Article Title: From Field to Fork: Sjerry Russell and the Vermont Fresh Network

Edition: November 2000
Category: Dining Out
Author: Jake Brown
Article:

Making agriculture work is rooted deep in Sherry Russell.

Russell, who is the coordinator of the Vermont Fresh Network, started early seeing opportunity in local produce.

Forty-three-year-old Russell, grew up in Sudbury, Vermont, in the Champlain Valley. When she was 10 and 11 she would go over to Shoreham Orchards, an apple place, and gather up "drops" apples that had dropped from the trees before they could be picked for money. The rate was 10 cents a bushel, and she could gather up 30 bushels a day.

"We'd work two weekends and earn enough money to go to the Rutland fair and ride the rides," Russell recalled.

Russell brings that early experience and her more recent career as a lobbyist and writer on agriculture issues with her to the Vermont Fresh Network, which is a web of chefs and farmers around Vermont connected to serve each other's needs. Through the network, farmers develop steady markets for their products and in many cases are able to charge a premium for their produce or meat because they sell directly to the restaurants. On the other side of the relationship, chefs are guaranteed a local source of food they can count on being fresh and of the quality they need. Their restaurants also can display the green-and-white Vermont Fresh sign designed to attract diners to the promise of fresh food.

The Vermont Fresh Network began in 1996 as the brainchild of Pam Knight at the New England Culinary Institute. She teamed up with the Vermont Department of Agriculture and the group began holding annual forums in order to link farmers and chefs.

For the first 2 or 3 years, the organization was centered around the forums, Russell said, with the agriculture department doing the administrative work.

Then, the network got a grant from the Merck Fund and that enabled the organization to hire a coordinator to handle administration. Russell was brought on board in July of 1999.

The Vermont Fresh Network has 70 farms and 96 chefs as members, about double the size of the network when it started. She estimates she is bringing on about two new members a week.

"It's a business relationship, but it also becomes an emotional thing," Russell said. "Chefs get to know the farmers and respect them and they want to promote local business and understand that instead of shipping money out to California for produce they can keep the money here and it circulates throughout the community," she said. Russell says she has always been interested in the notion of "vertical integration" of agriculture, which basically is concept that farmers should sell products as far along the distribution chain as possible.

"I believe in this because it strengthens Vermont agriculture and maintains and improves the financial sustainability of Vermont agriculture," Russell said. "The consumer more and more is looking for fresh, local food and will pay for it."

Bumping around Agriculture
Russell has been "bumping around agriculture" in Vermont for more than a decade and has developed a long list of contacts across the Vermont agricultural and political landscape.

She has been a lobbyist for the Agricultural Producers and Marketers Association, working to further the interests mostly of agriculture not traditional in Vermont: beef, trout, fallow deer, bison and emu.

Russell has also been working as the full-time reporter for Country Folks weekly agricultural newspaper. She covers northern New England.

Russell recognizes that Vermont agriculture is under the strains of rising real estate prices, taxes, and low prices. But she says a key element to the survival of agriculture in Vermont and across the country is the need for people to understand where their food comes from.

"If I could wave a magic wand, we would become more like Europe where people better understand the relationship between farms and food," Russell says.

"It's important that farms are respected for their art and their craft," Russell said.

You have reached the end of the article.

Select the following link to see all the listings in the Dining Out category: Dining Out
Select the following link to see all the listings in the November 2000 edition: November 2000
Select the following link to go back to the index page: Index
Select the following link to go back to the introduction page: Introduction