This past Thursday was Farm to School Early Childhood Awareness Day at the Vermont State House - and our own Tom Brewton (Food Connects Food Hub Institutional Sales lead) testified in front of the House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry to support FY25 Farm to School and Early Childhood and Local Foods Incentive (LFI) funding.

In his testimony, Tom highlighted the significant impact of these programs on increasing sales of Vermont goods to public schools by offering financial incentives to source local products, overcoming previous budgetary constraints.

Tom noted a substantial year-over-year increase in sales of VT products to VT public schools, crediting the LFI with facilitating these gains. Additionally, Tom shared successes from the Local Food For Schools Program (LFS), a partnership aimed at providing local food to VT schools at no cost, resulting in increased local food purchases and fostering long-term relationships between schools and food hubs.

Other speakers advocating for funding included our friends at Vermont FEED (Food Education Every Day), Spaulding Educational Alternatives (part of Barre Unified Union School District), West Farm, and NOFA-VT.

We love seeing members of our team and our community partners publicly advocating for programs benefitting children's nutrition and local agriculture.

You can watch Tom’s testimony and others here: