The SNAP-Ed program — which focuses on nutrition education and overall wellness for people on food stamps — will end Sept. 30, cutting off hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual grants that supported programming across all Vermont counties, including recipe demonstrations, meal kits and active-living guides.

The program’s elimination was part of President Donald Trump’s sweeping budget adjustments that passed on July 4 in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. As the state’s food assistance network finds its way through a new landscape of shortfalls, officials worry more residents will fall through the cracks.

SNAP-Ed is an extension of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which has experienced a number of cuts across the board. Instead of providing funds for individuals to purchase food, SNAP-Ed’s much smaller grants focus on community education and initiatives to improve eligible households’ engagement with 3SquaresVT — Vermont’s name for the larger body of resources under SNAP. 

“Just providing food for people is not the whole answer to food security,” said Suzanne Kelly, who was the SNAP-Ed coordinator at the Vermont Department of Health for a decade until last month. Her former position, and another related role, will soon be discontinued.

“SNAP-Ed is sort of that extra bit of information to really make sure that people can access the food, can use the food, and can enjoy it over time,” Kelly said.

The program is deeply focused on health outcomes, she said, including prevention of chronic conditions and disease, and promoting wellness through nutrition and exercise.

Kelly is concerned about the immediate impact on Vermonters. 

“These are decisions that trickle down to the most vulnerable people in our communities,” she said.

Kelly referenced a SNAP-Ed needs assessment earlier this year that identified certain populations in the state with a disproportionately high need for food assistance, including rural Vermonters and people with disabilities. Outreach programs that meet people where they are geographically will be an especially big loss, Kelly said.

The end of SNAP-Ed has already had tangible effects in recent weeks, causing the imminent shutdown of a food pantry in Holland and contributing to the Vermont Foodbank’s recent staff cuts. Of the seven employees the food bank let go, three were specifically operating SNAP-Ed programs, according to Chris Meehan, the company’s chief impact officer.

Vermont residents received over $147 million in SNAP aid last year. The projected allocation for Vermont’s SNAP-Ed budget in 2026, which the Department of Health received May 30, was less than half a million. Five weeks later, Kelly learned that the program was canceled.

‘We’ll have to be really creative’

Meehan said the SNAP-Ed cuts will effectively end the Vermont Foodbank’s VTFresh program, which has reached every county in the state with initiatives to increase access and understanding around nutrition. The program provided a space for people to exchange knowledge about cooking, recipes and budgeting, and was often particularly useful for families, she said.

While the food bank employees who ran the initiative are no longer with the organization, the program’s existing resources will remain on the Vermont Foodbank website. VTFresh’s continuing presence, Meehan said, will be “more passive than active.”

Meehan is grateful for the infrastructure that VTFresh has left behind — it has been “transformational” for the food assistance network in the state, she said. 

Denise Walton, a Concord resident who is a lead volunteer at Sid’s Pantry in town, said VTFresh recipe materials had been invaluable in allowing her community to make better use of fresh foods. It’s common, she said, for people to ask questions about how to prepare food as they’re taking it.

“I think people want to cook,” said Walton, who herself is on food stamps. “They may not have learned, or been taught, or had the time.”

Walton said she would keep trying to provide resources to help people fully use the food they’re receiving — but that it will be more challenging going forward. 

“We’ll have to be really creative,” Walton said.

Vermont Foodbank’s situation is par for the course statewide at smaller food assistance providers.

The Vermont Garden Network will lose its dedicated nutrition educator, according to executive director T Hanson, one of only five staff at the organization. Come Alive Outside, a nonprofit which used SNAP-Ed funds to reach thousands of school-age kids in Rutland County with tips on how to stay active, has told its staff it may not have sufficient funds to pay everyone in six months, according to Executive Director Arwen Turner. 

Meanwhile, in Burlington, the People’s Farmstand will continue as a purely volunteer effort, according to founding Director Nour El-Naboulsi. There hadn’t been salaried roles, he clarified, but they had previously been able to offer staff — primarily farmers — a stipend for their time. The organization offers free fresh produce (both self-grown and donated) at weekly open events but has also been conducting educational outreach through its Veggie of the Month program. 

El-Naboulsi said the initiative features a combination of staple Vermont crops and “culturally relevant produce — things from Nepal, Somalia, Iraq (and) other places in the Middle East and East Africa.” The organization serves a relatively large proportion of immigrant and refugee populations, he said, and the program is designed to combine familiar food with information about how to prepare local produce.

With the loss of SNAP-Ed funding to the People’s Farmstand and sister organization Village Hydroponics, El-Naboulsi said he has had to reprioritize.

“We kind of lose the capacity to do supplementary education, recipe preparation, outreach,” he said.

‘A great return on investment’

Keith Robinson, a pediatric pulmonologist at UVM Children’s Hospital, emphasized a connection between SNAP-Ed and health outcomes for families. He’s the hospital’s vice chair for Quality Improvement and Population Health and built the provider’s screening platform for food insecurity.

“We are trying to go deeper and further upstream to make sure that we’re solving the root causes of food insecurity in Vermont,” Robinson said.

For him, nutrition education has been a big part of that work — that’s why the end of SNAP-Ed is such a blow, despite the small scale of previous funding.

“It’s gonna make communities potentially less healthy, and it’s also gonna create gaps in the systems that we need to have around families,” he said. “While the dollar value may not be great, the impact of those dollars is extraordinary.”

Robinson referenced a state report on SNAP-Ed last year, calling survey data that indicated diet and exercise changes for participants “a big deal.” Roughly a third of people who received direct nutrition education reported they ate more fruits and vegetables each day, and 20% said they exercised more, according to the report.

“That’s a great return on investment,” Robinson said.

Modifications and cuts to the SNAP program at large have been made in the name of eliminating “waste, fraud, and abuse” — a narrative that Kelly disputed. 

“The strategies that are used (in SNAP-Ed) have shown outcomes — real outcomes,” she said.

A page addressing cost concerns on the USDA website references studies showing that for every dollar spent on SNAP-Ed and similar programs, 10 times that can be saved in future health care costs. The total nationwide cost of the program would have been $550 million in the 2026 fiscal year.

“It’s probably not the best idea to be cutting programs that are going to eventually help reduce costs way further down the line,” Kelly said.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture did not respond to requests for comment.

A document briefly detailing SNAP overhaul from the U.S. House Committee on Agriculture called SNAP-Ed a program that has wrought “no meaningful change” for its target population. The committee cited a 2019 report from the Government Accountability Office that appears to primarily conclude that the effectiveness of the program is difficult to properly evaluate due to uneven standards of reporting from state agencies and a lack of coordination at the federal level. 

“When federal benefits get cut like this, we need to think about how to bolster connections in our community, and think differently about how to fill those gaps,” Robinson said. 

Jeanne Montross, executive director of Helping Overcome Poverty’s Effects, or HOPE, in Middlebury, said her organization has been seeing the effects of staff and program cuts elsewhere in the state’s assistance networks. Montross’ nonprofit is primarily funded by private contributions.

“It always ends up flowing down to HOPE,” she said of increased need in her local community.

Anore Horton, executive director at Hunger Free Vermont, said the state’s food assistance network “cannot in any way mitigate the loss of all of these different sources of funding.”

Any solution to a problem of this scale must be “collective,” Horton said, but must also involve significant new assistance from the state government. But in a situation this urgent, Horton said it wouldn’t necessarily make sense for the state to replace nutrition education funding.

Walton said Sid’s Pantry has also been increasingly relying on community support and donations.

“We’re very fortunate to have a little buffering like that,” she said, “especially for an aging community that needs healthy food and needs access to things out in the rural areas.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Loss of SNAP-Ed program leaves gaps in Vermont’s food assistance network.

Vermont Foodbank, the state’s largest food assistance provider, cut nearly 10% of its workforce two weeks ago.

The organization let seven employees go and discontinued two vacant positions. CEO John Sayles said Tuesday that the cuts were necessary for the company to avoid financial hardship down the line, as food banks become more stretched nationwide.

The Covid-19 pandemic more than doubled the food bank’s level of financial resourcing for a time, Sayles said, through increases in federal, state and philanthropic support. The organization grew from 60 to 88 employees, reaching its peak in 2023.

“We had to do what was in front of us,” Sayles said of the organization’s growth at the time.

Now, the picture is different — many COVID-era public programs have ended.

In addition, Vermont Foodbank said it was losing roughly 20% of its USDA food stock earlier this year due to federal budget cuts.

This restructuring also comes as cuts to the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program threaten to leave thousands of enrolled Vermonters without coverage. About 65,000 people currently receive aid from SNAP across the state.

The timeline of these changes is uncertain, and Sayles said he was concerned that higher burdens on food shelves will collide with the need to downsize. “It really is hard to predict when and how things are going to roll out,” Sayles said.

The layoffs are intended to put the organization in a more sustainable position so “we can do the best we can to meet the need,” he said.

It’s unclear how much the food bank will immediately save through restructuring. Sayles estimated the personnel costs for the food bank will be roughly the same next year, even with fewer employees. 

Sayles said some pay raises were necessary to cover cost-of-labor adjustments, rising health care premiums and the need to retain talent.

The organization said it will try to protect against gaps in services, but the layoffs may put some parts of the operation under stress. 

“Everyone was doing work that was having an impact,” Sayles said.

He added that Vermont Foodbank had been in touch with a number of local partners to discuss how they might be able to pick up the slack. 

“Whether every single thing that the food bank did is going to continue to happen, I can’t say,” Sayles said.

Disclosure: VTDigger has partnered with the Vermont Foodbank during member drives.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont Foodbank lays off nearly 10% of staff, braces for uncertainty.

This commentary has multiple signers. They are listed below the text.

All people deserve access to the basic human needs of food and shelter. We know that the state of Vermont — our government and our people — can make the choice to shelter and feed everyone in Vermont. For the past four years, the state has supported the GA emergency housing program in order to provide shelter to our most vulnerable neighbors. During the Covid-19 pandemic emergency, state agencies contracted with food service companies to provide meals for people housed in hotels, and then established Vermont Everyone Eats, through which restaurant workers and owners proved themselves to be committed, essential and highly effective community food security partners. 

The current unhousing crisis is the result of deliberate choices to change Vermont’s policy of providing safe, non-congregate housing to vulnerable people experiencing homelessness. These harmful policy choices can and must be reversed. Government can make policy choices that ensure everyone has housing and food. Taking away the fundamental human rights to shelter and food is immoral and is creating a state emergency that was completely preventable. 

When people are unsheltered, they have no way to safely store food or cook for themselves, leaving food access severely limited. By unhousing people, the state is also creating a new hunger crisis and threatening people’s health and lives. Municipalities and service providers across the state are heroically scrambling, yet again, to meet these needs, but many of these entities were already stretched thin before this latest crisis. 

We call upon Gov. Scott to declare a state of emergency and immediately reinstate safe, accessible, non-congregate housing for all vulnerable people who have been evicted from hotel housing as a result of the changes made to the GA emergency housing program in Act 113, consistent with the provider letter to Gov. Scott that was released on Sept. 25. 

State government has stripped people of safe shelter and access to food, and must immediately reverse course and provide adequate resources to meet people’s essential needs. Gov. Scott and all state agencies must:

• Provide immediate state funding to community action agencies and other community-based congregate and prepared meal programs so that they can increase their production and distribution of prepared meals to unhoused and marginally housed people.
• Provide immediate state funding through the Vermont Everyone Eats framework to willing restaurants in communities bearing the brunt of the current state-government-created unhousing crisis, so they can serve as another source of prepared and ready-to-eat meals to keep everyone fed wherever they are.
• Implement the state option for the SNAP restaurant meals program in Vermont so that it can be in place to support unhoused people and others in need of access to prepared meals through restaurants in future times of crisis, including the everyday crises that keep people from being able to access the food they need.
• Provide immediate state funding to Vermont Foodbank to support food shelves and meal sites who are being asked to meet the surge in demand in their local communities.

As we have seen in recent years, the state can choose to meet the basic needs of all of us living in Vermont. The lack of action by the administration is a failure to care for our most vulnerable neighbors. 

We urge Gov. Scott to immediately address this crisis and ensure access to safe, stable shelter and dignified access to food.

List of signers

Anore Horton, executive director, Hunger Free Vermont

Paul Dragon, executive director, Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity

Frank Knaack, executive director, Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont

Sue Minter, executive director, Capstone Community Action

Grace Oedel, executive director, Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont

John Sayles, CEO, Vermont Foodbank

Joshua Davis, executive director, Southeastern Vermont Community Alliance

Read the story on VTDigger here: Nonprofit leaders: Rehouse and feed vulnerable people being exited from emergency housing program.

Vermont allocated more than $50 million in federal Covid-19 stimulus money without properly conducting due diligence on the businesses and nonprofits who received that funding, the state auditor said in a new report.

