Rural Vermont’s Betrayal of Rural Farmers

Exploring a Nonprofit's True Mission

In 2016, our Irasburg farm was visited by a Vermont Agency of Agriculture agent who informed me it was illegal for me to sell halves of beef. I decided to fight what was obviously an unconstitutional attempt to restrict small farms from centuries of practice, in ways that would hurt our businesses (especially on-farm slaughterers and custom slaughter facilities!), reduce health and safety, and compromise humane animal slaughter. In the course of that battle, I encountered Rural Vermont, a 501(c)(3) organization purporting to support local farms, and I joined.

However, I soon realized that Rural Vermont had helped craft the law that contained a “sunset provision” on on-farm slaughter, and so in fact, it agreed (and helped to draft) a bill to ban all on-farm slaughter in Vermont within three years. This is not what I signed up for. Farmers, slaughterers, and processors descended on the Vermont State House, the sunset bill failed, and now Vermont farmers can legally sell quarters of animals to their customers. This was a major win for Vermont farmers that would not have been possible had Rural Vermont’s plan proceeded.

I have grown increasingly frustrated by organizations that receive the benefits of 501(c)(3) status as “nonprofits” and then engage in active political advocacy that is overtly partisan. Rural Vermont is a charity that purports to be about helping local farms, but has branched into numerous far-left ventures that deviate from its stated mission. I think Vermonters, especially those being asked to support this organization monetarily, should be aware of its now kaleidoscopic political frenzy and extremist positions.

Imagine if a person donated to the American Cancer Society, then learned it had decided instead to use the money to fight for animal rights or abortion clinics. This is just a matter of organizational integrity and respecting the corporate entity. There are issues that I agree with that are advanced by Rural Vermont, but others that have entered its purposes that I find deeply offensive and counter to its stated mission of helping local farms. I seek to inform my readers about this here, so they can reach their own conclusions.

What is Rural Vermont’s Mission?

Rural Vermont claims its “mission is to organize, educate and advocate in collaboration with local and global movements to strengthen the social, ecological and economic health of the agrarian communities that connect us all.”

It is affiliated with numerous far-left Marxist organizations and invokes racial (racist!) divisions over skin color while pretending it is about supporting farmers and “all” Vermonters. But it can’t do both, and has decided not to advocate for “all” Vermonters despite pretending to. Rural Vermont’s “policy director,” Graham Unangst-Rufenacht, boasts of Rural Vermont’s membership in “La Via Campesina, a peasant and food sovereignty-based organization which is one of the largest social movements in the world (where our Director of Grass Roots Organizing Mollie Wills is the primary liaison).”

Vermont farmers and their customers aren’t much represented by La Via Campesina – unless they are hardcore social justice Marxists.

For example, a recent La Via Campesina article titled “Building a Collective Political Agenda for Systemic Transformation” declares:

“...we are calling for a new mobilization within and beyond the food sovereignty movement, to build our response at both global and local levels, and tighten alliances with climate justice, antiracism, health, labour, feminist, and social and solidarity economy movements and organisations. Systemic transformation is now or never.”

Viva la revolution, Vermonters!

Rural Vermont is allied with Migrant Justice, a Vermont group that states:

“The seeds of Migrant Justice were planted in 2009 after the death of a young worker, José Obeth Santiz Cruz, on a Vermont dairy farm. Originally from Chiapas, Mexico, the eighteen-year-old was pulled into a mechanized gutter scraper without proper safety equipment and was strangled to death by his own clothing.

“This tragedy revealed the existence of a community of approximately 1,200 immigrants living and working on farms around the state, sustaining Vermont’s iconic dairy industry.

“Our mission is to build the voice, capacity, and power of the immigrant farmworker community to organize for economic justice and human rights. We bring together community members to analyze shared problems and envision collective solutions. Through an ongoing investment in leadership development, Migrant Justice members deepen their skills and knowledge to organize for long-term, systemic change.”

There’s the Marxist collectivization built on racism yet again! I advocate for farm rights for all farm workers. I have gifted parts of my cows to migrant workers at Vermont dairy farms, and I do not advocate to deport farm workers who are not breaking our laws. But like many Vermonters, I know white citizens who have been killed or maimed in accidents similar to this one. I can list many of them, including my Uncle Ronald Stoddard, my dear friend and Barton neighbor Henry Labrecque, dairy farmers’ own children, and others – all “white” citizens.

These white-skinned farmers are also the employers of most these 1,200 migrant workers: when milk prices are down, these farmers often work not only for less than minimum wage, but for a negative hourly earning when milk prices drop below cost of production. Thousands of “white families” have lost their farms over the decades because of a colorblind economy. No one in Vermont’s farming community wants ANYONE killed in an accident, but farming is the most dangerous occupation in the world. To racialize one tragic death is to exploit skin color and immigration status against the majority of Vermont’s farmers – far more white citizens have been killed on Vermont farms than Latino immigrants!

So which “mission” is Rural Vermont choosing – “one for all,” or all for one socialist Borg? It currently has it both slippery ways, at taxpayer expense because of its 501(c)(3) status. Furthermore, isn’t it false advertising or even fraud to claim you support all Vermonters while seeding divisions and becoming overtly far Left? Let’s see what else Rural Vermont has been up to….

Cannabis “Equity” and Higher Taxes For All!

Rural Vermont supports taxing wealthy Vermonters to fund cannabis operations that favor “BIPOC” weed sellers over white – a violation of the Equal Protection Clause and established US Supreme Court holdings. Rural Vermont is part of the Vermont Cannabis Equity Colation, which includes NOFA VT, VT Racial Justice Alliance, Vermont Growers’ Association, and Green Mountain Patients’ Alliance.

I support hemp as a viable farming product, but Vermont’s legalization of recreational pot has been a horror show for the environment, building new construction to use fossil fuels and plastics to grow inside what can easily be grown outdoors. The state imposed a massive (regressive) sales tax to milk this faux libertarian cow. Prices for weed are so high that the black market is rebuilding – without the state fees and taxes, rapacious bank fees and insurance rates, racist allocations, or environmental destruction caused by indoor grow factories.

But Rural Vermont advocates to raise income taxes to fund more “equity:

“This coalition proposes policy to increase taxes on personal annual income over $500,000 by 3%. The proposal would raise over $74 million each year in state tax revenue and would only affect the wealthiest 1% of Vermont taxpayers - bringing their tax burden more in line with that of most people in Vermont. Rural VT sees this as low hanging fruit for addressing economic equity and public resource needs in Vermont.”

Not all Vermonters will see this as low-hanging equity fruit, including many dairy farmers. What was this organization’s mission again? I forgot in all the racist, Marxist, baloney sandwiches it doles out. What of farmers who earn more than $500,000 on a 2,000-acre parcel while employing dozens of people? Do they earn too much money for Rural Vermont’s liking?

In my next Substack, we will examine more of Rural Vermont’s far-left advocacy that does nothing to support Vermont farmers.