“One of the things that we also recommend is that if you’re going to be purchasing especially large gifts this year, maybe you’re getting a really nice piece of jewelry, art, some kind of computer, or TV that’s costly, you may want to add that to your homeowner’s insurance policy,” said Reiss.
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While this was no ordinary Thanksgiving holiday for most Americans thanks to the surging wave of COVID-19 cases around the country, it was still a time to give thanks for anything that happened this year which wasn’t horrible. The only thing President Trump seems to be thankful for, however, is the opportunity to publicly wallow in his failure to retain power — both electorally and extra-legally. Though the president effectively conceded the election last week when he finally authorized his administration to work with President-elect Joe Biden on a presidential transition process, the soon-to-be ex-president still spent his holiday weekend raging against the dying of his White House light (at least when he wasn’t golfing). His campaign fights on, as well, though that has just meant adding more humiliations to the pile. The $3 million recount Trump requested in Wisconsin only expanded Biden’s lead in the state, while the only gains the president’s hapless legal team has been able to make have been giving more judges — including ones appointed by Trump — new opportunities to compose democracy-affirming dismissals of all the campaign’s baseless lawsuits.
It is not worth debunking every ridiculously false claim Trump has made about the election outcome over the last four days; he is far past the point of becoming a gold-plated broken record on that subject. But below are some of the most notable new absurdities he spent the holiday adding to his never-ending loser routine.
On Thanksgiving, Trump ranted about his loss, dressed down a reporter, and said the Electoral College shouldn’t vote for BidenThe president marked Thanksgiving by making calls to several American service members in front of the press at the White House, often showering himself with praise during those calls, and later took questions from reporters for the first time since losing the election. During the press event, he recounted numerous baseless allegations of voter fraud, repeating the words “fraud,” “fraudulent,” or “defraud” a total of 23 times, and “massive” and “rigged” eight times each. Trump also referred to Biden’s 80 million votes seven times.
During the Q&A, Trump was reminded by Reuters reporter Jeff Mason that the Electoral College was voting for Biden on December 14, then asked if he would concede after they had. “It’s going to be a very hard thing to concede because we know there was massive fraud,” Trump responded, adding that if the Electoral College does vote for Biden, “they made a mistake, because this election was a fraud.” After Mason continued to press him on whether or not he would concede, Trump shot back, “Don’t talk to me that way. You’re just a lightweight. Don’t talk to me that way. I’m the President of the United States. Don’t ever talk to the president that way.”
Trump said he would leave the White House if the Electoral College voted for Biden (which it will), then called the U.S. a “third world country”Trump was asked, “If the electoral college does elect President-Elect Joe Biden, are you not going to leave this building?” At this point, he seemed to acknowledge, for the first time, that he would voluntarily leave the White House when his presidency ends. “Certainly I will,” he responded. “Certainly I will, and you know that.” But then he claimed the U.S. was “like a third world country” and that “the whole world is laughing at our electoral process.” He also ranted about “glitches” in election computer systems and the country’s “stupid machinery,” before complaining about how Biden was making cabinet selections.
Trump then attacked media coverage of him saying he would leave the White House if the Electoral College voted for BidenThe president tweeted afterward that “the real message of such a [press] conference never gets out” — and that the “primary point made was that the 2020 Election was RIGGED, and that I WON!”
Trump wanted credit for the emerging COVID-19 vaccines — or at least wanted to make sure Biden didn’t get creditThanksgiving, of course, is when we give thanks for Trump’s non-existent role in developing a COVID-19 vaccine. Explained the president during his Thursday Q&A with reporters: “Don’t let [Biden] take credit for the vaccines because the vaccines were me and I pushed people harder than they’ve ever been pushed before. And we got that approved and through, and nobody’s ever seen anything like it … But the vaccines, there are those that says one of the greatest things. It’s a medical miracle. Don’t let anyone try and take credit for it.”
During a Fox News interview on Sunday, Trump added that “I came up with vaccines that people didn’t think we’d have for five years.”
The Trump administration’s “Operation Warp Speed” program has played a role in funding some of the efforts to develop a vaccine, but pharmaceutical companies got started on that process while Trump was still denying COVID-19 would ever become a problem, and some didn’t even participate in Warp Speed at all. Meanwhile, the president has done far more to sideline and discredit scientists during the pandemic than he or his administration has done to assist them.
