We are now working to develop legislation for the 2012 legislative session. Please stay tuned for updates and get ready to take action when we need your help to move our initiative forward!