Next month’s Harvest of the Month is dairy. Learning about dairy in Vermont provides an opportunity not only to sample delicious offerings like Vermont cheese, yogurt, and ice cream, to talk about beautiful cows and our pastoral Vermont landscape, but also to engage in rich discussions with students about food justice, economic justice, human rights, and Vermont’s dairy farming industry.

Vermont is fortunate to have strong advocates for our many migrant workers in the dairy industry. Migrant Justice, Vermont’s worker-led farmworker rights organization, leads this effort. After many years of laying the groundwork, in 2017, Ben & Jerry’s became the first business to join Milk with Dignity, a worker-driven model for social responsibility in the dairy industry. Currently, Migrant Justice is working hard to encourage Hannafords to be the next large New England-based business to join Milk With Dignity, and local activists participated in a day of action at the Hannafords on Putney Road in Brattleboro earlier this month.

If you would like more information, lesson plans, and resources for working with students to learn about the complex and important issues surrounding dairy farming in our region, here are a few resources to get you started.