welcome everybody i'm so glad that you're here as many of you guys know it today is food day and all across the country there are events celebrating food and the movement for healthy affordable and sustainable food and so it's appropriate that we're having this talk today and also completely understandable that it was difficult to rip you away from all the delicious food that we have here tonight so for those of you haven't had a chance to meet my name's janet mclaughlin i'm on the program in grants team at the remote community foundation and i have the honor of heading up the food environment issue death of which this event is a part i'm going to tell you a little bit more about that but first let me give you the plan for the evening we're going to merrigan whose work i know many of us have admired for many years some of us from the far end and many of you have ever worked with her very closely well the time for questions at the end of her talk which i'll help facilitate after share what's next for the food in front of initiative and then i'm hopeful that will end in time for you guys to grab another drink or bye and to say hi to those who haven't had a chance to connect with yet or i understand some of you guys might have to hurry out the door and see a t v to watch the red sox for those of you who are tired of hearing me speak at events don't worry i'm not up here for a very long well so i want to say a few words about what it is we're doing a little bit about who we are for those of you who don't know but i want to introduce a few folks and acknowledge a few folks first of course i want to thank kathleen and chuck for being here and speaking here today and chuck's been such a partner on so many things and what a pleasure that is i want to recognize we have representatives from the congressional representatives office and i know we have another couple elected officials in the state who are planning to be here tess taylor from bury state rep i don't know if syria and anthony believe it was going to try to come by as well and so thank you all so the vermont community foundation we are a community foundation we're one of seven hundred some community foundations in the country the what we do is we work with donors with charitably minded people to help them achieve the things they want to do to create a better vermont we work with nonprofit organizations and community groups to be more effective to work collectively to work collaboratively and we focus on things that really matter things that are important toward the future better vermont most significantly in all of our work our focus is also about doing that work together doing it collaboratively because we fundamentally believe that the future we all want in this state and in this country and in this world has to do with working together with working collaboratively the best dancers are always going to come that way one of the changes we made in this organization a couple of years ago is we started focusing on this idea of how we work together with the donors in our family of donors with other funders with community groups as we changed our grant making program a bit jenna's going to talk about the food and farm program but i want to talk a little bit about why specifically and how we do the work in our food and farm program first of all it's beyond the grants it's about gatherings like this where people like you all come together to talk about shared ideas the folks who met this afternoon to talk about the next round of grant making in this program where we believe this whole notion of better together working better together when we bring our ideas together things happen that we didn't imagine so that's the first part of it another part of this work is we've also are starting to integrate our investments program into this many of you know that we set aside five percent of our endowment to invest in vermont institutions in one way or another whether it's the vermont community loan fund or local banks for local investment programs we also chris bailey is here from vermont smoke and cure we just put money into vermont smoke and cure as an investment thank you chris where chris is somewhere there you go richardson's here from vermont land trust we just put money into the vermont land trust for a low interest loan a low interest loan to help them conserve farmland in various parts of the state that's part of this agriculture food sustainability better together system that we believe in fundamentally so that's what we do in this specific area and of course we do all of these things in a lot of other areas but for our purposes tonight thank you all for being here we're thrilled to be involved with all the great nonprofit partners and fellow funders and janet is going to tell you very specifically stephanie so you as do reference the community foundation is an effort to work at that place where vermonters health our environment health our lands health and our economies health inter t we launched the food environment because we believe that now is the time and vermont is the place to prove that a healthy local food system that serves everyone is truly possible many of you know the statistics that are cited in the report that we're discussing tonight many of you guys know the statistics by heart one in five children are at risk of hunger over fifty percent of vermont adults are overweight or obese nearly forty percent  f schoolchildren qualify for free school meals because of their family's income so while we have a vibrant local foods movement here with more farmers markets per capita than anywhere else in the country there are still many  vermonters who aren't getting the healthy food that they need and who don't recognize vermont's foods as their own the food an initiative is an effort to advance the availability of access to an affordability of healthy foods for all vermonters and to do that in a way that sustains our local farms and enhances our communities as do reference this is a new effort for us our first round of funding went out this year and it