The 83-page report, dated Sept. 27, raised concerns about two federally funded grants administered by Vermont’s Department of Economic Development. The state’s process for selecting projects to fund was poorly documented and opaque, the auditor found, and may have awarded money to entities that did not need it — or were ineligible. 

“The Legislature intended that the program be created and provide assistance to businesses who met all the eligibility requirements. That’s fine,” state auditor Doug Hoffer said in an interview. “Just do it — but do it with some accountability, transparency and so forth. And that’s not what we found.”

The Vermont Department of Economic Development disputed much of the report, saying that the complexity of the projects funded by the programs made it difficult to apply a single assessment formula across the board.

Thanks to the grant money, “150 capital projects were done throughout the state of Vermont, all 14 counties,” said Joan Goldstein, the commissioner of the Department of Economic Development. “More than half were not-for-profit entities — you know, child care, housing, mental health facilities, theaters, agricultural facilities, mixed use facilities. There’s an awful lot of work that went into it, and we’re proud of the work that we did.”

The report focuses on two Department of Economic Development state grant programs: the Capital Investment Program and the Community Recovery and Revitalization Program. Both initiatives were funded by a total of nearly $50.6 million in pandemic aid from the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act.

The goal of the programs was to speed Vermont’s recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic and to spur economic development across the state, especially in areas with declining tax bases. For-profit and nonprofit enterprises were eligible to apply for funding for specific projects.

All of that money has been allocated, according to Goldstein, but not all has been spent. The list of selected projects includes construction, renovation and building upgrades for entities across the state: farms, housing developers, arts nonprofits, private schools and more. 

But the auditor’s report said that state officials conducted minimal vetting to determine whether applicants actually needed the money — or how much they needed. Instead, the Department of Economic Development relied on the applicants themselves for that information.

Multiple grant recipients appeared to have plenty of money already, the report said. One unnamed nonprofit recipient had cash and investments worth 300 times the cost of the project, while another had money on hand that was 101 times the grant amount and 20 times the total cost of the project, according to the report.

The auditor also found that the economic development department had few records showing how it actually decided which applicants would receive money, and in what amounts. Three grant recipients told state officials that their projects would have been completed even without the awards, Hoffer said.

“The only thing we’re questioning is, are you using taxpayer money effectively and efficiently?” Hoffer said. “And if you’re giving money to entities that would have done what they’re promising to do anyway, without your money — without our money — then you have not met your obligation.”

The auditor’s report made note of two other concerns about the grant process. When funding child care or affordable housing programs, the state did not require those programs to remain affordable beyond the expiration of the grants — mandates that could have helped future Vermonters access those scarce resources.

And the auditor questioned whether one specific grant recipient — the Northeast Kingdom Development Corporation, which received $1 million to build the soon-to-be-completed Yellow Barn in Hardwick — was in fact legally eligible for the money.

According to the report, a consultant for the state, Guidehouse, told officials the project did not clearly fit into an eligible industry, such as agriculture. Federal grant requirements say that “large capital projects intended for general economic development or to aid impacted industries” are ineligible, Guidehouse said.

In an interview and a Sept. 18 letter responding to the report, Goldstein, of the Department of Economic Development, denied breaking any rules.

She said the question about affordable housing and child care was valid and that the department would seek to implement such restrictions past the expiration of the grant. However, she denied that the department’s vetting process was only superficial. 

State officials looked at applicants’ fiscal information, Goldstein said in an interview, but made their determinations based on their financial assessment of the specific project in question — not the organization as a whole.

“The (Vermont) Foodbank was expanding, and we helped the food bank,” she said. “Now, they may have gotten significant contributions from elsewhere, but we did not take that into consideration. We’re talking about a specific expansion project.”

She added: “This is not as if we’re giving money to people who don’t need it.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Auditor raises alarm about Covid-era economic development programs.

BRATTLEBORO — Carolyn Pieciak can tell you how she made peanut butter, jelly and Fluff sandwiches for her son, state Treasurer Mike Pieciak, long before he sunk his teeth into Vermont’s financial ledgers.

But the 78-year-old Brattleboro resident would rather chew over the smorgasbord of meals she has coordinated as founding leader of one of this region’s largest soup kitchens, St. Brigid’s.

“They say to cook chicken to 165 degrees,” she began a recent interview, “although dark meat isn’t fully done at that, so we cook it to 175 to 185 degrees — until it’s falling off the bone.”

After four decades serving up such facts, Pieciak is retiring as the lunch spot’s director. She spread the news one day this month as she welcomed dozens of people into its Walnut Street dining room.

“Probably the biggest misunderstanding is they’re all homeless,” she said. “Instead, 76% are low-income elderly who worked their whole lives, are living on Social Security and are struggling.”

Talk to Pieciak’s peers statewide and they report a similar shift in clientele.

Times have changed since Pieciak was a Catholic schoolgirl in West Springfield, Massachusetts, during the post-World War II boom.

“I can clearly remember feeling,” she said, “that God wanted me to work with the poor.”

Moving to Brattleboro in 1970, Pieciak was head of the local St. Michael’s Catholic Church peace and justice committee when the pastor noted a growing number of visitors requesting food.

“A lot of people didn’t see the need,” she recalled.

That’s because those seeking help were either transients catching rides along the nearby train tracks or former mental health patients holed up in apartments after their release from the Brattleboro Retreat.

Pieciak and fellow volunteers soon were raising money, ordering and obtaining food, and creating cooking and serving space at the church’s former convent.

Then came the hard part.

“We had to name the kitchen — and had our biggest fight,” Pieciak said. “Someone wanted St. Francis House of Bread. Someone else wanted Martha’s Kitchen, because Martha got a bad rap.” 

Martha, according to the Bible, worriedly made a meal for Jesus, only to be told to instead stop and marinate in his teachings — but that’s another story. Amid the debate, someone thought of St. Brigid, the matron saint of Ireland who is celebrated for her compassion and charity.

“Everybody loved it,” Pieciak said.

The newly named soup kitchen opened on St. Patrick’s Day 1982. It soon was serving an average of two dozen people, including the local coal shoveler who always arrived with ashen hands.

“We thought this was a temporary fix — we never thought it would last,” Pieciak said. “Things were not good then, but they’re horrible today.”

St. Brigid’s now feeds more than 200 people each lunch hour on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, with about 100 volunteers preparing an annual total of 45,000 meals.

“It’s like catering a big wedding four days a week,” Pieciak said.

The local influx of older patrons mirrors the situation statewide. According to “The State of Senior Hunger in America” report by the national hunger relief organization Feeding America, an estimated 8% of Vermont elders are considered “food insecure.”

“We know that inflation and the increase in food prices have hit people on fixed incomes hard,” said John Sayles, CEO of the Vermont Foodbank. “It’s not just older Vermonters, but also working families.”

Pieciak credits the foodbank for help with provisions and funds to purchase kitchen equipment. That said, she believes St. Brigid’s benefits most from something else.

“I couldn’t have remained if I didn’t have strong faith that God was right here doing most of the work,” Pieciak said. “Sometimes we shouldn’t have succeeded — we did something wrong, we agonized about what was going to happen — and it would just get solved.”

Take the building’s recent $250,000 renovation. Or when volunteers, enacting Covid-19 safety protocols, kept the kitchen open during the pandemic for takeout meals. 

Pieciak remembers the calls from her three grown children urging her to close.

“This went on for weeks and weeks,” she recalled, “and so one time I yelled at Michael and said, ‘St. Brigid has been watching over us for years and she certainly isn’t going to stop now.’ That’s why I think we were absolutely blessed. I don’t think we could have lasted as long or as well without that.”

Today, her son only had good words for his mother when he spoke at a recent local panel on poverty.

“Thank you for all the work you’ve done for the Brattleboro community,” the treasurer said as the audience offered her a round of applause.

Pieciak will continue to volunteer periodically when she’s not devoting time to her husband, children, grandchildren and “one needy German Shepherd.” For their part, the three people required to take over her position keep asking for a list of everything it entails.

“You just have to have kindness and empathy for the people that show up,” she replies. “If there’s anything we need now, it’s those two things.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: This soup kitchen volunteer is feeding more people than ever. Those being served aren’t who you’d think..

By a wide margin, the Vermont House voted on Thursday morning to override Gov. Phil Scott’s veto of H.158, better known as the “bottle bill.” The lawmakers’ rebuke was surely the most interesting thing that happened today in the House chamber… right? 

Oh, yes — perhaps not so coincidentally, Thursday was also the day of the gov’s annual State of the State address. 

Speaking in a packed chamber just after 2 p.m., Scott told legislators, with more than a hint of passive aggression, that his 2025 fiscal year budget would be “sobering” as pandemic-era federal funding dries up and “last year’s spending decisions” come to bear.

Really, though, the governor’s speech had nothing to do with the timing of the veto override vote, House Speaker Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington, told reporters. “It was on notice yesterday — which was our first day of the session — and then up for action today,” the speaker said.

H.158 would overhaul the state’s system for recycling beverage containers by expanding the state’s existing bottle deposit law to include more types of beverage containers — including water bottles — that were not part of the original legislation, which turned 51 last year.

Proponents argue the system was overdue for an update, and the expansion would help keep more bottles out of landfills. Lawmakers’ approval of the updated bill during a special session last June was followed soon after by Scott’s veto.

The Vermont Senate is on a slower roll. Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden Central, told colleagues Thursday that he wanted to give them time to “get refamiliarized” with the H.158’s details as well as to “have our constituents weigh in.” (Lobbyists might also have something to say.) He said he expects that chamber to take up the veto override on Jan. 22. 

In a message explaining his veto of the bottle bill last year, Scott wrote that he opposed the updated bill because it would impose additional costs on manufacturers and consumers.

It’s a sentiment that, surely, would have fit right in with his address Thursday afternoon. 

— Shaun Robinson

In the know

In that address Thursday afternoon, Scott reinforced to a full House chamber some of his perennial concerns: state demographics, public safety, affordability and housing.

And at least partially at fault for these grim trends, he scolded, is a Legislature emboldened by its veto-proof Democratic supermajority.

“Now, I’m a realist, and I know you have a supermajority. I know all too well,” Scott said. “You’ve proven the final budget, and the growing burden of taxes, fees and other policy-driven costs, is in your hands. So all I can do is make my case.”

Read more here.

— Sarah Mearhoff

A decision by an insurance carrier for the state to not provide coverage for legal claims made by defrauded foreign investors in EB-5 projects in the Northeast Kingdom will leave taxpayers footing the bill for nearly all of the $16.5 million settlement deal reached this summer.

Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark told members of the House Appropriations Committee during a hearing Wednesday about AIG Property Casualty’s decision to deny coverage, though she didn’t go into great detail about the company’s reasoning.

According to documents provided to VTDigger in response to public records requests to the Scott administration and the Vermont Attorney General’s Office, state officials have known about the insurer’s decision for years.

Read more here. 

— Alan Keays

Faculty, staff and alumni of Vermont State University gathered Thursday morning in the Statehouse to declare a crisis in confidence in the leadership of the schools formerly known as Castleton University, Community College of Vermont, Johnson State College, Lyndon State College and Vermont Technical College. 

The press event, organized by union leaders, called for increasing staff power in the college system’s decision-making processes, reducing upper level management, and ensuring VTSU is an affordable option for all Vermonters.

Proposed legislation dovetails with some of the group’s demands. Rep. Robin Chesnut-Tangerman, D-Middletown Springs, and Sen. Brian Collamore, R-Rutland, both said they plan to introduce a similar bill that will propose cutting the VTSU’s chancellor position and adding faculty and staff to the board of trustees by replacing legislative seats. The bills would also trim or fully eliminate the current requirement that VTSU reduce its operating deficit by $5 million per year, the legislators said. 

— Ethan Weinstein

On Thursday, representatives from the Vermont Foodbank asked lawmakers to support their request for a dedicated annual earmark of $5 million to begin in the next fiscal year. The group received $3 million in one-time funding in the current budget. 

The organization, which provides food to over 225 food shelves, meal sites and other distribution centers across Vermont, is asking for an additional $2 million through the budget adjustment process for this year. That would bring total state funding for the current fiscal year up to $5 million.

The request for dedicated funding is not new but comes after a year that saw a staggering increase in demand at food shelves across the state, as VTDigger reported last week.

The Vermont Foodbank distributed approximately 600,000 pounds of food a month in the years prior to the Covd-19 pandemic. Since 2020, however, that number has risen to well over a million pounds a month, peaking at 1.42 million pounds distributed in August following the July floods.

Representatives from the Vermont Foodbank told the House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency and Forestry that, even as a best case scenario, it might take over a decade for that number to fall back to pre-pandemic levels.

— Habib Sabet

Fuller disclosure

The Vermont Senate on Thursday voted to mandate that its own members publicly disclose new information about their personal finances and potential conflicts of interest. 

The voice vote, which appeared to be unanimous, came nearly nine months after VTDigger documented deficiencies in the transparency rules governing Vermont lawmakers in an award-winning series called “Full Disclosure.”

Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden Central, who introduced the rules change, said it had been inspired by VTDigger’s reporting.

“I would say it’s the press doing its work and us doing our work,” he said in an interview Thursday afternoon. 

Read more here.

— Paul Heintz

What we’re reading

The woman who made Vermont’s medical aid in dying law more accessible just ended her life (Vermont Public)

Smugglers’ Notch Resort hit with fines for safety violations after 3-year-old’s drowning in water tank (Community News Service)

Vermont Conversation: Harvard student activist Eva Frazier refuses to be silent (VTDigger)

Read the story on VTDigger here: Final Reading: House overrides Scott’s veto of ‘bottle bill’.

Audrey Bridge has been working at food shelves in Vermont for over 15 years and has never seen anything like what she’s experienced this month at the Rutland Community Cupboard.

“It’s been so overwhelming,” Bridge said in an interview Thursday. “We’re just trying to keep enough food on the shelf for the clients. We’re seeing them lining up outside two hours before we open sometimes — even in the rain.”

Bridge, the Rutland organization’s executive director, said the food shelf has seen a “mind-boggling” influx of demand in the past year, culminating in its busiest month in recent memory. According to Bridge, the Rutland Community Cupboard served nearly three times as many people this December as it did last December.

“Right now we’re really just dancing around as fast as we can to try to keep up with the demand,” said Bridge.

Rutland isn’t unique. All across the state, food shelves are reporting a staggering increase in demand in the past year. Staff attribute the uptick to the loss of pandemic-era benefits coupled with a series of crises that have affected communities around the state. 

Residents were already struggling in the face of inflation, and many have been impacted by a mounting substance abuse crisis. Then, catastrophic flooding hit the state, first in in July, again in August, and then again earlier this month. 

Andrew Courtney, director of Foodworks, a Brattleboro-based food shelf, said the number of people seeking food assistance “has definitely increased drastically this year.”

According to data shared by the organization, it has served nearly 2,000 new people — individuals with no prior record of having visited the food shelf — since December 2022. 

Northeast Kingdom providers have experienced a similar upswell in demand. The Hardwick Area Food Pantry, which has locations in Hardwick, Craftsbury and Albany, has seen a nearly 30% increase in customers since March, according to data provided by the organization. 

And in Montpelier, the food shelf run by the nonprofit Just Basics, which was displaced and changed locations after the July floods, has served twice as many people this December as it did in December of 2021.

Representatives from these organizations said that the increase in demand could mainly be traced back to this past spring, when extra pandemic-era food benefits ended for thousands of Vermonters.

Beginning in March 2020, those benefits provided over 40,000 Vermont families with roughly $6 million a month in total additional funding through 3SquaresVT, the Vermont food benefits program funded through the U.S. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), according to data provided by the Vermont Foodbank. 

“The pandemic created a higher need, and that need was met with an influx in federal food and resources from philanthropy to purchase food for distribution,” Carrie Stahler, the Vermont Foodbank’s manager of government and public affairs, said in an email to VTDigger. “But it takes a long time for people to financially recover from a disaster.”

In the years prior to the pandemic, the Vermont Foodbank, a nonprofit that distributes food to food shelves and meal sites across the state, distributed about 600,000 pounds of food per month on average, an amount that rose to just over 1 million pounds at the end of 2021 during the pandemic, according to data provided by the organization. 

That number reached a peak of 1.42 million pounds in August following the July floods. In October, the most recent month for which there is available data, the Foodbank distributed 1.34 million pounds of food, still a substantial increase from pre-pandemic and pandemic-era norms.

For Andrew Courtney of Foodworks in Brattleboro, increased expenses due to inflation without sufficient pay remain the biggest obstacle facing Vermonters.

“Since inflation really peaked, there are so many people in our community that are living paycheck to paycheck and any unexpected expenses that pop up really threaten food security for a whole lot of people,” said Courtney.

“It’s expensive to be alive right now,” said Courtney. “I think that’s the main story.”

Disclosure: VTDigger is currently running a member drive with the Vermont Foodbank as a partner. Staff coordinating the drive had no involvement in the assigning, production or editing of this story. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: ‘Expensive to be alive’: Food shelves across Vermont are getting swamped.

A recent U.S. Department of Agriculture report on food insecurity and hunger reinforces what so many people in Vermont already know and are experiencing firsthand — affording food for ourselves and our families is becoming much harder. 

The national report outlines a 40% increase in food insecurity across the U.S. from 2021 to 2022, further reinforcing recent Census data showing the largest-ever one-year increase in poverty. 

This drastic and inhumane increase in hunger and poverty makes the following clear: When the federal government chooses inaction by rolling back essential programs, it has devastating impacts on too many of our neighbors. 

Advocates and service providers across the state have been talking with community members and are continuously hearing about the struggle to keep food on the table each and every day, week, or month. 

Increasing food prices and the rolling back of essential anti-poverty programs, like the Child Tax Credit and increased 3SquaresVT benefit amounts, disproportionately impact those who are not adequately supported by systems built to improve access to basic needs like stable housing, enough nourishing food, and economic security. 

The USDA report highlights that in 2022, food insecurity for households that were American Indian or Alaska Native, Black, Hispanic, or multiracial was more than double the rate for white households. 

In a statement released by the USDA, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack stated, “These findings are unacceptable, yet the report is the latest piece of evidence that as the pandemic began to wane in 2022, another public health concern — food insecurity — increased. The experience of the pandemic showed us that when the government invests in meaningful support for families, we can make a positive impact on food security, even during challenging economic times.” 

We could not agree more. We are heartened to know that national leaders like Vilsack are sounding the alarm and pushing for change. 

In Vermont, when the state or federal government invests in meaningful support, there is a positive impact on food security. And when neighbors are struggling, we must act. 

Recent investments by our state — including a new child care law, Act 76, the Vermont Child Tax credit, and Universal School Meals — will have a positive impact. We all must continue this longer-term policy and systems work in order to solve hunger. 

We must also make sure everyone in Vermont has access to nourishing food they need and want today. The Vermont Foodbank, Hunger Free Vermont and our partners across the state are working to meet those needs each day, and we look forward to working with the administration and the Legislature to address longer-term systemic challenges.

Join the Vermont Foodbank, Hunger Free Vermont and our partners, community members and legislators for an End Hunger Briefing on Nov. 29 for an update on the status of hunger in Vermont.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Sayles & Horton: For many Vermonters, it’s much harder to afford food.

With many community (and home) kitchens damaged by floodwaters, Vermont has rebooted a recently sunsetted pandemic-era food distribution program in the wake of July’s catastrophic storms.

Vermont Everyone Eats, a program that paid restaurants $10 per ready-made meal for free distribution through local charities and food pantries, shut down this spring after nearly three years in operation when federal Covid aid dried up. But a new iteration of the program — called Vermont Emergency Eats — is now back in operation.

Nate Formalarie, the director of communications and strategic initiatives at the Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development, said that, before the floods came, state officials had already been in discussions about how to reactivate the popular program in case of a crisis. Officials have since set aside $900,000 in state funds, he said — enough to pay for about 3,000 meals a day for a month.

“It being an emergency, it was just said: ‘Yes, let’s do this.’ I think as the dust settles, we’ll probably look to (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) to see if they would kick in some reimbursement on that,” he said. “But we wanted to get it going as quickly as possible.”

Restaurants that are paid to prepare the meals must be located in one of the nine counties included in the federal government’s major disaster declaration — that’s Caledonia, Chittenden, Lamoille, Orange, Orleans, Rutland, Washington, Windham and Windsor counties. People don’t necessarily need to live in those counties to receive the meals, but that’s where distribution hubs are located.

Amanda Witman, the program’s coordinator, said the first round of meals went out on Monday, and about two dozen restaurants are already participating. 

“​​It’s pretty exciting to be in a position of taking our long-term, pandemic-era model and adapting it on the fly to create an emergency program,” she said, adding that officials hope to create an enduring model that’ll be ready to be reactivated in the case of future crises.

The rebooted anti-hunger and economic development initiative comes amid widespread disruption of Vermont’s food system. Local farmers sustained major crop losses, downtown restaurants were devastated, and food pantries and churches that were serving vulnerable Vermonters in some cases themselves lost equipment — or entire kitchens.

The Montpelier Food Pantry, for example, which was operating out of the Trinity United Methodist Church basement in Montpelier, lost all of its equipment and inventory when the capital’s downtown core was inundated last month. And local churches that were cooking daily community meals, and serving a large population of people experiencing homelessness, also had major damage to their kitchens.

Jaime Bedard, the Montpelier Food Pantry’s executive director, proudly noted that, aside from the Tuesday immediately following the storm, the food pantry hasn’t missed a distribution day. (It’s currently operating out of a temporary location at the Center for Arts and Learning.) But with much less cold storage space available, she’s stocking less perishable food — and worried about finding a permanent and affordable space to eventually relocate to.

“I’m getting a little sticker shock when I’m looking at real estate here,” she said.

Statewide, meanwhile, the Vermont Foodbank is seeing what it calls “Covid levels” of ordering from its local partners, and notes that, during the pandemic, the food bank distributed higher volumes of food than any time in the organization’s history. In the month after the July floods, the nonprofit moved over 1.2 million pounds of food — a 45% increase from the prior month.

“It’s kind of a crisis on top of a crisis,” said John Sayles, CEO of the Vermont Foodbank.

In Cabot, Elizabeth Vitale, executive director of Neighbors in Action, which operates the local food shelf, said traffic at the nonprofit’s most recent weekly food share was actually roughly double what it was seeing at the height of the pandemic. She said she’s thrilled the pandemic-era program is back — and hopes it sticks around at least a little longer than the 30 days it’s been approved for.

There are plenty of practical reasons why ready-made meals fill an important need, Vitale said. Many of the food pantry’s clients are homeless, and have nowhere to cook. Elderly clients or those with disabilities can struggle to prepare a meal at home. And those impacted by the flood may be displaced, or even if they’re home, some of their appliances or utilities might still be offline because of storm-related damage. 

But Vitale said there are also more intangible ways in which hot, prepared foods bring comfort in times of stress.

“You know, when somebody’s sick, you bring them a meal, right?” she said. “And so it’s kind of like our state being like: ‘We care about you and your situation.’”

Read the story on VTDigger here: State launches ‘Vermont Emergency Eats’ to provide meals after the flooding.

Hunger is a solvable problem, yet in the federal debt limit deal, one of the negotiated “tradeoffs” is to take food off our neighbors’ tables. 

People over 50 and under 55 who receive SNAP benefits, known in Vermont as 3SquaresVT, will now have to prove that they either worked or volunteered for 80 hours in the previous month. This means official pay stubs, approved volunteer sheets, or other “proof,” submitted every month simply to receive anywhere from $23 to a few hundred dollars per month to purchase food, or these benefits will be subject to time limits. 

The debt ceiling agreement comes at the expense of people all across America, including tens of thousands of people in Vermont trying to make ends meet. The expansion of cruel and arbitrary requirements and time limits will only deepen hunger and poverty, in Vermont and beyond. 

Telling people who are struggling to make ends meet that without documented hours of labor, they can use 3SquaresVT for only three months out of every three years will certainly not significantly lower the national debt.

Who will be required to prove they are eligible? Neighbors who are unable to work, yet not disabled enough to qualify on a government form; family members caring for children so parents can work; a friend working off the books for a small business; or someone in a rural area with no transportation or internet access.

In Vermont, the newly proposed work requirements will apply to about 2,500 more people than the current work requirements. Thirty years of research shows that imposing work requirements and time limits on food benefits simply takes food away from people, making it harder to get and keep a job. Food is a basic need and should never have a time limit.

Adding burdens to people ages 50-54 who receive food assistance as the price for allowing the government to pay its bills is immoral. These changes will do one thing: punish people with lower incomes and working-class people for systems outside of our control, like underpaid labor markets and lack of affordable housing, child care, transportation, and sick leave, to name only a few. Neighbors who qualify for 3SquaresVT benefits but, due to this policy change will be subject to work requirements and time limits, will continue to experience hunger. 

This federal policy choice also shifts the responsibility to ensure that no one in this wealthy country goes hungry to a network of organizations already reeling from the end of 3SquaresVT Emergency Allotments in April. Many of the Vermont Foodbank’s network partner food shelves and pantries saw record guest visits in May. 

This change puts impossible pressures on food banks and the small, local, community-based food programs that are already stretched thin by increased need. How can we ask the people who show up every day for neighbors across our state to do more when we have a federal system that already works — if politicians would only let it? 

Food banks and the charitable food system are not the solution to hunger. Tens of millions of people in the U.S. and well over 100,000 people in Vermont can’t afford enough nourishing food. People are working and contributing to our communities, yet they still can’t go to the store and afford to buy the food they need. 

Elected representatives need to stop cutting existing, successful programs and start listening to solutions to hunger being offered by communities across Vermont and around the country. Hunger is solvable. Hundreds of community organizations are ready to partner. Policymakers, let’s get down to the real work. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Horton & Sayles: Federal debt ceiling deal will heighten hunger, poverty.

