 Good morning folks. We have quite a crew of folks with us here at 1030. We're going to be talking about the Universal Meals program that we've spent quite a lot of time on in the last few years and especially last session and hopefully we'll get an update on how things are going and where we need to push and promote and and help to make it even even a better program. So I think that it would be good for the committee to introduce themselves and we'll start with Chris. Hi everybody. Chris Pearson, Senator from Chittenden. Hi, I'm Anthony Polina, Washington County. Brian Collamore from Ruffland County. And Corey Parent from Franklin County in Alberg. Yeah, and I'm Bobby Starr from Essex in Orleans County and certainly want to welcome all of you folks to our meeting this morning and I don't know Betsy if you're going to want to lead off but you're first on my list so we'll start with you and maybe you could introduce the other guest as we move forward. I'm happy to thank you Senator Starr. Good morning everyone. My name is Betsy Rosenbluth. I'm the project director of Vermont Feed which is a partnership of Shelburne Farms and NOFA Vermont and I also coordinate the Vermont Farm to School Network and first I just want to thank you all for your support and good work last session doing what we can to support Vermont families so kids are not going to bed hungry and also not distracted at school by hunger. Every Vermonter needs access to the nourishing food that we produce in this state so that while we address food security we're also helping our Vermont farmers and agricultural economy so I know this committee understands that win-win so well thank you. So towards this goal of improving food security while expanding markets for Vermont producers we know we can make a difference this year by ensuring families do not lose universal school meals after this school year by passing the universal school meals bill S100 with both breakfast and lunch included investing in the local purchasing incentive that was passed last year with one-time funding to get it started so we need ongoing funding and estimate that it will cost about 500,000 for FY23 fully funding the farm to school and early childhood grants program at 500,000 base funding that's seeing greater demand than ever and Trevor with the Vermont Agency of Agriculture will talk more about that and supporting the Vermont Food Bank to continue their pandemic response in the face of rising food insecurity in our state. So there's a one-page summary of this that I had submitted to Linda that you guys have access to and we'll tell you the status of those and these programs what I really want to say they all work together to help support Vermont families and Vermont children especially looking forward as we recover from the pandemic so we're going to talk about those pieces and can answer any questions along the way we're going to share that presentation with you. The local food incentive grant received one-time funding and we're asking for the base funding of 500,000 for FY23 and I just want to note a few things that we've seen those applications from SUs are due actually this Friday January 15th so we'll have a lot more information to share with you after that but anecdotally what I hear from school nutrition directors is as many products became harder for school nutrition programs to find local foods this year remained available to source like Vermont beef, maple syrup and local dairy in particular. We also have counted up that over 100 Vermont farms now provide food to feed our youth across the state through school nutrition programs and early childhood programs so we're excited about that strong connection in every corner of the state. Vermont feed has reached out to every SU in the state both the business office personnel and school nutrition directors to spread awareness of local food incentives, grant opportunity, we've been helping on answering questions and adding resources to our website completing applications, plans for tracking local food or connecting with producers and procurement support. The feedback is really positive SUs really want to really need this grant to increase local purchasing the barrier they talk about is really always budgetary it's not a lack of desire and so I think we're on the right track that providing this grant opportunity to SUs is essential for getting more local food to Vermont kids and directing more dollars to Vermont farmers and there's a clear need for technical assistance I think in the tools tracking tools and other kinds of resources that we've been working on product lists with key distributors etc and we've been providing that technical assistance as best as we can there's no support from the state for doing that and that's where the grants program comes in we're hoping an increase in the grants program can help sustain this kind of support to the SU so that they can take full advantage of the local purchasing incentive grant and the grant program itself I'll leave it to Trevor to talk more about but it's been really flexible in meeting an increased demand I think we've had record number of applications in the past year even in this really stressful couple of years that schools and early childhood providers are in the midst of and the agency of agriculture has been very flexible in different programming like csa subsidized csa shares for early childhood programs our goal has been to expand nutrition services for really young children and these grants have been critical for doing that I think especially the age when their tastes are developing and families are so involved in their care so we