Vermont agriculture remains dominated by corporate colonialism, where mostly foreign (out of state and out of country) corporations are exploiting our resources and labor while accumulating great wealth elsewhere – London, in the case of Ben & Jerry’s and its owner, Unilever. The ice cream giant is now awash in nearly a billion dollars in sales a year and yet continues to pay its Vermont farmers less than the cost of production. Worse, from the taxpayers’ perspective, the Vermont legislature is not holding Ben & Jerry’s accountable for its central role in the state’s water crisis, instead taxing tourists for the cleanup.
And so it goes, the accumulation of indignities in the modern rural world, whether it’s Vermont or West Virginia, Idaho or New Mexico, it all operates under the same formula: undervalue production, exploit labor, and count on taxpayer bailouts to clean up the messes, all so as to maximize corporate profits and growth – elsewhere.
Frankly, we’ve seen enough. And Vermont has given enough to a cheap, commodity-based agricultural economy that has stolen our rural vitality and wrecked our soil and water resources. Read “Our Mission,” a plan for “healthy farms and a livable planet, one of our founding documents (link below).
Together, we can fix this.