The Vermont Conversation with David Goodman is a VTDigger podcast that features in-depth interviews on local and national issues. Listen below and subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get podcasts.

The inauguration of President Joe Biden generated many memorable images. There was the inauguration of Vice President Kamala Harris, the first woman of color to hold the office. Young poet Amanda Gorman gave a mesmerizing reading of her poem, “The Hill We Climb.”

And Sen. Bernie Sanders became an internet icon for his mittens.

A photo captured Sanders bundled against the January cold, sitting alone on a chair, cross-legged, wearing a Burton ski parka and looking cozy in a pair of fuzzy wool mittens. The image instantly became a viral meme depicting him on the throne from Game of Thrones, on Mike Pence’s head and sitting in a row of ironworkers high above New York City.

This viral sensation led reporters to seek out the mitten maker. They quickly found Jen Ellis, a second grade teacher at Westford Elementary School. She sewed the mittens for Sanders after he lost the 2016 Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton. She hoped it would cheer him up.

Ellis’ sudden fame turned her life upside down. She was flooded with interview requests and thousands of mitten orders that overwhelmed her. She ultimately struck a deal with Darn Tough, which made the “Jenerosity” socks, which sold out in a day and resulted in thousands of meals being donated to the Vermont Foodbank. She partnered with Vermont Teddy Bear which continues to make the iconic Bernie Mittens.

Jen Ellis has written a book, Bernie’s Mitten Maker, which tells a deeper back story. Ellis is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. It was in an elementary school sewing class that Ellis “started to develop the skills I needed to save myself.”

Ellis told The Vermont Conversation that she shared this story in her book because “the longer people remain silent about this, the more it is able to spread as an epidemic.”

“The world might have learned about me because of some mittens I made,” she said, “but there’s a whole intricate backstory that people don’t know, that is interesting. And that has a theme of empowerment and generosity and kindness, and it has a path in the end to joy.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont Conversation: Bernie’s mitten maker weaves a tale of empowerment and overcoming abuse.

The federal Public Health Emergency is set to end on May 11, marking a new phase in recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic. Yet, the negative impacts of the pandemic continue for far too many across every community in Vermont. 

Food insecurity rates in Vermont are higher than they have ever been — higher than at the height of the pandemic — at a time when state and federal support programs have been reduced or ended. 

This concerning combination of increased need and reduced supports is creating surges in utilization of food shelves and meal sites across Vermont. The state must remain a focused partner to ensure everyone is able to meet this most essential and shared basic need — having enough to eat every day. 

I urge the Legislature to fund the Vermont Foodbank’s request for $3 million in base funding so that the state’s only foodbank can continue to distribute food as this hunger crisis continues. 

In March, households in Vermont that receive 3SquaresVT benefits, federally known as SNAP, received their final “Emergency Allotment” benefit. This benefit, created during the pandemic, addressed urgent financial challenges many households faced, including disruptions in school and work, increased costs of food and fuel, and supply chain issues leading to scarcity of some products. 

This additional money in grocery budgets helped many households weather these challenges. Even with additional benefits going to more than 40,000 households in Vermont, two in five (40 percent) people in Vermont reported experiencing hunger and food insecurity during 2022, the highest rates ever recorded, according to studies carried out by UVM researchers. 

The decision by Congress to end this emergency benefit early means that, now, people in Vermont will collectively lose $6.5 million a month in food benefits. Every household receiving 3SquaresVT benefits is experiencing a significant drop in their monthly food budget. The average loss per 3SquaresVT household is $100 to $500 per month, with some households losing much more. 

Many of our neighbors have shared with the Vermont Foodbank and its partners that they are deeply worried about how they will continue to provide enough food for themselves and their families. The Vermont Foodbank’s network of 225-plus food shelves and meal sites is already reporting increased visits of 20% to 80%, stretching their capacities to the limit. 

This includes seeing more working families with children using these food resources, as well as older adults whose fixed incomes cannot keep up with inflation. 

While the state of Vermont cannot make up for $6.5 million per month in federal food benefits, the state can support the Vermont Foodbank’s network of food shelves, food pantries and meal sites by fully funding the Foodbank’s request for an appropriation of $3 million in base funding in the fiscal year 2024 budget this legislative session. Philanthropy stepped up during the pandemic to help carry neighbors through the challenges of the past few year, but the philanthropic sector cannot do this work alone. 

With state support, the Foodbank can continue to be responsive to neighbors’ needs with fresh food and staples they need every day. Many people rely on these resources because they are not able to afford enough food and may not be eligible for programs like 3SquaresVT. 

The Vermont Foodbank and its network is a critical social safety net for neighbors in all regions of Vermont that requires the support of the state to continue to address the ongoing hunger crisis in our state. This support and partnership must be sustained as long as this hunger crisis continues to make it difficult for neighbors to access and afford the food they need and want.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Martha Oakes: State support needed in crisis of hunger and food insecurity.

When the Vermont Department for Children and Families first announced that a federal spending bill would end additional food stamp benefits this Friday, it included a bulleted list of resources to refer to “if you need more help with food.” 

The list drew attention to the fact that even though the extra benefits were part of an emergency response to Covid-19 and were always intended to sunset, hunger remains an urgent crisis in Vermont. 

Lena Greenberg, food access coordinator at the Intervale Center in Burlington, said cutting federal funding for hunger relief is out of touch with communities’ public health needs.

“We have no reason to believe that material conditions have improved for all of the people who are benefiting from these programs,” Greenberg said. The expiration of the extra benefits “is a travesty. This is horrible.”

In 2022, 2 in 5 Vermonters experienced hunger, according to a study from The University of Vermont. Now that Covid-19 pandemic supports are ending, local food organizers worry that number could rise. 

Vermont’s Food & Nutrition Program has issued almost $189 million in total food benefits since March 2020, according to Leslie Wisdom, director of the program. Most families who already qualified for 3SquaresVT, Vermont’s food stamp program, also qualified for the extra benefits, Wisdom said. Since 2020, more than 68,000 Vermonters have received the extra funds for food. 

With final payments having gone out this week, the end of the program will mean reductions in monthly benefits of between $100 and $500 per month for recipients.

“It’s always hard when you administer a program for people in need to have to lower the benefit amounts. We have to follow the federal rules, but I do think it’s a hard time for families,” Wisdom said, citing inflation rates that have increased the price of food by 9.5% in the past year.

The expiration of the extra support may return many Vermonters to deeper food insecurity, according to Ivy Enoch, food security advocacy manager with Hunger Free Vermont, a statewide anti-hunger advocacy and education organization. 

“Now for so many, impossible choices are going to have to be made between paying for basic needs (like) rent, a mortgage, food, or other necessary medical expenses,” Enoch said. 

Food systems organizer Jean Myung Hamilton said that the loss of the extra pandemic food benefits is significant, especially since it coincides with the end of the federally funded Everyone Eats program, which Hamilton helped to manage. Everyone Eats — which also expired Friday — was producing and distributing 25,000 meals a week to Vermonters in need.

“It’s very painful to watch how quickly we become so callous to people’s hunger,” said Hamilton, who has worked with groups including NOFA-VT, Conscious Homestead and the ReLeaf Collective, “which, as anyone who has ever been hungry before knows, feels dire and is an emergency all the time.”

The loss is felt “particularly for anyone who holds any number of marginalized identities,” she said. “Any additional need just stacks up, and often in very crippling ways.”

Food organizers across Vermont have been working to maintain and expand access to free and affordable food on statewide, local and grassroots levels, straining to fill the void that federal cuts are leaving. In the process, many are drawing attention to systemic failures of care and justice that have set the social and environmental stage for the hunger crisis. 

“We have such an incredible network of people, organizations and entities devoted to feeding people in Burlington,” said Greenberg, who, as part of the Intervale Center, helps coordinate free produce distributions year round in partnership with farms in the Intervale, the Vermont Agency of Agriculture and the Vermont Foodbank.

Greenberg says that while programs like 3SquaresVT are essential to helping people access food, community-run programs often have a deeper understanding of community needs. 

The Intervale Center’s services are completely free and require no means testing or proof of income for people to access food. This, Greenberg said, is essential to serving folks who speak limited English, people experiencing temporary hardship or people on the benefits cliff, who make too much money to get benefits but still struggle to get enough food.

“I cannot tell you how many people I talk to who say it is such a gift that you run a program that just feeds people,” Greenberg said.

This week, Greenberg said they have been working to update Burlington’s Free Food Map, an online and printable resource that highlights locations throughout the city where people can find free food.

One resource that appears on that map is the People’s Kitchen, a grassroots food organization that distributes hot meals.

The group helps to feed the people who need it most by coming to them, setting up weekly hot meal distribution sites in Burlington neighborhoods as well as meal delivery during the month of Ramadan, according to FaRied Munarsyah, activist and organizer with the People’s Kitchen. In the process, the group helps eliminate food waste by using ingredients that grocery stores or food shelves would have discarded. 

“We do try to put the ‘mutual’ in ‘mutual aid,’” Munarsyah said, “Often, like if we bring food to the families, the next week, they’ll help cook something for us, which makes it really a reciprocal relationship.”

According to Munarsyah, creating food access is about creating relationships between farmers, growers, eaters and other organizers. 

The People’s Farm Stand, run by Nour El-Naboulsi, Naomi Peduzzi and Sadie Bloch, was originally founded in partnership with the People’s Kitchen. Now, the groups act as sister organizations, with the People’s Farm Stand distributing free produce while the People’s Kitchen offers hot meals. 

When El-Naboulsi first heard that the extra 3SquaresVT benefits were ending, he said he felt inspired to create even stronger networks of collaboration. “We work with a lot of new American families,” he said, “So we’re thinking about how we can make (resources such as) the free food map easily understandable.”

According to Lindsey Berk, director of ACORN, a small nonprofit that works to strengthen local food and farming communities in the Champlain Valley watershed, efforts to alleviate hunger also necessitate an investigation of colonial systems that disguise the planet’s abundance and concentrate power in the hands of a wealthy few.

“Food should be a right,” Berk said. “So the question becomes whether we can envision a world where the state also agrees that food is a right.”

Andrew Courtney, director of Foodworks, which calls itself the most heavily utilized food shelf program in Brattleboro, said his organization is anticipating increased need as a result of the expiring extra benefits. 

“We’re all sort of bracing for what that impact might be,” Courtney said.

Even food shelf organizers who specialize in facilitating charitable food donations question whether this form of support is ideal or not. 

“Charity doesn’t seem to be the smartest method,” said Rob Meehan, director of Feeding Chittenden. “What would be better would be to use those tax dollars to kind of normalize food and make food available in a variety of ways to everyone.” 

Meehan said federal funding for programs such as 3SquaresVT helps keep dollars circulating within the local economy, benefiting growers and vendors alongside those consuming the food.

As communities come together to help feed each other, many organizers are quick to make the case that, in an ideal world, federal funding would prioritize the alleviation of human hunger. Some are considering how legislative action may be able to help address the hunger crisis. 

Emily Landenberger, the co-chair of the Addison County Hunger Council, said the group met with legislators recently to advocate for universal school meals for students in Vermont. 

Food organizers also have their eyes trained on current efforts to pass a new federal farm bill, which some say could address food insecurity and climate-related disasters. 

“The farm bill basically approves the spending for (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits, and that’s a place where policy changes for the SNAP program historically are made through congressional action,” Wisdom said. 

At the end of February, a coalition of 500 hunger and nutrition groups released a list of their 2023 farm bill priorities, which included expanding access to benefits. Meanwhile, other progressive groups have hosted events like the Food Not Feed Summit to advocate funding for regenerative farming practices.

Greenberg agreed that prioritizing such practices — on global and local scales — contributes to food security and climate resilience. 

“Regional, agriculture and reciprocal relationships between farmers and eaters could yield a food system that actually meets our needs as growers and eaters, as people are trying to survive the last — hopefully the last — gasps of late capitalism,” Greenberg said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: As pandemic-era programs expire, organizers highlight other ways for Vermonters to access free food.

Extra help during the Covid-19 pandemic provided to Vermonters who qualify for food stamps will run out next month, the Vermont Department for Children and Families announced Tuesday. 

Households that qualified got additional payments on top of the funding they already received monthly to help cover food costs. The extra funding began in March 2020 and “reached over 40,000 Vermont households comprised of over 68,000 individuals,” according to a press release. 

People eligible for the extra benefits will continue to receive them until mid-March, then will revert to their normal monthly payments, officials said.

The end of the extra funding in mid-March could be a serious issue for Vermonters struggling with food insecurity, Leslie Wisdom, director of Vermont’s Food and Nutrition Program, said in an interview. 

“Already, I think folks on our program may have been struggling with meeting all of their economic needs,” Wisdom said. “The ending of these extra benefits right now, in winter with high inflation during an economically stressful time, is going to have a real impact on families.”