are again asking that we fully fund that grant program at base appropriation of 500,000 for fy 23 and it would help support not only the technical assistance but more schools and more early childhood programs to be able to expand farm to school and for new schools we really see the opportunity with Vermont's harvest of the month and we're hoping to make an investment and expansion in that program so for those schools who've not been as active there's an entry point to begin to buy local to begin to do educational activities with kids so that's I just wanted to frame that out a little bit and then turn things over and I don't know if we want to answer questions as we go or wait till the end I think either way works for us well maybe one question that I picked up I think that we need to answer do you know if the 500,000 for the grants program did that get into the budget or is this something that we're going to need to do through a bill or in appropriations for the farm to school and early childhood grants program yes yeah I have not seen what's been included in the administration's budget so I can't answer that and the same with the local purchasing incentive I'm not sure and how much is that 500 as well that's it that's right that's what oh that's two two requests 500 each that's right yep and any other questions at this point if not next gas to speak is it trevor morning trevor good morning senator star and other senators thanks for writing me to speak my name is Trevor Lowell I am the program manager for the farm to school and early childhood grant programs through the vermont agency of agriculture so I manage the $171,000 annual allocation that funds currently three grants that are targeted at schools and early childhood programs and helping them support a variety of farm to school goals I can provide kind of a summary of those programs if that's helpful and then speak a little more to how those relate to supporting universal meals and then talk a little bit more about some of the other work that we're doing to support the local incentive purchasing grant as well and then answer any questions that folks might have so we currently offer three different grants through this program there's the farm to school early childhood grant which is a combination of technical assistance and a financial award that's open to schools and early childhood providers we also offer a csa grant as Betsy mentioned that's a new grant program that was first offered last year that subsidizes the cost of csa or farm shares for early childhood providers we cover 80 percent of the cost for applicants that are awarded that grant we had really great interest in that we had 46 applicants for that program last year we were able to fund 31 of them in 12 counties across the state we awarded about $23,000 and all of that money went to vermont farms so 23 different farms benefited from that program and over a thousand children benefited from receiving food through that grant program as well the third grant that we have is the farm to school vision grant so that was a new grant last year as well we plan to offer that again and that is really targeted at trying to find kind of innovative solutions within the farm to school space to contemporary problems so the grant last year went to sell hero land trust for a project that they're doing to integrate anti-racist education into their farm to school programming so those are the three buckets as as Betsy mentioned we had a lot of interest in all the grant programs the farm to school an early childhood grant program is the one that's been around the longest and this last round we just closed and awarded seven new applicants but we had 25 applications 15 from early childhood providers and 10 from schools and su's so you know to put that in a financial context there was $273,000 in grant requests just for that program alone and we awarded $75,000 to those schools and ECEs that were selected so lots of interest and also I think important to put that in context of obviously you know COVID is presenting lots of challenges for schools and reducing just overall capacity so I think interesting to know even in these trying times this grant program is still a you know really valuable resource for schools and ECEs the other thing I wanted to say there too is that the eligibility within that program of ECEs is relatively new so it's about three or four years that we've started accepting applications from early childhood that's been a really exciting development I think a lot of the strategy that we're focused on along with our partners at Shelburne and NOFA and hunger free and Vermont Community Garden Network is really kind of expanding this continuum of support around farm to school and farm to early childhood so understanding that farm to school doesn't have to start at K-12 and really it shouldn't ideally you know kids that are in child care centers in family home care provider centers are getting that type of support as well so we've been working hard with the help of a grant that we are co-leading with Shelburne Farms to build a coalition around farm to early childhood and really kind of build up the structure and the support for that sector to make sure and then integrate it with the existing really robust farm to school network that we have here in Vermont also wanted to mention that we received a grant from USDA in 2020 to help schools improve the quality and quantity of their tracking of local purchases this was a really timely grant the local purchase incentive this is what's helped fund the creation of a local food track tracking tool that Betsy mentioned that's available