represents a new level of focus for the foundation we see our role as helping catalyze efforts that increase food security and enhance the local food system at the same time our first round of grants focused on expanding farm to school programming a proven way to get healthy local foods to kids from all financial backgrounds now and to educate our next generation of food buyers and in fact our caterer tonight actually is the school food service program manager at richmond elementary passage of state funding that made vermont the first state in the country to make to offer free school lunches to all income children this means fewer barriers to kids participating in the school meals which means more meals are going to be served and that increase volume leads to increased purchasing power for those schools and the ability to purchase additional local foods food connects and brattleboro is piloting school based food buying clubs that aims to help parents access the local foods that their kids are learning about in that farm to school program and they're doing that in a way that is convenient and affordable for the parents feed which is a partnership shelburne farms know for vermont and food works that you reverse is doing the challenging and so often unglamorous work of coordinating the the statewide farm school network to create a learning community that shares lessons and tools so the best ideas can get out there quickly and it also offers that desperately needed time for training and for planning that's really hard to find in our in so much community work so at the community foundation we truly believe in the power of collective action of the need to conven and then coordinate develop a shared vision that can be acted upon that's why we've been an early and consistent supporter of the remote farm to plate strategic plan and network and it's what i were especially supportive of that effort focus on food access and food security is essential component of that work and that that collective action and collective vision is also why we're here today to hear from kathleen and also from ch to gather intelligence and insight that we can take back to back and apply in our roles whether we're philanthropists or farmers nonprofits public servants or businesspeople or some combination of all of those  and that actually is a great segue to segue to chuck who has worn many many hats and contributed and contributed to vermont totality in multiple ways as a farmer a state legislator a senator leahy's state director as a board member and trustee for multiple community institutions and now is very much secretary of agriculture chuck is also known our featured speaker for the night for many years and so you've asked him to both say a few words about the importance of building a local system that serves over monsters as well as introducing kathleen s because the first nine months i was on the job i needed a partner really really badly in the weight of irene and who was there to step up and in our work  with led to millions of dollars being donated to the benefit of farmers in vermont agriculture and really remote communities and if there's a word that i want you to leave with tonight in your head it is the word communities because standing here were in what used to be an active barn and another generation has now been recycled as part of  and it's an appropriate place to be when i can talk about the c f and the agency of agriculture in vermont agriculture the standard barn like this that is now owned and operated by an organization like the y c c that by the way is doing the very things we need now let me talk about the things we need because when i was first asked to be the secretary i didn't you know have all my talking points done at that point so i had to do a little thinking and one of the things i was  was asked to make some remarks one day and i said and i was thinking about so what is what is it that we are actually confronted with as we look down the barrel of the twenty first century and i came up with six challenges and i want to tell you what those are because then i'm going to tell you how what we're talking about tonight addresses those the six challenges of the twenty first century was spec to our food and agriculture systems are the following we have to have a safe and secure food network cultural system we have to have one that provides security for food that has to be ecologically sound environmentally restored and needs to be economic meaning when you're a farmer you actually can pay your bills and have a living wage and needs to be equitable so everybody has access to the very food they need to be sustain themselves and it has to be built on a foundation of education we don't get where we need to go if we don't have the education to help us lay this there those in my view are that challenges of the twenty first century that we all must address and it is the challenges that it's a pleasure for me to talk about because i've had a chance to work with one of the our keynote speakers tonight who has been dealing with this for a while but let me talk about b c f and the agency of agriculture and our role i'm proud to be the secretary in this state at this time in fact i'm really lucky because this agency of agriculture is really up to great things and it's not by ourselves mind you i know every single thing we do we do in partnership with somebody our buddies in the state we are the state and we're the agency that's partnered with many of you in this room around from the school fundamental initiative that is all about community because when you think of school here in the state of vermont you're thinking about community we are the agency that has taken up the banner of farm to institution and we're proud to be affiliated in some way with an institution like fletcher on health care the number one or two health care institutions in the country that source food locally we're proud to be starting a conversation around farm to market which includes our food hubs these new economic organisms that are evolving in the