The Vermont food stamp program is known as 3SquaresVT, but it is funded through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which provides money to offset food costs for people with low incomes.

People who apply for benefits through 3SquaresVT undergo a complex eligibility process, in which officials review household income, deductions, and sometimes their resources to see if they qualify, Wisdom said. The maximum monthly benefit for a family of four is $939.

Most households that originally qualified for food stamps also qualified for the extra benefits, Wisdom said. The extra monthly funding ensured that each household received the maximum amount allotted based on the number of people in the home, even if the actual amount had been less due to other criteria.

While the regular 3SquaresVT benefits are received on the first of every month, the extra money arrives in the middle of the month, Wisdom said. 

The department released a bulleted list of resources for Vermonters who may need additional food assistance, including calling 211, using the Vermont Foodbank and more.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont announces end to pandemic program that provided extra food stamp money.

Sept. 28 marked the first White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health in more than 50 years. Elected officials, people who have experienced hunger, advocates, nonprofits and private-sector leaders came together to discuss solutions to the ongoing injustice of hunger. 

Far too many in our country know the experience of not having enough food, including many neighbors here in Vermont. Important advancements came from the first conference of this kind, held in 1969, including changes in food and nutrition policy, major expansions of what is now called SNAP/3SquaresVT and School Lunch Program, and the creation of the supplemental feeding program for Women Infants and Children. 

These changes made significant headway in eliminating hunger but, by the 1980s, policy changes and program cuts caused a resurgence in hunger nationwide. 

The goals and recommendations coming from the 2022 conference offer a new chance to make positive, impactful changes for decades to come — but only if we seize this moment for bold action and solutions centered in equity and justice. 

Here in Vermont, more people have experienced hunger this past year than at any other point during the Covid-19 pandemic. Recent data collected by the UVM-led National Food Access and Covid Research Team found that two out of every five people in our state have experienced hunger in the past year. This means thousands across the state are struggling to consistently afford the nourishing foods they need and want. 

As we face the ongoing impacts of the pandemic and inflation, we applaud the timely focus of the White House on hunger and its root causes and we acknowledge the opportunities this renewed focus offers here in Vermont. Holding the conference is a welcome first step, and we call on the White House to be accountable, and to work with Congress to make the investments and implement the solutions outlined in the National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition and Health. 

Many of the ideas the White House has proposed are tried and tested, and, if implemented, will help to end hunger. We know strategies that work, like permanently expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit and increasing the minimum wage. 

The Expanded Child Tax Credit in 2021 kept 5.3 million people above the poverty line and drove child poverty to the lowest level since 1967. Then it ended. 

The White House has proposed cost-effective investments in nutrition programs that we know will reduce hunger. These include expanding Summer EBT to ensure families with kids can afford groceries when school is out, support for Meals on Wheels, and expanding access to 3SquaresVT so that more people can use the program, including college students and formerly incarcerated individuals. 

But the White House proposal alone is not enough. We can — and should — do more. The White House strategy aims to decrease the number of households going without food, and to cut the number of households struggling to afford enough food, in half. In Vermont, that would mean one in five of us would still be facing hunger. 

We have a vision for ending hunger that doesn’t leave behind half of neighbors experiencing hunger. The federal government must act to ensure that federal nutrition programs like SNAP, school meals, and Meals on Wheels can meet the needs of people facing hunger. 

● We need a national, permanent universal school meals program. 

● We need SNAP benefits to cover the true cost of nutritious food. 

● We need investments to help organizations like the Vermont Foodbank meet the unprecedented demand that food shelves and pantries are facing across the state.

● We need to address the root causes of hunger, not just a system that lifts some individuals out of poverty temporarily, and excludes others.

● We need systems that allow everyone to have access to nourishing, dignified food. 

● We need to address race-based inequities in access to food, and to ensure our systems don’t require families to make impossible choices in meeting basic needs. 

Let’s not let this historic moment go to waste, or the national strategy to gather dust. We are ready, and we are committed to doing the work alongside the federal government, state government, and our partners in the public and private sectors. Together we can end hunger.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Horton & Sayles: White House Conference on Hunger offers a moment to build on.

John Sayles says no one in the Legislature has asked him directly about the $9 million windfall the Vermont Foodbank received a year and a half ago as he has defended the organization’s request for a $6 million state appropriation this year. 

In December 2020, MacKenzie Scott, a major philanthropist and the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, announced that she was donating $9 million to the Foodbank. It was the largest donation the organization had ever received. 

But if no lawmaker has asked Sayles, the Foodbank’s CEO, point blank why he needs taxpayer money after the organization received such a large gift, it does seem to be on the mind of at least one key legislator.

“It would be great to see them use some of the investment dollars,” said Sen. Ginny Lyons, D-Chittenden, the chair of the Senate Committee on Health and Welfare, referring to Scott’s gift. 

“We’re all learning to live without federal subsidies for some of these important issues,” Lyons told VTDigger. “The funds are nonexistent. There are so many demands.” 

Vermont is flush with federal money, but temporary relief programs established during the Covid-19 pandemic — including those that funded hunger relief efforts — are coming to an end.

Among the funding requests Lyons’ committee considered this year were $3.5 million for substance abuse prevention, $4.9 million for child care financial assistance, $16.1 million for home- and community-based services, $3 million for an increase in Medicaid reimbursement rates for adult day services and $1.4 million for the 988 suicide prevention line. In all, the committee considered $34.1 million in continuing funding for programs and $8.5 million in one-time funding, including the $6 million the Foodbank requested.   

Lyons told VTDigger that because Vermont can no longer count on a continued influx of federal dollars appropriated during the pandemic, it is difficult to maintain the support the Foodbank received over the past two years. 

The Foodbank appears likely to get significantly less than it requested. The latest version of the state budget, passed by the Senate on April 20, included $2 million in funding for the Foodbank. The House version, passed in late March, included just $1.5 million. House and Senate lawmakers expect to finalize the budget next week. 

Lyons gave credit to the Foodbank for its Covid relief work.  

When rates of food insecurity skyrocketed early in the pandemic, the Foodbank led efforts to distribute free food at recurring events across the state.

“Without them, so many people in our state would have gone hungry,” Lyons said.

The organization already has plans for how to utilize Scott’s unexpected gift, Sayles said, but how long the money will last depends on how much the government and other donors support the Foodbank.    

About $6.5 million — more than two-thirds of the donation — is dedicated to covering the Foodbank’s operating costs for the next two to five years, he said. That includes funding VeggieVanGo, which distributes produce and protein at hospitals and schools. 

Sayles said the organization has created a “spendowment” with the Scott money and plans to spend about 3% of it every quarter. 

Another $1 million of the Scott donation would support the organization’s work in the Northeast Kingdom and in Bennington and Addison counties, where the Foodbank does not have a physical location, Sayles said. 

The organization plans to spend the remaining $1.5 million on an “innovation lab” that seeks to address the causes of food insecurity.

The need for food assistance appears to be increasing. Sayles said that at 18 of the 24 monthly VeggieVanGo events around the state, more people showed up this month than last. At the monthly VeggieVanGo event in Newport last week, he said, 750 families showed up, compared to 643 families in March. 

“They’re still scared of what’s happening out there in the world and don’t really feel secure,” he said. “And I think that’s a piece of why demand is so high.”

Donations have not kept pace with the rising need, Sayles said, and with Covid aid programs being phased out, federal support of the Foodbank’s efforts is dropping 30 to 40%.

Meanwhile, he said, food costs are up significantly — 40% higher than a year ago for the national food bank network.

Sayles said the $6 million he sought this year would be dedicated to buying and distributing food, roughly the same amount the Foodbank spent last year. Without that money, he said, the organization would have to buy and distribute less food, although he plans to reach out to private donors to make up the shortfall. 

He said that since 2019 the state has provided the Foodbank with about $84,000 a year from state general funds, and the federal government, outside of the exceptional Covid relief funds over the last two years, has provided about $400,000 a year. 

Much of the Foodbank’s revenue comes from in-kind contributions of food. For example, in its most recent available annual report, from 2020, the Foodbank reported revenue of $47 million. Food and other in-kind contributions accounted for $26.3 million of that total, compared to $20.7 million in money. 

For the year beginning on July 1, the Foodbank is planning on revenue of close to $13 million, not counting donations in kind, according to an email to VTDigger from Carrie Stahler, a lobbyist for the organization. If the Foodbank received the full $6 million it requested, it could plan on revenues of $17 million. 

In Sayles’ view, the Legislature should be stepping up.

“We can’t continue to rely on the charitable goodwill of people inside and outside of Vermont to make sure folks are eating,” Sayles said. “The state needs to be a full partner in this.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont Foodbank seeks more state funding as needs rise and pandemic aid dries up.

Editor’s Note: The Underground Workshop is a collaborative network of student journalists from across Vermont. We’re eager to work with student photographers to help them tell stories with their work. For more information please email Ben Heintz, the Workshop’s editor, at ben@vtdigger.org.

‘It could be anyone’ : The Manchester Community Cupboard

Reporting by Katie Cherry & photos by Grace Cabasco, Burr & Burton Academy

On the 2nd and 4th Wednesday of each month, a group of local volunteers travel to the Manchester Town Hall to unload boxes of food from a Vermont Foodbank truck. Though there are many heavy boxes to move and unpack, the laughter and smiling faces never cease. 

The Manchester Community Cupboard has been open since the June of 1990 and has not stopped giving back to the community throughout the pandemic. Many facets of the Cupboard have been impacted by the virus. Martha Carey, the Cupboard’s director,  explained that each month they give out around 15 to 20,000 pounds of food. That number is about 25% higher than pre-pandemic times.

Carey has stayed with the Cupboard through thick and thin. “We’ve had people whose primary earner has been sick. We’ve had people who themselves are immunocompromised and so they don’t want to go into the store,” she said. “It could be anyone, but everyone is welcome.”

Courtney Doubleday, the VT Foodbank truck driver, has been making this trip from Brattleboro since the pre-pandemic days. “I mean, when COVID hit, definitely everything exploded, and our demand increased several fold,” he said. “But things have kind of narrowed down since then.”

Jennifer Sullivan is a retired nurse who additionally volunteers at Habitat for Humanity. The pandemic led her to volunteer at the Cupboard while the Habitat trips were put on pause. She’s been at the Cupboard now for 3 to 4 months. She usually isn’t there when people come to shop, but on occasion she’ll meet someone. “They’re so grateful for anything that they’re able to get here,” she said. “This helps them a lot.”

While there were many systems put in place that had to be adjusted, there have also been some positive “inventions” that have come from a devastating time. There is now a little area, open everyday, that is kept well stocked and unlocked, just in case someone needs something and they can’t make during “business hours”.

The inside of the Cupboard is on the smaller end. “This trailer is here for the winter so that people have a place to shop, because we used to have clients come inside into our space, but [due to Covid] they still don’t,” Martha Carey explained. “I’m hoping by next winter, we’ll have people back inside. But for now, we’ve got the shed, we’ve got this guy (the trailer),  and we’ve got the outdoor cooler. So that’s helped a lot.”

Even with growing demand, the Cupboard is always stocked with fresh produce from the Vermont Foodbank but also the local grocery stores in Manchester such as Shaws, which provides some of their deli meats. There are also perishable food items available in family boxes and senior boxes. Grants have also allowed for local restaurants to donate meals that can be easily reheated. 

Other community organizations, such as Grateful Hearts, also contribute some of what they make to the cupboard. Through a partnership with Hildene Farm and the Burr and Burton Academy’s Farm program, the Cupboard has access to the fresh produce for the delicious meals they make, as well as local farm surplus.

The pandemic still isn’t over, but Martha Carey and the other volunteers continue to support the community.

“A lot of people lost work at the beginning of the pandemic. We’ve had people whose primary earner has been sick. We’ve had people who themselves are immunocompromised, and there’s been a lot more delivered to people who are homebound,”Carey explained.

“None of this would be possible without the volunteers.” 

Read the story on VTDigger here: ‘It could be anyone’: The Manchester Community Cupboard.

This past Monday, we were able to listen to the Vermont Foodbank’s most recent stakeholder briefing, informing partners and supporters of the most recent work, and challenges, that the organization has seen across the state.

The Vermont Foodbank and its over 300 local partners throughout communities in Vermont are continuing the work they’ve been doing since the pandemic began two (long) years ago. As we begin the third year of this critical work to help families through the pandemic, it was an opportunity to reflect on the Foodbank’s role and impact in meeting the increased need during the pandemic. 

Together, the Vermont Foodbank network, government and community partners distributed more than 36 million pounds of food to people in need across the state in 2020 and 2021, compared to about 11 million pounds of food in 2019. This tremendous increase could not have been accomplished alone — this was a result of partnership and collaboration during the height of the pandemic response. 

The challenges of the pandemic continue as Covid-19 creates ongoing disruptions, inflation soars, and so many of our neighbors recover at very different rates. 

The Foodbank is grateful for the support the state has offered. However, the increased need for access to food continues, and it is likely to continue for some time, as we know that food security lags behind other indicators of recovery. 

