A palpable sense of urgency and commitment marked the NOFA VT (Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont) conference in Burlington Sunday morning. Over 1,000 people were in attendance with a good many from the White River Valley area.

Keynote speaker Bill McKibben set the tone by placing the importance of local agriculture smack dab in the middle of global concerns about climate change.

The good news? The USDA reported last year, for the first time in 150 years, an increase in the number of U.S. farms. The inspirational news? It couldn’t happen at a more important time.

According to McKibben, 2010 was the warmest year on record around the globe. In his view, small, local farms, in addition to cutting down on transportation pollution by supplying food to their immediate community, also tend to build healthy soil that helps sequester CO₂ from the atmosphere.

McKibben also spoke to the importance of the link between local food and community. “The best insurance of all in these times is to be a strong community that works together,” he said and spoke to the role that farmers’ markets play in building community. He cited studies indicating that people have 10 times as many conversations when they go to a farmer’s market as when they go to the grocery store.

Another resounding theme at the conference was that Vermont is in the vanguard of a local food and agriculture movement that is no longer fringe. According to McKibben, the kinds of conversations happening at the NOFA conference are starting to get recognition on a national scale. The fact that Bernie Sanders and Governor Shumlin visited the conference on Saturday may be an indication of this growing recognition.

The Movement Expands

As it moves into a more central role, the local food movement is also casting its net farther and becoming more inclusive. The title for NOFA’s conference this year was “Room at the Table: Working Together for our Food Future” and organizers were clear that the conference is “Not just for farmers anymore.” While many attendees were farmers, others were homesteaders, gardeners, localvores, cooks, educators, and everyday citizens.

In addition to workshops on some of the more technical aspects of farming, there were classes on cooking with farm-fresh food, homestead energy innovations, plant medicine, lactofermentation, and homestead root cellaring.

In the spirit of eating locally in the winter, there was a workshop taught by Andrea Chesman, author of “Recipes from the Root Cellar,” on cooking with the new staples of the winter kitchen —root vegetables, hardy greens, and winter squash. There was also a workshop taught by Somali and Nepali market gardeners on how to prepare dishes from their home countries using Vermont-grown food.

Vermont’s growing agricultural diversity also found acknowledgment in an informative Vermont Migrant Farmworkers Solidarity Project booth, representing the roughly 1500 Latin American workers on Vermont dairy farms. Also featured were workshops about dismantling racism in the food system and creating equal access to food.

The conference inspired feelings of optimism concerning local and organic agriculture’s potential to provide a response to current climate challenges, inequities in food access, and increased demand for good food grown close to home.

"Our Farms, Our Food" is a regular feature of The Herald. Please e-mail any local agricultural news you would like to share to joseyhastings@gmail.com.