landscape or vermont today we're proud to be an active and engaged partner and farm to play probably the leading network farm and food network in the country a model as so many other things in vermont are for the rest of the country to look at and let me not shy away from our regulatory role of which is more than half of what we do in the agency that recalls her and i was often challenge the about how can you promote and how can you regulate at the same time secretary ross isn't that in conflict no way good regulation is good marketing because consumers know they're getting what they're paying for they know the food is safe it is something they can depend upon in the marketplace every single day and i'm proud to say i'm a regulator a regulator provide technical assistance and i challenge you to go find a person in the meat industry in the dairy industry that will sing our regular regulators praises about the things they do so that's what we do and we do it in partnership with organizations like the c f o and you heard it what they're doing they're operating at the nexus of health hunger in vermont agriculture and thank you for stepping up and doing that we can't do the things i just talked about whether frankly responding irene or advancing the farm to school initiative which you've already invested thousands and thousands of dollars and without that kind of help and think about what for the school actually does those six challenges i just mentioned a minute ago we provide state food in our schools when we advance from the school we provide secure food accessible food to kids and children who might not otherwise get it we provide a market signal in a marketplace for the very farmers we need to be growing that food and expanding that market through access to that institution called our community schools we in partnership with the people who do farm school worry about the ecological environmental message that can be associated with the delivery of that food and the production of that food and we get our kids out on those farms to see how it can be done and of course the education f stands up and supports the farm the school programs the community schools in your towns they are doing the thing that is most fundamental to the future of agriculture and food systems and that is providing the educational foundation so we have a wise consumers and farmers and citizens who understand the critical importance of a food system in the twenty first century so i thank you stu i thank you and your organization f stepping up to what i think is one of the most fundamental most vital initiatives and oh by the way one of the ones that the state of mind is leading this country and people come to the state of vermont to learn about farm the school so thank you and you know we don't get to these leadership positions in the state of iowa just by accident so it tastes really good people stepping up and taking it upon themselves to find a way into the future that support the good ideas i get to now introduce what i didn't know it was going to be a former colleague of mine i think we actually in this player to kathleen america and you know there's no you know for me it was like an interesting coincidence when i drove into my farm driveway today to sign a new lease with one of the farmers who was stepping into a farm back end of her car you know your farmer there's somebody in this room i think had something to do the know your farmer know your food or some some jingle like that this person who is responsible for that jingle is also responsible for a whole lot of other things in her tenure she has been operating at the highest levels of our government as a deputy in the u s d a she has been a leader on her own right in any number of arenas the minister minister of conference of food and agriculture organizations she was a leader and she was hope by the way just so you know named as one  one hundred most influential people in the world by time magazine she's worked she's worked for two presidents now i get to know if she's starting to squirm i love it when they start she's got a ph d she's helped educate a few of us in this room one have to work for the agency of agriculture when chelsea lowest and she worked her own center patrick leahy and while he may have been the as people and dance to the songs of prince and think of myself as a celebrity for a short amount of time their show but the thing that makes me cringe is because you hear that and you're expecting some office most influential people in the world i told my staff not to return the telephone call that it was just some sort of washington media seeking out people whose heads were too big for their human bodies to see who is  actually arrogant enough to think that they would be on the list luckily time persisted and we actually did make the connect and then when i found out i was on this list my head and i thought well i must be very  influential time and then one of my friends told me i should take a closer look at the last and know that lady gaga was on the list and he started whole trend in washington to refer  i was just the person in the limelight at the moment a representative of all that's gone on right with organic and sustainable agriculture so thank you very very much for getting me to a really great party in response to some difficult questioning by chambliss from georgia i have been all my life and will continue to be served a provocative for my job going into that was not you know tip of the tongue deputy secretary material frankly but my job was to go in as i saw for myself and make sure that some of the arguments that i've heard across the country and some of the really great works that i've been able to be witnessing were heard at the highest levels of government what a joy that was for me to be in cabinet meetings to be in the situation room to be spitting distance from the secretary's office and really talk about organic agriculture about sustainable agriculture about the role of local food systems and actually have some clout as much as i ever like remember i