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Friday, Mar 29, 2024

ACoRN meeting addresses future plans

Over 100 people gathered from across the county to learn about plans for the upcoming year at the Addison County Relocalization Network’s (ACoRN) annual meeting on April 14. Lincoln Peak Vineyard, located at 142 River Road in New Haven, Vt., hosted the event. Ben Hewitt, author of The Town that Food Saved, spoke about the local food system in Hardwick, Vt., the main focus of his book. Chris Granstrom, owner of Lincoln Peak Vineyard, and Jonathan Corcoran, president and co-founder of ACoRN, were both pleased with the evening.

“We had never done a party as the annual meeting,” said Corcoran, who noted that only 15 people showed up to the discussions in the past, and there was neither advertising nor a speaker invited before this year. “It was our first big splash at a really great venue that spoke to the local food movement. People felt very at home; it was a lot of fun.”

Granstrom felt the same.

“ACoRN is a great organization. We [Lincoln Peak Vineyard] really believe in the mission and we wanted to do whatever we could to help them out,” he said. “We are always looking for ways to get people who haven’t been here out to our place.”

Corcoran cited five innovations ACoRN has for the coming 2011-2012 year. The first, he said, is the “development of an online market platform to facilitate online market growth.”

Annie Harlow, marketing consultant for ACoRN, is spearheading the project. The main goal, said Corcoran, is to “complement the virtual side with the face to face relationships.” He believes his organization fosters connectivity, and he wants growers and buyers to become familiar with one another’s businesses and farms.

Corcoran’s desire to bring these groups together led ACoRN to hold its first matchmaker event, an informal conversation between growers and buyers, on March 30 at the College. All participants benefitted from the meeting, which was the first regional event of its kind in the state. In the past, only buyers from out of state were invited to meet Vermont growers, but ACoRN’s initiative tied buyers and growers from Addison County together.

“It was a tremendous success,” said Corcoran, who believes when a grower and/or buyer walk away from such an event with two to three new business leads, the day has proved successful. “To have a geographic area defined for this event was very effective. ”

Matthew Biette, director of dining services at the College and member of ACoRN’s advisory board on “local produce/production/sales/usage,” voluntarily hosted the discussion in the Proctor dining hall, and will do so again for the next meeting in October.

“The matchmaker event helps everyone in the food continuum,” said Biette in an email. “It opens up markets, helps others realize a market and connects growers with buyers — kind of a one-stop shop.”

Corcoran, too, is excited about the opportunities that arise for both buyers and growers. Many individuals could not attend the meeting in March, so there was much interest to have another matchmaker event in the fall.

“It’s really all about the conversations that happen. People who don’t know each other meet each other,” he said. “Those connections are what we [ACoRN] are all about. You would be surprised at how many people don’t know each other because they run in their own circles.”

Biette agreed and said, “This is an extremely efficient way to use people’s time as growers and buyers are in the same room. The competition is lessened as it is more of a level playing field or a ‘neutral territory.’”

At the vineyard, the organization also announced it would begin fundraising to hire a full-time coordinator. ACoRN organizes several events and programs, including Tour de Farms, the Addison County guide to local food and the Stone Soup conference, among others. Corcoran said the organization has reached a point in development where a dedicated person is needed to plan and execute these events.

“We are kind of the hub for the local food system,” he said. “We are the networker for the food system and so are approached by all kinds of people with events about what’s happening around the state, conferences, speakers and farm and food safety lectures. We need somebody to coordinate this fulltime.”

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ACoRN is also hoping to host a slow-money conference in the late fall. When the organization was founded in 2005, the directors realized that the third leg of relocalization was local money, in addition to energy and local food. In 2008, the ACoRN Energy Co-op, separate from ACoRN, adopted the energy work for the program. Corcoran said the organization was left with the “food work,” and it has been developing this aspect over the years.

“We put money on hold because it was much more complicated,” he said. “Food is basic, everyone eats. Money was too challenging to pick up at the time.”

Corcoran believes his group is now ready to tackle the issue and that this conference will examine how ACoRN might service money in Addison County. There are four key steps to achieve the organization’s goal: identify the types of funds to develop, identify sources of capital, create an infrastructure to evaluate projects and disperse the funds. Corcoran believes his plan is fairly complicated and he will ensure professionals are managing all the necessary steps.

“This is not a project ACoRN is looking to take on itself,” he said. “We are a catalyst. We are putting the flag up the pole to signal to the community to have the people interested in this come together.”

The conference is tentatively set for this November at the College.

“Their [ACoRN’s] plans all look really good,” said Granstrom. “We [Lincoln Peak Vineyard] are sort of limited in matching [with buyers] because we are producing an alcoholic beverage, so we are not working with the elementary school, but the general trend of what ACoRN is doing is wonderful.”

Corcoran also wants to plan a board retreat with the ACoRN directors to further develop the plans for the 2011-2012 year.

Another one of the big projects ACoRN has taken on is the ACoRN Wholesale Collaborative. Corcoran described it as “grant funding to explore feasibility of a wholesale brokerage for produce between Addison County produce growers and institutions.” The College figures prominently into the discussion, as it serves 7,000 of the 10,000 daily meals in Addison County. The final report, which was constructed by a 12-member advisory board of all the lead growers and buyers in the county, will be published at the end of May. Board members include individuals from Porter Hospital, Biette, Kathy Alexander, president of the Vermont School Nutrition Association, Bart Litvin, owner of Greg’s Meat Market in the town and general manager of the Middlebury Natural Foods Co-op Glenn Lower.

The matchmaker event resulted from this planning study, which analyzed supply and demand, and worked directly with data from the buyers and growers.

“This is not theoretical data, but based on surveys and interviews,” said Corcoran.

Hewitt’s lecture at the vineyard tied together many of the projects ACoRN has planned. Described as an entertaining speaker by both Corcoran and Granstrom, Hewitt continues to struggle with the notion of what a healthy food system with affordable prices should look like. He spoke much about Hardwick, Vt. and how the area was able to work collaboratively to build a strategy that created employment opportunities for the community and brought prosperity to the town. Hewitt also shared what he feels are the dilemmas surrounding local food and why the system is currently unable, in many places, to feed all people.

“The industrial food system is a flat system and should be contrasted with the local food system, which ideally is more of a circular system,” said Corcoran. “Inputs are sourced locally and waste streams go back into the food system, closing the loop.”

Annie Rowell ’12, a resident of Craftsbury, Vt., which is located in the Hardwick area, attended the meeting, too.

“Vermont’s small size can be such a strength for expanding food markets and local food accessibility, especially in the realm of idea sharing,” she said in an email. “There is so much to be learned from this statewide community of innovative thinkers. They have created a network of engaged problem-solvers who are equally committed to the success of each others’ projects.”

Corcoran echoed her thoughts and said it is time to stop waiting for our problems to “magically” be solved.

“Hewitt’s philosophy is that it is all about us, let’s get on with the work, and this very much ducktails with our philosophy at ACoRN,” he said. “What are we waiting for? It has always been up to us.”

On April 28, Ellen Kahler, executive director of the Vermont Sustainable Funds, will speak to the College on the 10-year strategic plan for food in Vermont. Her lecture, “Farm-to-Plate: What does it mean for Addison County growers and businesses,” will be held in Bicentennial Hall 216 from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Corcoran encourages all to attend, as he feels the talk is a “snapshot of what is happening in the state and locally [with food]” and believes it is especially important to engage the College in the conversation.


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