we've also been able to partner and bring in a lot of great voices from distributors and food hubs and food service directors to kind of understand what their challenges are and help support them so we're taking that work that's ongoing the grant is still active right now but continues to add value I think to the broader effort around increasing schools ability to procure more local food. Trevor how much was that grant? There was a little south of $60,000 and that NOFA Vermont is participating in that Shelburne as well and then Northbound Ventures and Farm to Institution New England so we have a great collaborative team of experts within the state that are all working together with a voluntary advisory panel of folks that have just stakeholders within this this area and then lastly just wanted to kind of speak to the universal meals given that that's kind of the topic that we're interested in today so the grants program is the main mechanism through which we support universal meals at the agency of ag and that's really sort of a grantee driven approach so the way the Farmers School and Early Childhood grant works is that grantees really start the grant by identifying what do they want to accomplish with the funds and the technical assistance that's offered to them and a lot of times that is universal meals or that's just in you know improving participation in the meal program there's specific technical assistance that's offered to every grantee through that program around their meal program and the viability of it that's provided by Hunger Free Vermont so if a grantee expresses interest in that they get direct technical assistance and support from Hunger Free and others to help you know achieve that goal and pursue that goal so it's in that way it's not you know it's part of the kind of broad tent of goals within the Farmers School grants program but it is very grantee driven so you know they decide you know what do they want to accomplish with this and then we help them get there they're able to use their funds to accomplish those goals or pursue those goals as well so and I think that's all I had but I'm happy to take any questions the folks out there yep so Trevor you're 171,000 that you had three grants that is the ag budget is that coming out of a different pot of money that's the annual allocation from the general fund I believe but and did that go up at all this year or do you know that's been steady the past few years there was a one-time increase I think the first year I started in 2019 so the base funding has been 171 for several years but I think in the past there's been a couple years where that has been increased yep other questions from committee members for Trevor at this point if not we'll thanks Trevor and will Chris has a question yeah maybe it's I don't think you got an answer maybe Trevor knows it is is some of this included in the governor's budget do you have that sense particularly the the the local food incentive money that we came up with last year was one-time money in the budget so any idea Trevor and if that's not a fair question for you I'm happy to send it to somebody else yeah and I don't know I saw it sorry yeah I think we're gonna probably have to be asking for for the you know the right amount of money any other questions for Trevor at this point if not Betsy who's who's up next so Rosie is here from the agency of education child nutrition program and and then say Mack from hunger free Vermont can follow Rosie yeah morning Rosie good to see you good morning for the record Rosie Kruger the state director of child nutrition programs at the agency of education good to see you all so I'm gonna just give you kind of a brief update on the work we've been doing this year did not prepare any kind of written update for you but can give you a brief overview and happy to answer any questions so as you're likely aware already meals are still free to all kids 18 and under through USDA waivers and that's through June of 2022 this coming June at this point and that's been the case since March of 2020 due to COVID related waivers USD does not currently have the authority from Congress to extend those waivers further because they don't have authority to approve waivers that increase federal costs beyond that point so USDA at this point is advising us that next year we should expect things to look similar to how they had in the past of course we've heard that from them before Congress has acted at the last minute and things have changed on a dime and we've had to be very flexible with that but at this point we are looking at a situation where those waivers would be ending in June this year unfortunately schools haven't really been able to take as full advantage of those waivers as they were able to even last year schools are providing breakfast and lunch at no charge to students but those waivers actually would allow us to offer after school snack and after school supper to students as well as offering meals during unexpected school closures and offering meals to children under 18 who are not students or 18 and under who are community members but not enrolled in schools and because of staffing capacity issues not being able to hire staff or having staff out just having intense staffing shortages generally a lot of our schools actually have scaled back their offerings and are not able to offer as much as they had last year or have been able to offer pre-covid so even though the funding is there we don't really have the staff on the ground to be able to operate these programs to the fullest extent truly unfortunate but there's not really a lot that you know we can