was on that time one hundred list and i got to have this big but hasn't clout to do some really good thanks and the first term for the president really was about a political battle not surprisingly when we launched the know your farmer know your food initiative where the secretary and i went around the country saying not every family needs an accountant every family needs a lawyer but every family needs a farmer do you know yours and we really started to do an inventory of what usa was doing to support local regional and figuring out what more u s d a could do to support local regional we knew that there was likely going to be some pushback from traditional interests because it just was at least unfamiliar and that sound familiar uncomfortable for some and for some people they felt that investing in those arenas was an implied attack on the conventional ways of doing things it really wasn't my view in politics always ben try to invest in rise up the really great examples and let the others let the let the bells go alongside that just just really show what can be done and we we had a couple of floor votes in the house of representatives trying to get rid of the no your farmer initiative people wanted to get rid of me people want to get rid of the budget that was associated with the know your farmer know your food initiative there was no budget there was no office they couldn't read out the line i figured that out ahead of the game but we've gone through this period of time where we had these big political skirmishes were on the other side of that there's not anyone really in the halls of power that really make very articulate arguments against local regional in organic they say gee there's some really good stuff going on we see some job creation  value some people think it's more important than not but you know i feel like i've played my role and we've gotten off to a really great start and where we now were in face to face two is the really hard  thank you for letting me have a leadership role in the really easy face didn't seem so at the time but it really was now we're at the time when the really hard work has to happen because people are saying ok we're going to put resources out this problem we're going to galvanize communities around the challenges here and also and we realize we've gone past the rhetorical thing as we've gone through the arguments and now we're in the really really hard work phase and there's going to be failures and challenges the good news is you guys have a lot of really great ideas i've really enjoyed reading the farm to plate plan and i'm so excited about the vermont community foundation their new issuance of challenges and thinking and investments in this arena this is really exciting stuff so the main reason i wanted to come to vermont was just to cheer you on and say thank you for your leadership you've got a congressional delegation like none other people who are just really invested in these issues in their willing to have and ready and have taken on the tough issues of tough conversations in washington and you have a state here that doesn't necessarily always have the climate and some of the resources other states have where local regional might be so much more attainable in certain ways and yet it's sort of that driven vermonter in all of you that have really made things happen beyond rationality in some ways and so i  conversations around the country was really really proud to look to massachusetts and vermont and being from western massachusetts i was affiliated much more with vermont than i did boston trying to get the bus until i was a junior in high school you know i just really proudly say if they can do it in vermont they can do it anywhere in the country so one of the things i also want to say to you is the work that you're doing here as horton as it is here communities it's really important to the rest of the country because you've always been leaders and you have the kind of energized community based organizations and you have the intelligence and we all of us who no longer live here don't have the opportunity to live in vermont we need you to succeed so i just really want to again say thank you and i want to look at the very front page of the report  and what i really like is the idea that you have to work at this nexus and i think that janet said in her opening remarks the nexus of hunger help and local food hunger health and local food when i first started out a step a secretary has always been all about the fruit vegetable industry trying to get to that goal of half a plate that our new food icon has everyone you have to play fruits vegetables the first thing in july we're talking about this month the first thing i kept getting was we can't afford to increase fruits and vegetables a cost too much well actually some of that's not true we have some good economic data from the economic research services says fruits  vegetables are affordable if you eat within season and you pick certain fruits and vegetables and you can even do it if you're on a food stamp budget so you have issues of access and parish ability and things like that there a challenges but when people have that kind of thought in their mind to start with it's impossible to start doing creative policy work and i spend a lot of time in the white house  with the highest levels of government trying to get them around that noodle and say no we can't afford to eat healthy in the same way and maybe in an even more pronounced way you have that notion wildly widely held that local regional food and organic food is food of the elite it's an affordable it's unobtainable it's it's what those people can afford and  and so that's why i really like that mandate right at the beginning that it's at the nexus of hunger health in local food bringing communities together chuck you mention farm to school and all the great work that the school and by the way no idea of a great congressional delegation but perhaps a great commissioner of agriculture you know that we all know that but he is now the head of nasa the