Recent data published by the food systems researchers at UVM confirm what we are seeing in the field — increased levels of food insecurity among people in Vermont as compared to levels before the pandemic began (food insecurity is 22.9% higher now than in 2019). 

We saw that when the state, Vermont Foodbank, and partner organizations work together, we can most effectively get food to the people who need it in all regions of Vermont. The Vermont Foodbank remains a ready and willing partner in this work to ensure that all Vermonters have access to nourishing food and can bounce back from Covid’s impact. 

We look to the state of Vermont to take responsibility for ensuring that Vermonters have what they need — and that responsibility includes ensuring that Vermonters have access to the food they need during this ongoing crisis. 

The Foodbank has been shoulder-to-shoulder with the state during this crisis response, and we need the state to continue to support the work of feeding Vermonters during this crisis by funding the charitable food network with $6 million in one-time funds to make sure our neighbors have a chance to recover. 

This function is at the core of the American Rescue Plan Act — to respond to the public health crisis and address the negative economic impacts of the pandemic. This funding will enable the Vermont Foodbank to meet the increased food insecurity that Vermonters are experiencing, caused by the Covid pandemic. 

The state’s continued and increased support will ensure that Vermonters experiencing food insecurity have the food they need right now, particularly for our most vulnerable populations and for those whose lives have been most impacted by the Covid pandemic. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Foodbank board: As the pandemic continues, so does Vermont’s hunger crisis.

Editor’s Note: This article by Liz Sauchelli was first published in the Valley News on Nov. 28.

The price of milk and yogurt has gone up. Cereal, too. Meat has been harder to come by.

As inflation is hitting everyday staples for grocery buyers, Upper Valley food pantries are entering their busiest time of year. And that time might be even busier with other expenses spiking as well.

“There’s certainly some areas of the cost of business that are impacting us, but the larger concern is how the rising cost of living, particularly in areas that are essential — food, heating oil — (that) are impacting the people who rely on the Haven for support,” said Michael Redmond, executive director of the Upper Valley Haven in White River Junction. “We’re anticipating that as families try to balance their household budgets we will see more people coming to use the Haven food shelf to help out so they won’t have to spend as much in the grocery stores.”

That’s already being reflected in the Mascoma Valley, where the Friends of Mascoma Foundation is located in Canaan. Eula Kozma, executive director of the nonprofit organization, said more families started visiting them for food at the end of October and early November.

“I think a lot of the state and federal resources have sunset,” Kozma said. “Groceries, household items, everything is up, so I think maybe more folks that were on the cusp … for whatever reason some combination of things tipped them … to needing more assistance.”

That’s been the case for Karen White, of White River Junction, who stopped by the Hanover Food Pantry with her neighbor Annette Wright on Saturday morning at the Church of Christ at Dartmouth College.

White said her boyfriend of 17 years died in January after contracting Covid-19 at a skilled nursing facility.

“It’s been rough going from two incomes to pay bills. It makes it hard,” said White, who was pleased to find toilet paper and deli meat at the pantry. “The prices of everything is going up so bad.”

The Hanover pantry opened last November. It started with folks offering items out of the back of their cars in the church parking lot and now occupies a room in the basement, where natural light from windows illuminates shelves. It is open from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. each Saturday.

This week, eight people stopped by to select items including produce, dairy, meat and baked goods, in addition to dry good staples like beans and cereal. Household items are also in high demand.

“If we have liquid soap or laundry detergent or adult pull-ups, it just goes off the shelf,” Cinny Bensen, one of the organizers of the food pantry, said during an interview Friday.

“I’m not sure we had any idea how sustainable it was,” Bensen said of the pandemic-born pantry. “We knew there was a need but would people find us, would people feel comfortable, were we open at the right day at the right time, were we offering what people needed? There were so many questions.”

In time, they’ve developed a following among community members including graduate students who attend Dartmouth College. Among those students is Debbie Sulca, a first-year graduate student from Los Angeles.

Sulca does not have a car and her nearest grocery store is the Co-op in Hanover, New Hampshire, “which can get very expensive very quickly,” she said. “I really like the food pantry because they have a lot of fresh produce.”

By visiting the food pantry, Sulca has been able to stretch her budget and try out new ingredients to cook with — such as squashes — that she hadn’t used.

“It’s been a great creative outlet for me that brings me a lot of health,” she said. “This has been a big help for sure.”

Like many smaller food pantries in the area, the Hanover Food Pantry has support from the Upper Valley Haven. While federal programs have been generous, grocery stores continue to donate food and the Vermont Foodbank has continued to supply items, Upper Valley Haven staff pick up donations from as far as Brattleboro and Barre.

“We’re spending more each week and I’m estimating that we’ll spend $5,000 more on diesel fuel than we did last year, just the fuel increase and driving the same distance,” Redmond said.

Their cost of milk is up 10% and cereal is up 5%.

Prior to the pandemic, about 10% of the Upper Valley was food-insecure, meaning they worried about affording food. During the pandemic, that number rose to 30% and is now around 15% to 20%, Redmond said.

“There’s still many people that are food-insecure in the Upper Valley,” he said.

Last Monday, 125 households visited the Haven’s food pantry and, while that is higher than the typical 50 to 70, it is part of a usual pattern of the holiday season and winter months.

Supply shortages are showing up in interesting ways, said Kozma, of the Friends of Mascoma Foundation.

That pantry gets much of its food from the New Hampshire Food Bank and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

One of their most sought-after items has been snacks, which they distribute to their food pantries and schools in the area.

Usually, Kozma can order three large boxes of mixed snacks and on a good week could receive as many as nine. After the school year started, the supply changed.

“It just hasn’t been an option,” Kozma said. The community, including businesses and Boy Scout troops, have stepped up by organizing snack food drives. “We’ve been able to piece it together.”

Meat has been a challenge in Charlestown, New Hampshire, which runs a small pantry from 9 to 11 a.m. Monday, Thursday and Friday at Old Town Hall, 29 Summer St. It is part of the larger Fall Mountain Food Shelf in Alstead, New Hampshire.

The Charlestown Food Shelf typically gets meat once a month through government surplus, said Dick Westney, who oversees the food shelf.

“This last time … we got fish sticks and that was it,” he said. “We didn’t have any other type of meat or anything like that.”

Other food pantries have pitched in by sharing supplies. Charlestown also gets meat from area grocery stores.

The pantry has bucked the trend in terms of the number of clients during the pandemic.

Westney expected numbers to pick up but the reverse happened. They currently serve around 85 families per month while before the pandemic it was 120 to 125.

“It kind of baffled us. Our numbers went down,” he said. “With the numbers down, the food was still coming in, so we were able to stock up a good pile of canned goods, dried goods, stuff like that.”

Back in Hanover on Saturday, visitors perused the shelves, refrigerator and coolers for items to add to their reusable bags.

Some shop just for themselves, while others shop for multiple families. They were assisted by volunteers including Vassiki Chauhan, who greeted shoppers warmly.

“Being a graduate student, I know how things get tight,” said Chauhan, who recently finished up her doctorate in cognitive neuroscience.

Prior to the Hanover Food Pantry, the church had a small closet where they kept food for those who needed it, said Rob Grabill, associate pastor at the church.

The weekly Hanover Food Pantry has been a welcome addition.

“There’s food insecurity everywhere,” Grabill said. “What’s nice is the stigma is eroding. If you need food, you need food.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Food pantries fear pinch from inflation, supply shortages.

Dear Reader,

By now the table is probably cleared and we hope you had a healthy, happy Thanksgiving. Even as we paused to celebrate the holiday, VTDigger never really closes – our commitment to cover Vermont news continues, no matter what.

Today we’re excited to announce a new incentive: if you sign up to make a monthly gift to VTDigger on or before Giving Tuesday, your gift will be matched dollar for dollar for the entire year! With one easy transaction you can sign up for an automatic monthly gift to support VTDigger, and a group of generous donors will double your impact.

You read that right! If you commit to sending VTDigger $10, $20, or $50 a month, those dollars will be doubled for the next twelve months. That’s twice as much support you can send each month, to provide the stable funding our reporters rely on to get the news out every day.

Use our online form to enter your credit card or ACH information once, and the payments will be made automatically each month until you tell us to stop.

We will also send 10 meals to the Vermont Foodbank on your behalf.

We’re thrilled to report we were able to partner with our VTDigger members to send 10,000 meals to the Vermont Foodbank so far this month – but our annual fund campaign carries on, in order to sustain our public service journalism throughout the year ahead. Monthly membership is the best way to ensure VTDigger can keep providing the daily local news you count on.

With appreciation,

The VTDigger Team

Read the story on VTDigger here: VTDigger announces new monthly member match.

Dear Reader,

We never want to see critical daily and investigative news behind a paywall, and you probably don’t either. While many news sites make readers pay for articles, VTDigger does not – – but that’s only because of voluntary donations made by readers like you.

Membership support is the reason we are able to keep our news free and accessible to all. Please, become a member today or make an additional gift during this special time of year.

If you think news organizations are doing fine, you’re not alone. Shockingly, a 2018 Pew Research poll showed that a majority of U.S. adults (71%) believe their local news organizations are doing well financially, even though only 14% say they have paid for local news themselves in the past year.

But the reality is that quality local journalism is in danger of extinction. Newsroom employment was cut by nearly 50% in the last ten years, meaning more and more communities across the country have no source for local news. VTDigger fills that void in Vermont, thanks to member support.

Right now, we are just over halfway to our Thanksgiving goal of inspiring 1,000 readers to donate and sending 10,000 meals to the Vermont Foodbank. Join us as a supporting member and show that you want local news to stay strong in Vermont! Will you make a donation today at the level that works for your budget?

We will send you a limited-run member patch and
send 10 meals to the Vermont Foodbank on your behalf!

We understand that not everyone can make a donation, and we are committed to providing accessible news for all. Thank you for considering a member donation today.

With gratitude,

The VTDigger team

Become a VTDigger member today

Online: vtdigger.org/donate
Call: (802) 225-6791
Mail: Make checks payable to VTDigger, 26 State Street, Suite 8, Montpelier, VT 05602

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont news needs your support.

Dear Reader,

We know VTDigger readers care deeply about the world around them, just as we do. That’s why we are partnering with the Vermont Foodbank for our annual membership drive. But, we also wanted to give those who join us this year some special recognition– let’s face it, it has been doozy.

We worked with Outpatch, a local and veteran-owned company in Tunbridge, VT, to create a unique patch to give to the first 1,000 members who join our annual fund drive this year.

Make a member gift at the level you’re comfortable with now, and you’ll get this high-quality embroidered patch free. They’re stick-on (no sewing required) and magically machine washable, so they’ll stand up to your Vermont wear and tear.

These limited-run patches won’t be around for long, so snag one of them today and support local news while sending 10 meals to the Vermont Foodbank for Thanksgiving. It’s a win-win-win!

VTDigger’s news is free for all to consume, but it’s not free to produce. Thank you for understanding that local news is essential and worth supporting!

With gratitude,

Libbie Sparadeo

Director of Community Engagement and Strategic Partnerships

Become a VTDigger member today

Online: vtdigger.org/donate
Call: (802) 225-6791
Mail: Make checks payable to VTDigger, 26 State Street, Suite 8, Montpelier, VT 05602

Read the story on VTDigger here: Show your commitment to community.

Dear Reader,

It is heartwarming to see the outpouring of support that we’ve received this week already. There’s less than a week left until Thanksgiving and our goal of sending 10,000 meals to the Vermont Foodbank.

Readers have been stepping up to become first-time members with donations of all sizes, and current members are making additional gifts during this critical time. Will you support our nonprofit reporting during this special time of year with a gift that works for you?

Our annual fund drive is the most important time of the year for the sustainability of our news operation. Your gift will sustain our daily and investigative journalism and help combat rising hunger in Vermont by sending 10 meals to the Vermont Foodbank. Here’s what some new members are saying:

I’m always impressed by the quality and scope of VTDigger’s journalism and also want to help support folks who are food insecure. Win win! – Anna

VTDigger is awesome…. And it’s a good thing to do. Good Karma. – Bill Edwards

I value and trust Vt. Digger’s constant care and responsiveness to all that is happening in the state. – Bern

I support local journalism and your efforts to keep communities informed – and fed. – Alan Bachers

Together our Thanksgiving goal is to send 10,000 meals! Will you join Anna, Bill, Bern and Alan in making a member donation to keep our community strong and healthy?

Investing in local news is investing in the health of those around you. We are grateful for your readership and your dedication to our community.

With gratitude,

Florencio Terra

Membership Manager, VTDigger

Become a VTDigger member today

Online: vtdigger.org/donate
Call: (802) 225-6791
Mail: Make checks payable to VTDigger, 26 State Street, Suite 8, Montpelier, VT 05602

Read the story on VTDigger here: Less than 1 week left! Help keep Vermont well-informed and fed..