do we can make the funding available but we can't create people to do this work so that's where we are at right now and in general we're hearing from the schools that they're just facing intense capacity issues and that comes into play when we're talking about grant programs as you know and heard before the local foods incentive grant due date is coming up January 15th and we won't have a full picture until January 15th of who's actually applied but we are hearing some reluctance from schools to apply for that grant because of staffing issues and general grant fatigue there's been a lot of funding available from USDA and from other COVID funding sources and you know all that funding is generally available in the form of a grant where you have to sit down and fill out an application and go through a grant agreement and a lot of and submit reimbursement requests and so it's not a matter of the funds not being there it's a matter of the people to complete the grant applications and complete the paperwork are not available we're also having some grant fatigue here at the agency of education so I just want to make you aware of all that because I think that often it's the very well-meaning impulse of the legislature to jump in and create a grant program whenever there's a need and those grant programs don't seem to be quite meeting the need of folks on the ground right now and I would encourage you to this year when you're thinking about things consider other ways where you can make funding automatically available to all eligible entities without requiring a specific grant program so with the local foods incentive we have heard from some folks who are reluctant to apply even though the first year of that grant program is actually very easy we've made a very simple application for it but it's just you don't have somebody to fill out that application or to figure out the details or really understand it all because they're just trying to keep the lights on so that's kind of where things are at with with those programs last year you created a universal meals task force consisting of the secretary of education or designee secretary of ahs or designee and secretary of agriculture food and markets or designee so I was designated the chair of that task force we've met a number of times this fall we're drafting a report which we will vote on the final draft of that report tomorrow and that will come to you by the 15th so I'm not going to speak too much to that because you'll be able to read the full report at that point nothing terribly new there a lot of the same information that we've been providing for you over the past few years but hopefully in a useful format for you with a number of helpful suggestions for how to move forward I think that those are the updates that I had for you so I'm happy to answer any questions at this point yeah Brian thank you mr chair so great to see you again Rosie as well you mentioned a couple of factors the lack of staff and I think you call grant fatigue but that the funding is available where does that money go if it's not used are we in danger of losing it yeah so there's a couple different streams of funding so different things happen with different streams of funding so for the local foods incentive that's state general fund if they don't apply for it then we tell you you know we only got applications for 300,000 of the 500,000 or whatever you know I'm drawing that number out of out of there but we'll let let you all know how much was funded and I assume at that point that the remaining amount would be kind of rescinded and absorbed back into the general fund for federal funding we have made really intense efforts to get those funds out the door so for example we had these emergency operational funds that went to schools who lost funds in the spring of 2020 compared to the previous spring and those actually to schools and child cares they ended up being pretty nominal grants a few thousand here and there some of the larger school districts received larger amounts of funding but I believe in total it was something like $200,000 we got most of those out the door in the required time frame but there were a few folks who decided to turn the funds back because they felt uncertain about whether they had capacity or met the requirements that goes back to USDA we have some we received a very nominal amount of administrative funding for PBT that went to the schools the schools were given the opportunity to apply or not a number of them you know it ended up being like $600 a thousand dollars per school you know pretty nominal amounts and so a lot of them decided not to apply for those funds those went back to USDA those were all grants where this had they filled out the form and signed the grant agreement they would have gotten the funds it wasn't competitive but even so it was just you know too much too much paperwork in a short period of time given their other constraints we offered in 2020 we offered two pots of CRF funding that the legislature had made available one for offering summer meals in summer 2020 and one for school equipment in fall of 2020 we didn't end up using the full amount that we were allocated and so those went back in to be reallocated for other CRF purposes so i'm not sure i've got all of them but kind of that's you know generally they get returned to whatever the source of funds was initially i guess is the short answer to that question thank you very much yeah uh sander pearson rosie i can appreciate uh particularly what you're saying with the overworked and you know our schools are just beleaguered right now so you could imagine how the