national association of state department of agriculture so he is incredibly well positioned to lead a lot of these conversations nationally with his colleagues across the many states and so don't forget that opportunity to use his leverage in that he has now firmly school has been a big focus of the foundation i don't think that there's an area where you can find more synergy more things coming together in all those different communities and farm  everything's right about farm to school except it's really hard to do it's really hard to do now i don't know how many of you noticed that u s d a just came out with a new census a farm to school programs this  week that was something that has been in the hopper for a couple of years has a beautiful graphics it's very excessive also if you just get the u s d a dot gov it's the front thing on the website you just click on and you go to your vermont you can go to a particular school district and you can get the data except for when you get the data it's rough it's not fully cooked i guess i can use that expression i know this because i went to my hometown greenfield massachusetts where we have the western massachusetts food processing center a great great example featured on the compass talked about the compass in a second where there is the solidity that has all those kind of like processing equipment investments that you need if you're a farmer trying to do institutional buys and they have cold storage of all the great things that you would need it's all focus on farm to school and greenfield said that they only  you is to work with your local community school districts and try to write that data and uses it as an opportunity to galvanize people to go to that next level i think u s d a would really appreciate it and they have a farm to school grant program that's going to continue to chunk out money and if they figure out that things are going on here at the next level then i think that well positions you to try to get very much worried about my friends who've been involved in the affordable care act obamacare and all the computer glitches and all that i remember when we launched the compass which is a geospatial mapping tool that has all the federal investments and local regional food across the country gearing up for the day of launch as a really have to be ready for two million people accessing that site now unfortunately not nearly that many people came to the site but being outside but the compass is there and it's a really cool tool and it's very soon going to be relaunched and it will be accessible with mobile devices so you can get it on your i phone for example which is going to  be much more user friendly but there are all kinds of really great investments across the country that are going on you should really cherry pick use that tool to find out what's going on and say hey there's this really great  in kentucky that is both a farmer's market and community kitchen and a beautiful value added space for people to then their products and  cooking classroom and i that we could probably talk to those people in kentucky and they might share the architectural plans and we could build up the syllabi in vermont and learn everything they know and do it for less money there's all kinds of networking possibilities if you really use that compass site so i just want to put a plug in for that and also one firm just want to plug in preschool i think that's where u s d a is going next is putting some money out for preschool so you think about the importance of getting young people with school gardens and farm to school and all of that but we're starting elementary school why when he started preschool because many mothers and fathers do that in the are you know kids get food conceptions down pretty early on in life so to think about preschools and connecting with them and i've also really noticed that the best farm to school programs have cheerleaders food court has been really good that's where you have the young people like the american or volunteers who are going in the schools and when they cheerlead it makes a huge difference in what the kids so just getting the food there alone isn't enough so i would just say to the foundation and all of you leaders out here the more you can continue to peel away the farm to school and make it work well the better off we'll all be now it's really hard for farmers to get the food to the schools you've got the food safety modernization act coming down the pike you've got gaps certification you've got processing requirements you've got both delivery requirements you have even how payments are schedule doesn't necessarily work for farms for months lead in a lot of ways and farm to school but you have still only scratched the surface push comes to shove and that's something that i think would be really great to pull up the first lady has had an initiative about salad bars in the schools and that sounds really great and they're probably last salad bars in vermont schools but you know my kids when they go to school they have twenty minutes for lunch and recess combined so that means in the winter months they're getting their coach from their locker they're going to the cafeteria if they have to go through a salad bar and they've been the going outside with their friends and twenty minutes so it brings to bear this whole question about how do we make lunch time classroom time so it's not time off from school but it really is part of school and that we build in the curriculum time to have a meaningful experience in the cafeteria and that's something that i think the department of education is working on our great chef jose but there's a lot of stuff that needs to happen to make it all happen so the hungry people twelve percent of them honors food insecure what's the solution there  were doing those two very similar investments but if you brought them into one then the chances are more fresh food would go to the food bank farmers would likely donate more because  have a lot more efficient transportation with the trucks going in and now right