Trump said he didn’t want to talk about his 2024 re-run at the White House — which he is reportedly considering launching on Inauguration DayThe president dismissed a reporter’s question about whether or not he was planning to run for president again. The next day, the Daily Beast reported that:
Trump called Georgia’s Republican secretary of State “an enemy of the people”According to three people familiar with the conversations, the president, who refuses to acknowledge he lost the 2020 election as he clearly did, has not just talked to close advisers and confidants about a potential 2024 run to reclaim the White House but about the specifics of a campaign launch. The conversations have explored, among other things, how Trump could best time his announcement so as to keep the Republican Party behind him for the next four years. Two of these knowledgeable sources said the president has, in the past two weeks, even floated the idea of doing a 2024-related event during Biden’s inauguration week, possibly on Inauguration Day, if his legal effort to steal the 2020 election ultimately fails.
The president and some of his closest associates have already started surveying prominent donors to get a sense of who would be with him, or perhaps against him, if he chose to run in the 2024 election. Some top Trump allies have told The Daily Beast that they are doing what they can to stay in the president’s good graces, calculating that doing so will help ensure a seat at the table and a future in the party—in the event he runs again.
While complaining to reporters about Biden’s narrow victory in Georgia — where no evidence of voter fraud has been uncovered, let alone evidence of a vast voter fraud conspiracy involving long-deceased Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez, as Trump and his legal advisers have claimed — the president once again attacked Georgia’s secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. His unwillingness to effectively help Trump steal the election has drawn the ire of the president and his allies for weeks. On Thursday, Trump swatted away the fact that Raffensperger supported him and donated to his campaign, calling the secretary of State — who has become a pariah within the Georgia GOP and received death threats as a result of the attacks — “an enemy of the people.”
This is what Raffensperger and his wife told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about the death threats in an interview this weekend:
Trump falsely accused Twitter of inventing a “#DiaperDon” trend“The very first one that we got was really a warning,” Tricia Raffensperger said. “Now it’s every sexual connotation. It’s horrific. Who am I for you to do that to? I’m just a regular person just like they are, and their wives and their daughters and their mothers. Would you say that to your mother?”
The latest round were sent from a dummy account meant to look like Raffensperger directly threatening his wife.
“It’s vulgar,” he said. “It’s disgusting.”
Even as he has had to have around-the-clock security and news of the attacks against him have been publicized, the response from the Republicans who aren’t attacking him has been silence. Multiple requests for comment to Republican lawmakers who have supported him in the past were declined or not returned. “I’ll take a pass,” said one.
In response to the president’s endless sore-loser routine on Thanksgiving, “#DiaperDon” eventually became a number one trend on Twitter — and the president definitely noticed. “Twitter is sending out totally false ‘Trends’ that have absolutely nothing to do with what is really trending in the world,” Trump responded in a tweet on Friday. “They make it up, and only negative ‘stuff’.”
Trump alleged that Biden only received 1,000 views for his Thanksgiving address, citing it as proof he couldn’t have gotten 80 million votesAs CNN’s Brian Stelter pointed out, the false stat cited by the OAN report came from some random tweet. His address actually received hundreds of thousands of views.
Many of Trump’s tweets over the weekend promoted content on OAN and Newsmax — part of his transparent ongoing effort to punish Fox News over its failure to breathlessly support his efforts to overturn the election.
Trump vowed to “use 125 percent” of his energy to prove he didn’t lose the election, and called for the Supreme Court to overturn the resultsDuring his first one-on-one interview since the election on Sunday morning, Trump told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo that he planned to use “use 125% of my energy” of his energy to continue contesting the election well into next year. “It’s not like you’re going to change my mind,” the president added, “my mind will not change in six months.”
Referring to the mythical massive pile of evidence that the election was stolen — which no one has or will ever see — Trump insisted that “You need a judge that’s willing to hear a case. You need a Supreme Court that’s willing to make a real big decision based on everything.” He seemed to realize that wouldn’t happen, however, later acknowledging that “It’s hard to get into the Supreme Court.”
He also repeated some variation of the word “fraud” another 23 times during the interview.
Trump implied that the Justice Department and FBI was “involved” in the non-existent plot against his reelectionDuring what was essentially a 45-minute rambling monologue on Bartiromo’s show, Trump complained about the lack of assistance his effort to steal the election has gotten from the Department of Justice and the FBI, then suggested that maybe they too were working against him:
This is a total fraud. And how the FBI and Department of Justice — I don’t know, maybe they’re involved. But how people are allowed to get away with this stuff is unbelievable. … Missing in action. Can’t tell you where they are. I ask, “Are they looking at it?” Everyone says, “Yes, they’re looking at it.”