energy it takes to apply for $600 or $1,000 grant is not worth it but i guess it's always you know that could equate to in a normal year a chunk of the unpaid school balance or whatever from parents and you know so this committee is sort of famous for trying to help smaller organizations towns or what have you that don't have staff apply for grants and has there been any thought to to that approach you know a temporary person at in the agency that could just bang out one after another and in cumulative leads ends up being a significant amount of money and so just i don't mean to suggest you should have done this i i really don't i know it's just too much already but i'm wondering if there would be wisdom for us to think about that kind of approach i mean i think as you know getting um getting positions as always its own challenge um and conversation between the legislature and the administration um so we haven't particularly pursued that in the child nutrition world i'm not really sure about the rest of the agency's COVID response i know that there's been some some attempts to assist folks with other COVID related funding i'm not sure what formulas have taken we do you know using the local foods incentive program you you provided a permanent position to us through that and we told you that we needed that to get that up and running and we certainly did so we were able to hire a very good candidate for that position connor floyd he had previously worked at food connects one of the food hubs in southern vermont and so he was able to get that program up and running and it's also been working on a number of our other grant programs and is trying to provide a lot of hands-on assistance to folks and also to make sure that any grant applications we create are as simple as possible that you know if there's any data that we have here at the agency already we fill that in for folks um just trying to make things as user-friendly as possible but ultimately we can't apply on their behalf somebody at the supervisor union office needs to click that you know i authorize a certify button um and if they don't have the time to understand what they're applying for and what they're committing to um they're they're not ready to do that um and so i think that's yeah i should have been more clear that was really the nature my question is would it work and and i'm talking about the usda some of those grants that effectively were leaving that money on the table um but you're saying it has to come directly from the local folks and are those online applications or paper or what we're doing everything electronically um sometimes we're using a program called Cognito to make a web form where they can apply um other times we've been using the agency's grant management system we do still have a process that we call a paper grant but it is a pdf it's all electronic we're not having any email anything at this point so be hard for a centralized person to get it all done and then say sign here and we'll get you a thousand bucks you know yeah and i just i don't know that you know a business manager and a supervisor union needs to understand what they're applying for and what they're committing to and so um you know it's sort of like hey don't read the fine print just put your signature here and that wouldn't really be a responsible thing for them to be doing um so i i i would be a little hesitant to go down that road and i think they would be as well thanks but certainly we do try to make the grant out any grant book should make we try to simplify as much as possible um and not ask for stuff that we don't need to ask for and and that's really a concerted effort on our part earlier rosie you said that if we if we change the law or the rules loosening up the rules or regs that you could maybe get some of this grant money out faster did did you say that i don't think i said that specifically but just urging you you know as you're thinking about you know what steps you're going to take this year i would urge you to not create new grant programs or you know think about ways that you can add additional funding if that's your goal in a way that kind of automatically goes to the school food authorities without them having to do extra work and as we've talked about before you know the the way that i always recommend doing that is to increase that pot of funding that we call the state match funding and that's a set amount of funding that the state appropriates from general fund that gets divided among all school food authorities every year based on the number of meals that they serve between june and december and it's just an automatic calculation and they get a check for it by participating in the school meals programs they're eligible for it and whatever amount of money is available gets divided up among them evenly based on the number of meals that they've already served we do the math here at the agency we issue the payment they don't have to sign anything extra they just get that payment and so you know right now you give a certain amount if you increase that you know by $20,000 then that additional amount gets divided up among everybody if you increase it by 100,000 that additional amount gets divided about up among everybody so if you just want to get funds to schools without extra paperwork for anybody um that is the the best and simplest way um no additional work for us here at the agency and no additional work for the schools and that goes into the nonprofit school food service account and has to be spent on child nutrition program related costs so why couldn't we put something in the law or that if you have extra money