now they're going in and out the different facilities one way empty but if you figure it out right the routes it could be going both ways and it could be a central community meeting place so that's something that as a challenge as you look at your hunger component i think that there's a lot of opportunity there's your statistics a ver vegetable consumptions really high it's really impressive you're one of the top in the country so that makes me think about how do you get the markets organized so our commissioner is wearing all about biofuels and what was really exciting was that the navy had made a commitment to buy biofuels before they had even been developed so it was really everybody churning and all the capital was going there because they knew at the end of the day they had a market and i think about all the different things that we really need to have a market for before you really get the kind of important investments that you need wal mart the grocery store i met with wal mart and they said you know we'd really like more locally grown blueberries because the reality is we import so many of our blueberries if you sat down with someone like wal mart and you found out a little bit more about what they're thinking about as you guide your farmers and you remember speaks line all right we like to refer to it as living finally textured beef please so this if it's for the few people in the crowd who may not remember this this was about a year ago and it came about that people realize that they him burgers that were being sold in the school meals actually had this really finally textured beef in them which was referred to as pink slime that had then taken off the bone through chemical treatment and basically  put in the hamburger meat why in the world with pink slime relate to it talk about local regional food systems it's because it's such a great example of how the big guys have figured out how to use every last bit of meat in that animal and you guys have i know we have in this region farmers who are trying to make it in the meat business and they don't have the rendering plant down the road they don't have those markets for all those parts and they're trying to make it on the top cuts alone and that's never going to work so i think the challenge for all of  that might be worthwhile is to figure out in a very detailed way all the different pieces of the meat and what happens to it and really do an economic analysis because i don't think alone you're going to be able of and dairy wars continue on capitol hill maybe we'll have a farm bill one of these days but i think we've all given up holding our breath for that that's not a good idea but one of the things that i do know is there's emerging research that's coming out that shows that mel that comes from the grass based system where dairy cows are on pasture and then during the non passion months are being fed primarily a grass base so how does it look at their dairy system and intice a pay more and more research coming out about pasture based systems and figure out how to position themselves in a way that helps their small farmers another idea and something that i'm starting do a little work on is milking robots in fact the first time i heard about milking robots it was outside of burlington and i had a group of my had a milking robot you probably could be a dairy farmer and do some other things and a small farm could be more economically viable than it currently is now maybe we could study on milking robots maybe eventually we could convince us environmental the incentive program money to kashi milking robots i think that you have to really focus in if you're looking at local regional food systems is a great opportunity to diversify for my agriculture and regional agriculture in terms of various foods but you cannot lose your dairy farm base it's just too too important and a lot of lifeline has been there from organic but that alone is is not enough last thing i'll say a lot of other things is organic so entrancingly i read the farm to plate study i read the foundation's great piece of work important on organic agriculture which is still in my mind the high water mark for ecological farming and so that's my last just justice department hearings across the country and i trust in agriculture that something would happen it's an area that's very politically a third rail kind of area i remember at the end of clinton era when i was a marketing service in this writer i did commission book on information for farmers and i'm ready to sign a contract with with big guys in terms of not getting themselves into that spot and we didn't get it done to the very end of the ministration and so we had distributed it and then the next team came in and got rid of the altogether and never got out to the countryside so these are politically tough is most of the farmers were people who were very philosophically devoted to the concepts of organic and then there are all these waves of people came in just because you made more money on organic and eventually a lot of them actually became very philosophically devoted to organic so i don't care why you get people in get them in and so i think that what we need to show farmers some of the markets down to the products are being grass based on what kind of premiums there could be and while that's not a huge market yet we need to show them some of the scientific studies that are coming out that shows the difference in the nutritional quality  and maybe help them do a multi year plan to get there to when the market will be there for them we also have this huge generational change in agriculture you all know the at ageing farm  in are very interested in multi tasking in different ways they're really open to the idea of not only doing on farm production but doing value added doing nagra tourism doing in some of that might be just survival creation there you know let's let's look at we we kind of muffled the food pyramid and now we have my plate the new food icon and the big message is there is half a plate of fruits and vegetables every