This story by Liberty Darr was first published in the Other Paper on July 18.

What does the future of agriculture look like in Vermont?

For a group of four leading farmers in South Burlington and Shelburne — Bread and Butter Farm, Killeen Crossroads Farm, Blank Page Café and Chrysalis Landworks — a future may only be possible through collaboration.

Through a new nonprofit called The Agrihood Collective, these farmers are exploring solutions to the growing challenges of farming and working together to create an innovative land ownership model in partnership with the Vermont Land Trust.

And now, the plans are coming to fruition, as the group raises money to purchase nearly 900 acres of land in South Burlington to help realize its agricultural dream of building a comprehensive shared farm infrastructure.

It’s no surprise that the nature of farming is changing. In addition to the labor-intensive daily work — most of which is sunup to sundown — farmers must also adapt to a changing climate and unpredictable weather, rising infrastructure costs, and a housing crisis that leaves many low-wage workers without a place to live.

“We understand that there are absolutely critical issues that we’re facing right now in our farming community,” said Brie Gelinas, co-director of the new nonprofit. “We’re talking about the very foundation of what Vermont is. Vermont isn’t Vermont without farms, and while there’s a lot of land and there’s a lot of abundance, the fact is that land is becoming increasingly unaffordable as a farmer. There’s also the challenge of affordable infrastructure, and that’s because of the rising cost of equipment. We also have a challenge of retaining the workforce, and that’s because of this housing crisis and, of course, inflation is only exacerbating an already very serious problem.”

The idea of ​​the collective is relatively simple, she said. When farms pool their resources, the chance of survival is inherently higher.

The nonprofit’s founders — whose farms are located within a mile of each other — collectively provide fresh fruits, vegetables, meat, poultry, eggs and value-added products to more than 13,500 customers. They feed more than 450 households with organic produce each week through community supported agriculture, or CSA, and offer food and land education programs and more than 150 events each year.

Great vision

The broader vision for the new farm began in 2017 when Bread and Butter Farm, led by owner Corie Peirce, saw a “for sale” sign on the old Auclair Farm, almost directly across the street from her farm, which straddles the border of the towns of South Burlington and Shelburne, just off Cheesefactory Road.

“When we saw the for sale sign on Auclair Farm, we immediately went to work to find a way to protect the site as an open landscape and working farm in our community. We reached out to the City of South Burlington and received an overwhelmingly positive response to pursue a conservation path for this land,” the farmers wrote in 2018.

The city has advanced nearly $605,000 in public space money to help preserve portions of the land owned by the Vermont Land Trust, which currently owns the land.

“We partnered with them, we preserved the land, we brought the cost of the land down, and now we have to finalize that,” said Gelinas, who joined the nonprofit team last year. “The final step is to purchase those 360 ​​acres from them.”

Abby White, vice president of engagement at the Vermont Land Trust, said her team worked with the collective and even helped raise funds for Agrihood to eventually purchase the 360 ​​acres of land.

“If we’re going to be successful in protecting land, especially farmland, we have to make sure that the farmers who are working that land are also successful,” she said. “What’s really exciting about The Agrihood Collective is that it’s an innovative way for farmers to come together and figure out how to be economically viable on the land.”

In a major success, the collective recently received a donation of just under $1 million from the nonprofit Dirt Capitals Partners to purchase a 13-acre plot of land just north of the estate.

The transaction should be signed, sealed and delivered by the end of the month, Gelinas said.

That’s where the group envisions a commercial kitchen, freezer refrigeration, shared farm equipment, and a potential event space. More importantly, it’s where the collective plans to build affordable housing for its employees.

Of the $750,000 needed to purchase the separate 360-acre site, the collective has already raised nearly $435,000. But receiving the $1 million donation for the 13 acres sent a much-needed message of support to the team.

“Receiving that donation was a huge step in the right direction and helped us to really say, ‘Okay, this is something that can work, this is something that people believe in,'” Gelinas said. “It’s not just us in the inner circle who are hopeful and wishing that this exists.”

South Burlington City Council members attended an event at Bread and Butter Farms last month that focused on the Agrihood Collective. They overwhelmingly supported the project during a council meeting in July.

“I’m very proud of the role the city has played in helping to preserve those 400 acres,” said City Councilman Andrew Chalnick. “There’s a lot of excitement about conservation, about what they’re doing on the land, and regenerative agriculture, and how important that local food production is to South Burlington, Chittenden County and the state of Vermont.”

Gelinas expects that as the nonprofit enters a new phase of more public fundraising efforts, events like last month’s will pop up at all the farms in the coming months. The “community conversations,” as they call them, are meant to build support from community members while also seeking continued donations to purchase the land this year.

“This is such a critical time for agriculture in Vermont, which is such an agricultural state,” she said. “It’s really the core of what holds the community together. It’s such a big part of Vermont’s history, and also the economy. So I think people care deeply about agriculture. They really care about the land, and they also see that there are things that need to evolve so that we can support farmers in the right way.”