From the resigned tone of Trump’s voice, it seemed clear he knew they weren’t taking him seriously.
Trump attacked Georgia’s GOP governor, Brian Kemp, and said he was “ashamed” he ever endorsed himThe president complained to Bartiromo that Kemp, who Trump endorsed in his race against Democrat Stacey Abrams in 2018, has “done absolutely nothing” to help him steal the election.
Trump complained about “massive dumps”On both Thursday and Sunday, the president spoke out against “massive dumps” of votes for Biden following Election Day (which were, in fact, totally legal late-reported votes from heavily Democratic areas in various states).
Then again, if anyone knows anything about massive dumps, it’s definitely the president who continues to preside over the most massive dumpster fire in the history of American politics.
The Link Lonk
Kristi O’Rourke and Shana Adams of the Chester Christmas Committee flank the Grinch, who is on hand to attempt to steal the West Virginia city’s Christmas celebration. The 34th annual Chester Hometown Christmas will be held from 9 to 3 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 5 in the city’s downtown with some pandemic friendly modifications. (Photo by Stephanie Ujhelyi)
CHESTER — Organizers of the city’s downtown Christmas celebration are bound and determined that even a pandemic will dampen their holiday spirits.
Although they have had to modify this year’s celebration, the 34th annual Chester’s Hometown Christmas still will move forward, according to Kristi O’Rourke, who helps to coordinate the event.
Most of their activities have to be outdoors, so hopefully the weather is nice.
While the parade and majority of kids’ activities had to be canceled, O’Rourke noted that there is plenty to see. For example, there will be an open air market on Fourth Street, which will be closed for the event, and the American Legion will have plenty of tasty favorites available takeout only.
Santa and the Grinch are even expected to make appearances along with Cindy Lou Who.
A basket auction will benefit the F.I.S.H. food pantry in East Liverpool. Tickets can be purchased either six for $5 or $1 each for donated goods from area businesses including Fiestaware, local pizza establishments, bakeries and other businesses.
The $100 Walmart gift card from Ludovici law office tends to be a favorite especially around the holidays, she notes.
Downtown Chester businesses also can enter a window decorating contest centered around the theme, You Cannot Steal Our Christmas, with the top three favorites as chosen on the group’s Facebook page winning Fiestaware plates.
O”Rourke stresses the importance of attendees observing the Centers for Disease Control COVID guidelines (such as face masks and social distancing) to keep the event safe and fun for everyone.
Committee members also include Shana Adams, Wendi DeCapio, Nikki Six, Holly Adams Cathy Ash and Amber Groves.
Anyone wanting to sign up as an open air market or wanting more information about the event and its offerings can call O’Rourke at 330-383-3940 or email at kckoping@hotmail.com
The Link Lonk
As the Trump presidency fades to black, it is time for Washington to get to work. In embracing Joe Biden, the American people cast a vote for civility, pragmatism and competence. Lawmakers now have a duty to hunker down and find ways to make progress on critical issues. But with both chambers of Congress narrowly divided and ideologically polarized, coming together on even the most modest deals could prove daunting.
One promising move under consideration: bringing back congressional earmarks.
Loosely speaking, earmarks are spending requests — or, depending on your definition, also limited tax or tariff benefits — inserted into bills at the behest of individual lawmakers for the benefit of specific entities in specific locations. Think: funding for a domestic violence crisis center in Alaska or for STEM programs in a rural school district in Colorado.
In the big picture, earmarks add up to little more than a rounding error, generally constituting not more than 1 percent of the federal budget. They are used to determine spending priorities, not spending levels, meaning they determine how the pie gets divided rather than how big it is.
As conceived, earmarks allow the people who presumably best understand a state or district — its elected officials — to direct federal dollars to where they are most needed. In practice, they also gets used for all kinds of daffy or ill-conceived projects. Remember the infamous Bridge to Nowhere? Classic earmarking. At its most vile, the process veers into organized bribery, as special interests pursue ethically questionable, and occasionally illegal, means to get lawmakers to champion their pet issues. In the mid-2000s, a handful of earmark-related scandals landed some prominent political players in prison. Earmarks became a tidy symbol of government waste and corruption.
In 2007, the Democratic-controlled House began reforming the practice, increasing transparency and accountability. Members were required to attach their names to requests and to certify that they had no financial interests in the projects. Beneficiaries were limited to nonprofit entities or public projects. In 2011, Republicans assumed control of the chamber and went even further, declaring a moratorium on earmarks.