five years the federal government has a dietary guidelines that was the big output from the last round by the way this round they're really looking at sustainability issues for the first time which is very exciting but only have half a play for some vegetables since nineteen ninety four this country has been importing more and more fruits and vegetables even though we're not even close to the half a plate right so say it's a big show obama gets her way and we all move and we all eat that have a play and she's done a great job she's a rock star so we're getting there but so i think that she will consumption trip should be like this and already that's what the curve looks like in terms of imports so seems to be that really been a lot of opportunity on the table for american farmers in the produce industry and you can do produce on small acreage so farmland is wicked expensive as we like to say in the northeast i love to get my wicket in there and the red sox are going to do with great tonight too you can do it on small acreage and it may be that you're doing it in a vertical farm you might be doing in their urban setting i think we're going to see all different kinds of models of farm i love the old barn i have a beautiful painting in my living room is a very beautiful red traditional barn but we have to be open to the idea that farms may not look like that all the time in the future we're going to see some really neat nifty things and we're going to see a lot of part time farmers i think not hobby farmers i hate when people say that but part time farmers where farming is going to be part of your life because carefully there is a ballot issue there and people are saying it's the next battleground and where that ends up sort of might indicate to the federal government approachable they should be in terms of looking i can have all the tomatoes in the room thrown at me luckily it's a little late in the season but it's a wasp i have ladybugs i mean we have having a fully true outdoor experience here today  look at some international standards and we said ok this will be the law of the land and then states can add on if they want and the one place that i didn't follow that rule was on biotech because most of the standards have a prohibition and i as a person just very technologies kind of benign it's how you use it what what's so i didn't want to say never will organic and  come together but now that's that's long gone the world has spoken and the thing that i'm finding frustrating frankly is that we are not allowing organic companies to get a g m o free label taking food home from the schools at the wholesale price yeah because if parents are really engage those farm to school the penetration of that effort will only go so  far cooking is as you very well know from your previous experience a huge challenge i had my home ec teacher i learned how the fold the paper towel to butter i mean it's sounds ridiculous but my sites and actually having eating clubs where families would come together and there would be children's activities so if you're a single mom and you've got three kids and you actually just got home from work  dead tired you don't really see yourself cooking a big meal and peeling that squash and yabba dabba doo maybe it's wednesday night and you're all expected at this community club where there's a communi trying to do a garden base learning program in an elementary school in chinatown in boston where the kids come from families below the poverty line it's a really challenging environment with three million different languages being because we brought in the students and we've brought in the materials and i raise the money but you just have to start from the perspective of who you're talking to kind of day to day realities that they face in order to make th conversations with leaders at feeding america for example there's a lot of excitement about it opportunities there i think for mark could really come up with the dream plan for that tha you thank you so much kathleen we really appreciate you joining us this conversation and helping us wrap our brains around the challenge of building a healthy and fair local food system i really appreciate all up so the community foundation has created a local food and farms fund that allows others to join us in investing in this work and there's a number of representatives of foundations and  folks who have chosen to give with the community foundation here in the room and so we're really you know grateful to be partners with you guys in this effort and i wanted to give a couple examples of that so for instance last year we were really glad that the employees of green mountain coffee roasters joined us in supporting green mountain farm to schools development of the harvest of the month program that teaches kids about local foods and also markets those local foods to the schools in case you're wondering the harvest this month is  on this year's grants are going to focus on farm to school again with an emphasis on eye debt on identifying what works to connect families of limited means with local foods and then also developing the needed capacity or around the state to implement those solutions in future years expand our focus to include increasing eating healthy local foods at home so that this year we'll be working on building continue to build on the great work being through farmer school as you heard from kathleen this is really still is an emerging field basically sort of the effort to advance both food security and the local food system at the same time you know in a market driven way  it's new and we're going to be learning as we go we're hoping to facilitate more conversations like this one will continue encouraging the collective work of the farm to plate network and we're going to be supporting efforts to bring players of from the hunger in the local food communities together and we really have been glad to partner with many of you already we're looking for more partners so with that many thanks again to secretary to secretary rice and of course to form