VTDigger is committed to Vermont communities. Our timely local news is an essential public service that hundreds of thousands of Vermonters count on each day. But as much as everyone needs reliable information, many Vermonters also need food for their tables.

Our news is free to consume, but not to produce. If you value our work, please consider becoming a member today. Your contribution will not only support VTDigger, but also provide 10 meals for Vermonters in need. Will you join us?

Whether it’s our daily updates on the Covid-19 pandemic, breaking stories about Vermont politics, statehouse coverage, or our deep dives into schools, agriculture, healthcare or public safety — VTDigger covers news you can’t find anywhere else.

We care about Vermonters’ stories and are dedicated to the issues that affect our communities. And right now, we know 1 in 3 Vermont residents have faced food insecurity since the Covid-19 pandemic began. The majority of those who reported experiencing food insecurity are still facing hunger in 2021. 

That’s why we’ve once again partnered with the Vermont Foodbank for our 2021 Member Drive. Our goal is for 1,000 VTDigger readers to join us so we can send 10,000 meals to the Foodbank by Thanksgiving. Our members make it all possible — please join today.

As a special token of our appreciation, we’ll also send you a commemorative patch if you’re one of the first 1,000 people to support our drive!

Your support keeps our reporting free for all to access. But whether or not you can donate, we’re honored to be at your service. It’s our mission to keep Vermonters informed. Thanks for trusting us to do that.

With appreciation,

Anne Galloway

Founder and Editor, VTDigger

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermonters need facts and food. Give both during our annual membership drive..

Imagine an easily accessible store filled with fresh produce, pantry staples, home necessities and warm winter clothes where everything is free for the taking. 

That’s what the Winooski School District plans to offer when it cuts the ribbon on its “free store” in August 2022. The store will be part of a renovated, expanded school complex, where construction began last October. Overall, the project will renovate 125,000 square feet of its existing school complex — which includes elementary, middle and high schools — and add 75,000 square feet.

Winooski now has about 850 students but is growing quickly, and expects enrollment to top 1,000 in the next three to five years. The project will bring the schools into line with modern standards, replace all mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems, add a new gym and a performing arts center, realign athletic facilities, and include a new community services center.

The $57.8 million project is being funded by a loan through the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development program, which trimmed loan costs by about $11 million.

The new spaces will be great, but “keeping our kids fed, clothed, and feeling cared for is the first step in making sure they are able to access the opportunities that will help them feel successful,” said Emily Hecker, communications and development director for the Winooski School District.

Plans for the necessities store and grab-and-go cafe got an infusion of $150,000 from an anonymous donor funneled through the Vermont Community Foundation. The money went to the Heart of Winooski Foundation, a nonprofit that supports the Winooski School District, and it will go largely toward construction of the store.

To fill the store and keep it running, a variety of other nonprofits plan to step up to the plate. The Vermont Foodbank, through its new Veggie VanGo+, will keep the shelves stocked with fresh produce and nonperishable food. The district plans to work with organizations to secure donations of household essentials, personal hygiene products and winter gear, which will be vetted for quality by the district’s wellness coordinator. 

Ecker also hopes the school can raise money for a washer and dryer so donated clothing can be cleaned on 

site. 

Winooski school officials detected an increased need for food and essential items during the school year that ended in June, and used more than $14,000 from the district’s emergency fund to help feed and clothe Winooski families in need. 

The Winooski School District has the highest concentration of low-wealth students in Vermont, according to 2019 information from the Vermont Agency of Education. Almost 98% of the district’s 850 students are eligible for free lunch, which means their families are at or below 185% of the federal poverty rate, or $49,025 per year for a family of four. 

Around the state, 32,397 students, about 38%, qualify for free lunch. 

Rachel Worthington, manager of food access programs at the Vermont Foodbank, said if the Winooski project is a success, the effort could be expanded to other school districts around the state, provided sustainable financing can be arranged.

Three Vermont Foodbank pilot projects similar to the Winooski’s opened in 2019 at schools in Rutland and St. Johnsbury and at Spaulding High School in Barre, but closed down when the pandemic hit. They reopened in February. 

Although the Vermont Foodbank provides a variety of programs to increase access to fresh food, most of them are monthly or bimonthly events based at schools or hospitals. It can be difficult for people to get there consistently — work hours, sickness, child care issues and other barriers get into the way.

The partnerships with schools in Winooski, Barre, Rutland and St. Johnsbury are unique, in that they focus on empowering kids to participate, have permanent locations, and offer pantry staples rather than just fresh food. The program is tailored to be equitable and welcoming, and to reduce stigma. 

Although the Winooski store will be inside the school building, residents can shop on designated days and Veggie VanGo’s twice-monthly Winooski food bank events will continue. 

“We’re trying to create a more permanent and dignified place for students to access food,” Worthington said. For instance, it’s called a store, rather than a food pantry; it should feel like grocery shopping; and it will be open to everyone, so that students who need food assistance won’t feel spotlighted. 

The store will stock food items requested by residents, including families who recently immigrated to Vermont through the Refugee Resettlement Program; their favorite foods can be challenging to find at food banks. 

“Feeling included and not feeling like you’re being targeted because you need food assistance  helps reduce embarrassment around needing to receive food,” Worthington said. “The whole premise of this project is to create a dignified and welcoming environment to access food.” 

Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Emily Hecker’s name.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Winooski schools will open ‘free store’ to improve access to food, clothes, supplies.

For the first time in a long time, I’m feeling optimistic. The American Rescue Plan Act, passed by Congress and signed on March 11 by President Biden, brings much-needed support to families hit hard economically by the pandemic. 

When it comes to direct hunger relief, the rescue plan boosts 3SquaresVT benefits (federal food support funds) by 15%; continues “Pandemic EBT,” which gets food money to families with low incomes and kids in school; expands funding for TEFAP and CSFP, two federal food programs administered by the Vermont Foodbank; and provides $4 billion to the U.S. Department of Agriculture to support the “food supply chain,” which includes getting food directly to people using local providers and restaurants. 

Food insecurity is financial insecurity. And changes in the child tax credit and earned income tax credit will potentially do more to alleviate hunger than all the direct food aid. These changes are projected to reduce U.S. child poverty by 50% over the next year. That’s right. Half of the children now living in poverty may not be living in poverty next year. Let that sink in. 

We’re all better off when families are afforded the dignity to pay for housing, medical care, transportation, and food — the necessities of life — without relying on direct food aid. People can be in control of their own lives, kids have stable homes full of joy, and parents can find meaning in their families, work and communities without the toxic stress of constant worry. 

Racist systems and behaviors are the cause of much financial insecurity, and therefore hunger, for BIPOC communities. The American Rescue Plan takes some small steps forward by recognizing the historic oppression of Black and other BIPOC farmers and providing direction and resources to the USDA to begin repairing the damage. A more just food system is a more resilient food system and one that connects with and serves everyone in our communities. 

That’s the optimism. There are still challenges, and one is that most of these transformational provisions are temporary. The economic damage already done won’t be quickly wiped away, even with $1,400 checks and the temporary changes outlined above. People have lost their life savings, their dignity, and their hope for the future. Building back will take time, focus, and commitment. 

We also know from years of experience that people who no longer meet the federal definition of “food insecure” can still struggle to make ends meet and put food on the table. The Vermont Foodbank and our hundreds of partners in every Vermont community will still be needed. And we will be here as long as necessary. 

After the great recession that began in 2008, it took 10 years for food insecurity to return to 2007 levels. We can’t let that happen again. 

My call to action is simple: Don’t forget. As we start hearing stories of recovery, and of the economy roaring back, remember to ask if everyone is included. Remember to ask if we’re reinvesting the recovery dividends into racially and economically just systems, and not returning to the same unjust and inequitable systems that exist now. Check in with me. We’ll go on this new journey together. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: John Sayles: The American Rescue Plan brings reason for renewed optimism.

The Farmers to Families Food Box program is now under review, after Vermont’s congressional delegation flagged “significant problems” with the program’s implementation. 

The situation is being evaluated by Bruce Summers, administrator of federal Agricultural Marketing Services, according to Rep. Peter Welch’s office. After the Vermont Democrat spoke with Summers on Thursday, the delegation followed up with a letter on Friday to Agriculture Secretary-designate Tom Vilsack.

By providing pickups at only seven locations in the entire state, and in only five of Vermont’s 14 counties, the New Jersey-based Global Trading Enterprises is failing to meet the terms of its contract, causing “significant problems,” says the joint letter sent by Welch and Sens. Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders.

The congressional delegation wrote that Global Trading submitted a bid that is “seemingly too low for them to deliver food boxes to the areas promised under the contract. As a result, they are failing to meet the needs of hungry Vermonters, falling back on an insufficient plan. … This will leave nearly 250 towns, and hundreds of Vermont families, without the food assistance they were promised under this federal program.” 

The letter asks the USDA to “investigate all violations to this point and open the contract for rebidding for March and April.”

In a press release, the delegation calls the program “disorganized, inadequate and opaque.”

“Our offices learned this week that Global Trading Partners told one local food shelf leader she would need to drive to the next county and wait in line for hours, just for the possibility of receiving boxes when the delivery truck arrived,” the letter states. It also noted that the USDA contract requires Global Trading “to provide last-mile delivery.”

Farmers to Families, now in its fifth round, is designed to address food insecurity, which has risen dramatically during the pandemic. Recent UVM surveys indicate that one in three Vermonters has experienced some form of food insecurity since the pandemic began. That’s triple the rate of food insecurity in 2018. 

Criticism of the USDA contract with Global Trading Enterprises began almost as soon as it was awarded. While there are networks already in place to distribute food, Global Trading Enterprises hasn’t been using them, according to the letter.

The Vermont Foodbank is a prime example. It has been involved with distributing the USDA food boxes since Farmers to Families began May 15. But Vermont Foodbank CEO John Sayles said it’s not currently working with Global Trading, and in fact has urged the USDA to find a better partner for food distribution.

“It would be valuable to have a vendor that was more interested in figuring out how to get these boxes distributed around the state in a way that we know how to do already, that we’ve been doing already,” Sayles told VTDigger.  

“The food boxes are getting here,” he said; the problem is that “they’re not being distributed as broadly and equitably as they could be.”

Sayles said the Foodbank will “continue to try and figure out how we can work with this vendor.”

Sayles said he was pleased with the first round of the program, which used a Vermont vendor called The Abbey Group that was able to incorporate Vermont products in the boxes. But that hasn’t been possible with other vendors, according to Sayles.

In part, that’s because government contracts are often awarded to the lowest bidder. In this case, the congressional delegation said, Global Trading Enterprises seems to have gone too low, and it’s not getting enough money to do the job well.

In the first three rounds, Norwich nonprofit Willing Hands got a contract to put food boxes together, said Gabe Zoerheide, executive director of the group.

“We were working with local vegetable growers. Pretty much all of what we purchased was very locally grown,” said Zoerheide. “It had a really nice economic impact for Vermont farmers.”

But in subsequent rounds, Zoerheide said, Willing Hands didn’t even bother applying because the program had changed and the price point was too low. 

“We don’t have the ability to source food that cheaply, whereas larger contractors can do that,” he said.

Now, Willing Hands is a “last mile” distributor; it receives boxes from Global Trading Enterprises and takes them to various food shelves in Vermont and New Hampshire.

He said switching contractors for Farmers for Families can be problematic, as inexperienced vendors try to figure out distribution avenues almost overnight.

While other vendors paid between $1.50 and $3 per box distributed, Zoerheide said that hasn’t been the case with Global Trading Enterprises. But even though Willing Hands doesn’t get that money, “we’ll do it,” Zoerheide said. “We’ll take the food and move it out. The most important thing is folks in our community get fed.”

Willing Hands now distributes commodity food packaged in large quantities for the vendor. That might mean a single meat package of 3 to 4 pounds or a 4-pound container of cottage cheese. 

The portions are designed for a family of six, not a single person living alone.

“Even if that meets the price point,” Zoerheide said, “even for a couple, I’m sure some of it goes to waste.”

The boxes have gotten bigger too, from 12 to 13 pounds when Willing Hands was providing boxes to up to around 30 pounds now — a difficult haul for a senior citizen to carry to the car.

“I’m glad somebody decided that they wanted to do this,” Zoerheide said of Farmers to Families. “But they should fix it. They can make it better.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Farmers to Families food program under review after criticism from Vermont delegation.

RUTLAND — The Vermont attorney general has reached a settlement with a Rutland gym owner who, at the onset of the pandemic, stayed open despite an executive order that required the gym to close.  

Under the terms of the settlement, Sean Manovill, owner of Club Fitness of Vermont, Inc., has agreed to comply with Gov. Phil Scott’s executive order and will make a $1,000 payment to the Vermont Foodbank’s Rutland Regional Distribution Center. 

“These are tough times for all Vermonters, including Vermont’s small businesses,” Attorney General TJ Donovan said in a statement Friday morning. “But even in these tough times, we all have to do our part. The vast majority of Vermonters have done the right thing by following the executive orders and the advice of public health experts.”