This ban has made Congress less accountable and more dysfunctional. It is time to abandon the experiment.
Despite their bad reputation, earmarks are not inherently corrupt. Since America’s earliest days, they have proved a useful tool for building coalitions. (The first known instance of congressional earmarking dates to the Lighthouse Act of 1789.) Nothing greases the gears of government quite like pork. A lawmaker may not care for a larger bill per se, but the ability to slip in a little something for the voters back home can be a compelling motivator. “Without earmarks to offer, it’s hard to herd the cats,” John Boehner, the former House speaker, once observed.
It is this utility that many earmark opponents object to. They do not want costly legislation to be easier to pass. The budget watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste warns that “earmarks cause members to vote for excessively expensive spending bills that cost tens or hundreds of billions of dollars in exchange for a few earmarks worth a few million or sometimes just thousands of dollars.”
Considering the thicket of crises the nation is facing, big-ticket legislation, including another meaty round of coronavirus relief, is precisely what is needed.
Of course, the earmark ban didn’t really ban earmarks. Pork spending simply became stealthier, with some members falling back on similar, more convoluted moves such as “phonemarking” or “lettermarking.” Worse, non-earmark earmarks are not subject to the same transparency requirements, making them harder to track. So much for increased accountability.
There are also questions of constitutional authority. When Congress declines to specify how the money it appropriates is spent, the executive branch is happy to fill the void. Curtailing congressional earmarks “simply shifts that power more explicitly to a president and a cadre of unelected bureaucrats,” according to John Hudak, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution and the author of “Presidential Pork.” “Eliminating earmarking is a serious abdication of power by Congress which empowers a branch of government beyond what the Founders intended,” he has argued.
This argument should have special appeal for Republican lawmakers, who like to complain that unelected bureaucrats and unaccountable regulators have too much authority.
Since 2011, clusters of lawmakers have periodically flirted with restoring earmarks, only to abandon the efforts. The practice remains easy to demagogue, especially with mistrust of government running high. In the wake of this month’s election, House Democrats are approaching the issue with renewed energy. In a recent interview with Roll Call, Steny Hoyer, the majority leader, said that once the new chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee is chosen, she would begin asking members to submit “congressional initiatives for their districts and their states.”
Members in both chambers should facilitate this process — working to ensure that the new system has maximum transparency and sufficient oversight, of course. Earmarks are not a magic cure-all for today’s hyperpolarized politics. They are unlikely to, for instance, convince conservatives to support the Green New Deal or members of the progressive “Squad” to back corporate tax breaks. But restoring positive incentives for lawmakers to embrace negotiation and compromise could provide at least some counterbalance to the partisan forces fueling rigidity and gridlock.
The Food and Drug Administration may approve a Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use within the next few weeks. Within days of that green light, millions of doses will start making their way to patients. The distribution and administration will be logistically complex and difficult. And the study of a vaccine’s safety and efficacy doesn’t end with FDA approval. Researchers will be gathering evidence on how well these products work in the real world.
The vaccine is likely to reduce the odds of serious or symptomatic infection....
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HONOLULU — Software engineer Raymond Berger begins his work day at 5 a.m., before the sun comes up over Hawaii.
Rising early is necessary because the company he works for is in New York City, five hours ahead of Maui, where he is renting a home with a backyard that’s near the beach.
“It’s a little hard with the time zone difference,” he said of living in Hawaii and working remotely in New York. “But generally I have a much better quality of life.”
The pandemic is giving many workers the freedom to do their jobs from anywhere. Now that Hawaii’s economy is reeling from dramatically fewer tourists, a group of state officials and community leaders wants more people like Berger to help provide an alternative to relying on short-term visitors.
Coinciding with the approach of winter in other parts of the U.S., “Movers & Shakas” — a reference to the Hawaii term for the “hang loose” hand gesture — launched Sunday as a campaign to attract former residents and those from elsewhere to set up remote offices with a view.
They’re touting Hawaii’s paradisiacal and safety attributes: among the lowest rates per capita of COVID-19 infections in the country.
The first 50 applicants approved starting Sunday receive a free, roundtrip ticket to Honolulu. Applicants pledge to respect Hawaii’s culture and natural resources and participants must commit several hours a week to helping a local nonprofit.
