This is a Vintage episode from 2010.

Why This Episode Matters

Hardwick, Vermont became an early test case for whether local food and small agricultural businesses could help revitalize a struggling rural economy.
Ben Hewitt challenges the feel-good version of the local food story: What happens when artisanal food creates jobs but remains too expensive for many people in the community?
The conversation explores how small farms can compete through distinctive, value-added products rather than commodity agriculture.
Mark, Francis and Ben dig into questions that remain central to the food system: affordability, farm viability, subsidies, food access and what “sustainable” actually means.

The Conversation

In 2010, Hardwick, Vermont was attracting national attention for an unusual concentration of farmers, food producers and agricultural entrepreneurs. Writer and farmer Ben Hewitt chronicled the town in The Town That Food Saved, but he wasn't interested in presenting Hardwick as a simple local-food success story.

Ben joins Mark Pascal and Francis Schott to examine what was actually happening in this working-class Vermont community from Jasper Hill's approach to artisan cheese and the rise of value-added agriculture to the advantages of diversified farms and shorter supply chains.

The conversation soon gets to the harder question: Can a local food economy truly strengthen a community if the people producing the food can't always afford to eat it? Mark, Francis and Ben debate the economics of small farms, food access, agricultural subsidies and the tension between building viable food businesses and making good food broadly accessible.

They also take on the language of sustainability, the growing concentration of the food and seed industries, and whether a more decentralized food system could create something both economically durable and better connected to the communities it feeds.

Guest Bio

Ben Hewitt is a Vermont farmer and writer and the author of The Town That Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Wired, Men's Journal and other publications.

Timestamps

1:00 Ben Hewitt and the Hardwick, Vermont story
3:00 How food businesses began reshaping a working-class town
8:00 The “agri-preneurial” revolution and Jasper Hill
12:00 Why small farms need value-added products
13:00 The affordability problem with local food
19:00 Farm subsidies and an unequal playing field
23:00 Shorter supply chains and diversified farms
27:00 Food access, Pies for the People and sustainable businesses
35:00 What “sustainable” really means and who controls the food system

Info

Ben’s books

The Town That Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food

Making Supper Safe

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