Donovan filed his first Covid-19-related civil enforcement complaint in May 2020 against Manovill, asking the court to require that the gym comply with the order by shutting down. The court soon filed a temporary restraining order that barred the Manovill from operating in-person and indoors. 

Manovill responded to the action by filing a countersuit, which claimed that the governor’s executive order was unconstitutional. Judge Robert Mello threw out the bid, in which Manovill also sought damages and alleged the state caused him emotional distress by forcing him to close.

“Defendants [Manovill and Club Fitness] appear not to recognize the reality of COVlD-19, the state of emergencies that have been announced throughout the country, and the attempts by courts at all levels to address situations similar to the present case,” Mello wrote in a footnote to his ruling in September.

The current executive order allows fitness centers to operate, but with reduced occupancy and restrictions on the use of locker rooms and common areas. 

The settlement was filed in the Rutland Superior Court on Friday morning for final approval.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Attorney general settles with Rutland gym owner.

The Vermont Foodbank has received its largest ever donation, from MacKenzie Scott, the philanthropist ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. 

The $9 million donation is part of a $4.2 billion burst of donations Scott announced this week in a post on Medium called “384 ways to help,” referring to the number of organizations in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico she has made contributions to.

The food bank is the only Vermont organization on the list.

John Sayles, CEO of the Vermont Foodbank said he received an email on Dec. 3 from a philanthropic adviser who said their client was interested in making a donation. Shortly thereafter, Sayles learned who was making the donation and how much it was for.

“And then I just spent about a day in shock,” Sayles said. 

The gift is “exponentially” bigger than any other the nonprofit has received, Sayles said. The amount is the equivalent of the organization’s annual operating budget.

The Vermont Foodbank is the largest anti-hunger organization in the state. The food bank collects donations from producers and retailers, and distributes food to 300 food shelves, senior centers, schools and hospitals statewide.

“We’re always trying to think big, think about questions like ‘What would we do if we got a $10 million gift,’ so we did have some thoughts about it,” Sayles said. “But still, it’s a big responsibility.”

Pre-pandemic, one in 10 Vermonters was considered food insecure. When Covid hit that number surged to one in three, and is now at one in four. Sayles said he thinks the numbers are even greater and believes the Vermont Foodbank is currently feeding, through one program or another, about a third of Vermonters. 

Sayles said they’ll likely spend the money trying to combat the “last mile problem” — making food as accessible as possible to people who need it most and might have trouble accessing it because of barriers in transportation or work schedules.

“We’re not like a grocery store that’s open seven days a week 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. We need to be able to get people the food they want and need where and when they need it,” he said.

He said they are considering home delivery, order ahead programs and longer hours for food shelves as ways to improve access.

“These funds will help us scale up some pilots and partnerships and hopefully find something that can make a longer term difference,” he said.

The money will also likely go toward targeting the root causes of food insecurity, namely poverty, systemic oppression and racism. 

He said it’s “a little daunting” to have been the only Vermont organization selected to receive the funds, especially knowing so many others could use financial help. It is troubling that government hasn’t stepped up to meet the need, he said.

“I will never miss an opportunity to say this: The charitable food network cannot be the solution to hunger,” Sayles said. “We’re an imperfect vehicle at best.”

3SquaresVT, the state’s foodstamps program, needs to grow exponentially, he said, so families can use money on an EBT card to buy food at the time and place that works for them without having to wait in line for food distributions. 

Scott used a data-driven approach to identify groups with “strong leadership teams and results,” paying particular attention to those in communities with high rates of food insecurity, racial inequality, poverty and low access to philanthropic capital. 

As part of Scott’s divorce last year with Bezos, she received 4% of the outstanding shares in Amazon, then worth $38.4 billion. As Amazon stocks surge, the shares are now worth nearly $60 billion.

Scott is the third-richest woman in the world. In 2019, she signed the Giving Pledge, promising to give away most of her fortune in her lifetime.

Scott’s blog post said that in determining the size of the gifts, her team talked with nonprofit leaders and local experts to determine community needs, program outcomes, and each organization’s capacity to absorb and make effective use of funding.

“I think we could probably do more, frankly,” Sayles said. “I hope this inspires other people who are thinking about where a gift would make sense to say ‘Hey, a billionaire thinks this organization has the capacity to handle this money and do some good, maybe we can add to that.’” 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Billionaire MacKenzie Scott gifts Vermont Foodbank $9 million, largest donation in its history.

Before Covid-19, one in every 10 Vermonters struggled with food insecurity. Now one in every four residents in the state struggles to obtain adequate nutrition.

John Sayles, CEO of the Vermont Foodbank, joined VTDigger on Wednesday to answer reader questions about food insecurity during the pandemic and beyond. Below is a partial transcript, condensed for length and clarity. 

Anne Galloway: How is this crisis different from the one that we experienced with the Great Recession? What kinds of trends are you seeing? Is this going to really impact people differently this winter?

John Sayles: It is profoundly different than what we experienced in 2007, 2008. We have not experienced, I think, across the country, a food security issue or hunger issue like this, really, in a generation. It is deeper and wider than we’ve seen before. 

To contrast it to the Great Recession, where we saw a huge spike…Then, we expected that unemployment would remain high for a period of time and then go down. And it also affected some people more than others. There were certain types of industries and people with certain types of jobs that lost jobs and have lost them for longer. 

Now this, Covid, is basically shutting down large parts of the economy — the retail, the restaurant industry, hospitality industry in general. In Vermont, I think, at one point we saw 70,000 people applying for unemployment. And it’s not only the people who are unemployed, it’s older Vermonters who are justifiably scared to leave their homes that are really susceptible to this, and aren’t getting out to go grocery shopping, and are worried about people coming into their homes bringing things, or getting a ride somewhere. 

It’s really hard to plan what’s going to happen next. We just don’t know what’s going to happen. We know how recessions work. We don’t know how pandemics work. So this could be over in six months, we thought, or it could be over in two years. We’re finding out more about that. But the up and down nature, and the lack of understanding over the long run, makes it much different.

Anne Galloway: That uncertainty must be really difficult for people to experience, especially since the federal government has played a role here — there have been some programs that have supported people — but those are expiring soon. I wondered if you could talk about that — when the benefits might be re-upped and whether there’s going to be a gap that people are facing in between.

John Sayles: There were a number of coronavirus relief bills that passed. The first one had some additional resources for foodbanks and food. And it was the second or third that had the PPP, the payroll protection program to support businesses, the increase in unemployment benefits, the $600 federal boost, and the $1200 dollar checks that went out to everyone over 18. 

We had seen at the very beginning this real surge in people who were losing jobs, and justifiably really concerned about the future, going to food shelves and meal sites. It was in April and May when we worked with the National Guard and FEMA and had meals ready to eat, MRE kits, provided to Vermont, trucked in here and distributed across the state. Because we were just worried that people had an urgent need that we weren’t going to be able to fill more quickly. And we did see that real boost in people looking for help. And then with those extra benefits — the $600 unemployment, the $1200 checks — we actually saw a decrease in demand. Fewer people going to food shelves, fewer people going to the Foodbank-run distributions around the state, which we call Veggie Van Go. 

It was easy to explain: People had money, and they were able to go and shop for the food that they wanted and needed. And then as over the two months after that, we really saw things slowly ramp up again. During that time, we also saw the federal government institute what’s called the Farmers to Families food box program, a program run by the USDA and the Foodbank as a partner. And we do daily distributions of boxes of pre-packed fresh fruits and vegetables and dairy and meat products. We’re doing, right now, 576 of those a day. We do one a day in different locations all around the state. You have to make a reservation for that, to pick up a box, and the reservations are full at every distribution. So we’ve seen we’ve seen the need go back up again. 

There’s also now the Everyone Eats program, which people may have heard about, where some of the CARES Act funding that came to Vermont was allocated and being used to pay for restaurants to continue operating and producing meals, and then those meals are being given away. That’s been very popular. Over the course of that program, it’s going to be about half a million meals that’ll be distributed. 

As you mentioned, all this support goes away on December 31. CARES Act funding expires. Any money that’s not spent has to be returned to the federal government. Money that’s come to the Foodbank from the state — $4.7 million to purchase food, to make grants to your local food shelves and meal sites, and just pay the operational expense of moving all that food. There have been a number of people in Vermont who have been losing their extended unemployment benefits. So there’s a real concern that come January, if the federal government doesn’t act again, that we’re going to see another surge in some pretty dire need, not just for food but also for other basics like housing.

Hannah, Barre: Given that the level of food insecurity has increased that the pandemic — once the worst of Covid-19 passes, can we expect to see the numbers return to pre-pandemic numbers? Or do you expect to see residual challenges when it comes to food and security?

John Sayles: I think my answer is going to be based somewhat on what happened back in the Great Recession also. When the economy does start coming back, which eventually it will, what we found is that the folks who are relying on food assistance, a lot of them, are kind of the last ones to come back. These are people who maybe were working two or three jobs and lost one of them or got hours reduced. And they may be the last ones to really be hired back. 

I call hunger a leading and lagging indicator of a bad economy. So we generally start seeing an increase in need prior to something like the Great Recession. Covid came on so quickly that there really was no leading in, but there’s going to be a lag. I’m expecting that would be 12-18 months past when the newspaper headlines are, “everything’s back.” We’re preparing for that, and we expect to need to provide above and beyond what we would normally expect to for quite a while to come.

Anne Galloway: It sounds like, from what you’ve said, that you’re not sure that you can replace the kind of mass feeding programs that the federal government is efficient at offering. Is that true? How are you going to handle that?

John Sayles: That’s true. The charitable food system was never set up to be a mass feeding program. And in fact, as soon as Covid hit, we started talking to the state and actually put together a mass feeding team that still is still meeting and making sure that the needs are being met. 

Once the federal resources go away, we’re going to be doing everything we can to fill in that gap. Fortunately, the people in Vermont, and outside of Vermont too, have been so generous and supportive that we’ll have the ability to continue on at the current level for some period of time. Not a long time — we’re still going to need resources. 

But the federal government needs to act. This is just too big for a nonprofit organization. And I would say this is too big, really, for the state of Vermont to address, for people who live in Vermont. Just the 3 Squares Vermont benefits — it’s about $10 million a month in normal times that are going to the 60-70,000 people that are getting those benefits. So we’re just going to do the best we can. And also we are doing a lot of advocacy at the federal level — working with our congressional delegation, working with our national organization — to help guide the federal government to make sure that whatever they do is something that’s really going to have an impact on the ground. 

Ev, Woodbury: I believe this statistic, but please tell us how we know that one in four Vermonters is experiencing food insecurity. And please put them in human perspective because we all need to be motivated to do something to help.

John Sayles: How do we know? Well, we actually know because we ask people. There are a couple different surveys that happened across Vermont. The Census Bureau does a monthly survey, and that information feeds into the USDA and some of their economists, and the USDA is doing periodic surveys also. So they put out data on the food insecurity levels. 

In addition to that, the Foodbank, with our national organization Feeding America, is doing surveys also. And those numbers generally line up. We can also correlate those numbers to the number of people that are getting 3 Squares Vermont benefits. So we’ll see those numbers increase and decrease kind of in tandem with the numbers that the Foodbank is looking at.

Just recently there’s a consortium with some leading folks from the University of Vermont and the Gund Institute. They’ve actually been doing periodic surveys since March that have shown it’s actually more than one in four right now. We’ve seen since Covid began in March that at least 30% of the people in Vermont have had the experience of food insecurity at one point. That could be somebody who’s lost their job for two months and now they’re back to work and things are OK. But a lot of people are seeing continued issues. 

I just want to point out, food insecurity is really financial insecurity. It’s harder to go to the grocery store now, but there’s plenty of food there. So it’s really just about people not having the financial resources to be able to buy the food they want and they need. 

Ev also asked about how we humanize this. If you look back to a story that was in VTDigger to a woman named Amanda, who had been homeless and really knew what food insecurity was like — that is a common story. People who, for whatever reason, find themselves in a position where they don’t have a home, are automatically food insecure. Well beyond that, food insecurity for people in Vermont can be just eating ramen noodles three nights a week for dinner because you can’t afford fruits and vegetables and dairy and meat to put on your table. It can mean buying hotdogs and macaroni and cheese for the kids, while maybe the parents eat a bag of chips and a two liter bottle of soda, which is really cheap, but can fill you up enough to get you through the night. 

What we find over and over again in talking to families and people showing up, is that people will do anything to make sure their kids are fed. Oftentimes we hear stories of parents who are skipping meals and are making sacrifices to make sure that their kids have the food that they need. If you go to our website, you can also look at our blog and see a lot of stories of people working very hard and trying very hard. It’s just tough these days to bring those ends together and have a roof over your head and make sure there’s enough food on the table.

Read the story on VTDigger here: FAQ LIVE: Vermont Foodbank CEO John Sayles discusses hunger during Covid.