It didn’t take much to convince Abbey Tizzano to leave behind her Austin, Texas, apartment to join four Silicon Valley friends in a rented house in Kahala, Honolulu’s version of Beverly Hills.
She’s keeping Central time zone hours while working in account management for a software company, allowing her to end the work day early enough to enjoy long hikes along mountain ridges or walk five minutes to the beach.
“It’s like I live two lives right now. There’s the corporate side for … the early mornings,” Tizzano said. “And then there’s just like the Hawaii lifestyle after I get off work around noon or 1 p.m.”
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Editor’s note: VTDigger writer Anne Wallace Allen and photographer Glenn Russell spent time talking Nov. 11 with Jack and Anne Lazor at their home and farm for this story. Jack Lazor, who had cancer, died late Saturday.
WESTFIELD — Sebastien Latraverse was 13 the first time he visited Lyle Edwards’ 50-cow organic dairy. He took an immediate liking to farming, and started working side-by-side with Edwards, learning the business and filling in as a milker from time to time.
“I always lived for the weekends and summers where I could get out of the city,” said Latraverse, who grew up partly in Montreal, where his father was a lawyer, and in Jay, where his mother had a home.
Now 24, Latraverse is still as committed to dairy farming as he was at 13. He’s entered a partnership with Edwards, 68, that will allow Edwards to retire in five years and Latraverse to slowly take ownership.
That’s a scenario that agriculture groups would like to see repeated more often as farmers reach retirement age and farms go out of business.
In dairy, which makes up 80 percent of the farming in Vermont, the average age of a farmer is 60-plus, and an estimated 10% of the state’s dairy farms stop producing milk every year. The state has lost half of its dairy farms since 2002, and has only about 650 left now.
And there are other reasons farming is just more difficult now than it was 25 years ago, said Jack Lazor, who has operated Butterworks Farm in Westfield with his wife, Anne, for more than 40 years.
“We’re so much more regulated now than ever before, not only agricultural regulations but the Department of Labor,” he said. “They don’t make it easy for you.”
Competition in organic dairying has also become intense.
“There’s a lot of organic brands out there that look like they were made by your next-door neighbor but are made in a big factory in Wisconsin,” Jack Lazor said. “They really know how to set up their packaging, and the marketing has changed.”
The succession of farm ownership is different from that of another business because “the economics are pretty unique,” said Don Devost, a partner at Marble Trail Financial in Middlebury. Farms often hold a valuable asset in their land, and sometimes a retiring farmer can make more money developing that land than selling the farm, said Devost, whose parents were both farmers.
“And farmers typically have quite a lot of debt, more than other businesses,” he said.
Vermont groups such as the Intervale Center in Burlington, the Vermont Land Trust, the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund, and the Northeast Organic Farmers Association in Richmond have been working in various capacities for years to sustain agriculture. They want to protect agricultural land from conversion to real estate development or other uses. There are also several national groups that help people get started in farming.
A conventional dairy farm isn’t generally considered profitable unless it’s milking at least 500 cows, said Sam Smith, a farm business specialist at the Intervale, which offers a suite of programs aimed at helping existing and prospective farmers.
But “to transfer a farm with 500 milkers is a really heavy lift for a young farmer. It’s just too expensive,” Smith said. “It’s a huge amount of debt, and most young people just don’t have that capacity.”
The Vermont Land Trust estimates in the Agency of Agriculture’s 2020 Food System Plan that as many as 300 Vermont farms will change ownership between 2020 and 2025.
The organization lists succession planning as a priority. Many retiring farmers don’t have a plan in place to keep their land in agriculture.
“If we just let the market take its course in this moment in time, we may not have a viable farm economy within 10 years, or at least the shape and size and health of that farm economy would change dramatically,” said Nick Richardson, president of the land trust.
The Vermont Land Trust has been working for years to make sure that doesn’t happen. Among other things, the trust buys farms that are at risk of being developed and then works with prospective farmers to match them to properties they can operate.
The trust buys the development rights on the property and steers the new operator to business planning services through the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, which operates a farm viability program.
The goal of preserving farmland intact is something many people who love Vermont can get behind. Last year, the land trust raised $12.5 million in just three months for its new Farmland Futures Fund, which it uses to buy farms, Richardson said.
Nationally, groups like American Farmland Trust pursue the preservation of farms and ranches all over the continent. The group estimates that, in the next 15 years, one-third of the farmland and ranchland in the U.S. will change hands.
Years of work at succession planning have gone into Butterworks Farm, the site of a rotational grazing operation and an organic yogurt company that once had revenues in the millions.
The yogurt business declined when the Greek yogurt trend bloomed in 2008, and is now down to four employees. The Lazors, who sold the development rights to much of their property 20 years ago, graze 85 head of cattle in the summer, with 500 acres of field and forest on their home farm in Westfield and more land on several plots nearby and in Troy.
Anne and Jack Lazor are legends in the New England organic farming community. They were awarded NOFA’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019 and were the first organic farmers to be inducted into the Vermont Agriculture Hall of Fame. Mother Earth News called Jack Lazor’s 2013 book, “The Organic Grain Grower,” “the best resource we’ve seen for small-scale grain growers everywhere.”
Even before the yogurt side of the business started to decline, the Lazors were thinking about the future. They attended an employee ownership conference in 2006 and also tried to find a group of people who would be interested in running the farm as a cooperative.
In 2013, Jack Lazor was diagnosed with cancer. His condition became very serious this summer, and he died late Saturday. He was 69.
In an interview at the farm Nov. 11, the Lazors said they wanted to make sure the farm and the soil they had labored over for years would be handled with care. They started working with advisers to create a succession plan that would allow their daughter, Christine, and her husband to take over.
That path was rocky, said Jack Lazor. A year of family therapy later, the family decided to hire a manager, Erica Wilson, who has an MBA and had been working at Jay Peak Resort. She started at Butterworks Farm in September 2019. Now Christine and her husband are deeply involved with operating the farm, and Wilson manages the financial side of the farm business and yogurt business.
Things have gone a little more smoothly for Lyle Edwards, who also briefly considered leaving the farm in the care of his daughter before he decided to enter into a partnership with Latraverse.
He feels lucky to have watched Latraverse grow as a farmer and to trust him with the place he’s worked to improve since 1999.
“The farmer has a lot of emotional commitment into the place and it’s hard to all of a sudden let someone else take over basically your life’s labor,” Edwards said. “You’ve been in it every day.”
It’s not that there’s a lack of young people who want to farm. Smith, Edwards and the Lazors have met plenty of people who wanted to try farming, but didn’t have the tenacity, skill, or money to get started or stay at it.
Edwards said he’s lucky that Latraverse has the passion, the mechanical skills and the formal training that farming now requires. Latraverse graduated from McGill University’s agricultural program, held several internships and then worked on farms in Canada before entering the agreement for a five-year transition plan with Edwards. The farm owns 50 acres and leases 80 more, all in Westfield.
“If you’re coming onto a farm, you have to have some kind of financial background or schooling or something,” Edwards said. “You can’t come along thinking you’re just going to be milking cows. He learned the financial part of running a business at McGill.”
Both Smith and Richardson see diversification as another element that is critical to agriculture in Vermont.
While he said the land trust supports dairy, “it’s not good for the viability of Vermont’s agricultural economy overall that it’s 80% anything,” Richardson said. “I’d love to see us get to 70% or 65%, not because the dairy economy is shrinking, but because we’re building other diversified farms around it that help make the system function.”
Dairy farmers have struggled with low milk prices for years, and dairy cooperatives are lobbying in Congress for various mechanisms to raise them. But higher milk prices won’t save farming, Smith said. He doesn’t think dairy farming is a long-term sustainable business model in Vermont, where small farms are competing with giant milk operations in other states.
“It’s just not working for the scale of farmers we have here in the state,” he said. “We have to look at what other business models are appropriate and also have the financial potential to be viable.”
Organic dairying is one way of adding value to fluid milk, he said. Vermont also excels at grass-based livestock production, for meat or for dairy, and at tree fruits and vegetables in areas that are relatively near markets, he said. During the Covid-19 pandemic, demand for Vermont produce has increased sharply, in many cases outstripping supply.
“If we think about it in that way, those are the types of businesses we want to try to promote,” Smith said.
Latraverse said he loves the lifestyle of farming, where he can take steps to improve the business every day.
“You’re always building on what you did yesterday, and every day you can find something new to do better and more efficiently,” he said. “I like the challenge of it.”
He also likes the variety of the work, and he has several classmates from McGill who do, too, with a similar commitment to farming. But he doesn’t know many people his age who have been able to farm without a family connection to an agricultural business.
“I think if it was a more lucrative business, a lot more kids would want to come in,” Latraverse said. “I couldn’t not do it.”
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dogol.indah.link CURT NICKISCH: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Curt Nickisch. To say the last year has ch...