from a grant program then it would automatically revert to the state match funds pot rather than getting sent back to the general fund or to some other division I think you could certainly do that with state general funds something where that money would revert to the state match fund um I think you could certainly do that with state general funds um I don't think you could do that with with USDA funds or other um non non state or uh non state sources of funding but I think you have the authority to do that with general fund because it's it's really bad to have federal funds go back go back that we can't use it and we couldn't get away to refund all that that money for the same purpose but to a different pot that would give you leeway to get it back out to the school districts a lot of the funds that come from USDA have very specific uh requirements about how they're to be granted out so we don't have authority to do that with most of the USDA funding no no um other questions for rosie at this point in time if not um our next person is that fad uh chris well I just want to say thanks rosie we put you through a lot of feeling and uh I appreciate your your forthright manner and and all the hard work you and your staff are doing appreciate you yeah well good morning fey good morning senator star committee my name is fey mac from the advocacy and education director hunker free vermont it's nice to be back and see all of you today um thank you for having us here for this overview this is really helpful to do um so before I share um a little bit about universal school meals I wanted to just step back a bit and I think that carry from the food bank will also have some context to share as well but I wanted to just say a little bit about what's happening right now in vermont with hunger um which is part of the reason that we're here with all of these different programs to make sure that people have access to food um and and what I really want to share is that people in vermont are still struggling um families with kids are still struggling older adults across the age spectrum hunger remains high and remains a pretty dire um situation for a lot of people across the state um there have been a lot of interventions from both the federal government and from ual and the legislature and the state government over the course of the pandemic to address the increased need with hunger and um job loss and housing and economic security and and all that a lot of folks are facing um but much of that has been temporary and many of the aids and assistance that has been provided are ending um so the one of the big ones that affects um kids in school which is part of what we're here to talk about today um is the child tax credit at the federal level and that expansion has ended and one thing that I think is just important to share with you all is that all of these interventions have made a huge difference for people but they've made a temporary difference so while they're in place and families are getting extra money every month through the child tax credit or three scores of benefits are temporarily higher than they normally would be all of these make a very big difference but the minute they're gone that support and that that sense of breathing room is gone for folks um so what we're talking about with um with school meal programs and um some of the other requests that our our group of organizations have for the legislature this year is really about taking a look at what has worked well and making those interventions permanent and meeting that need in a higher way because the need doesn't it isn't disappearing it's not going away and that's what we expected right we expected that the economic recovery and things like hunger would remain high even as the economy recovers and and we move forward through this pandemic I'm done saying when we end the pandemic but but as we continue to move forward through it we need to start to make some of these efforts efforts last and so in that vein you know we're really excited to continue to work with you all to pass the universal school meals bill um so you all did so much work on this last year and um and we're really grateful for the progress that was made and we at hunger free Vermont and all of our partners are really um pushing to to have that bill passed this year for breakfast and lunch um and to make universal school meals permanent um some of what you just heard from rosy especially is really just the the enormous stress and pressure that school meal programs school nutrition professionals agency of education all the folks who are making school meals happen they're they're under a lot of pressure and stress and making universal school meals permanent will help help ease that in a in an ongoing way um as rosy mentioned the waivers that are allowing for schools to provide universal school meals now are set to end at the end of the school year and as of now we don't expect them to be extended um so that means that we would be asking schools to recalibrate their programs all over again reintroduce um school meal applications reintroduce cash registers and um and basically restart a different program um for the school meal program rather than continue with the program that has been happening um and has been in place in all schools for a couple of years now um the other nice thing too about universal school meals that i'll highlight is that the funding structure um it's not a grant program um it is an automatic reimbursement um you know so school it is a a per plate reimbursement as rosy was mentioning as something that works really well for the agency of education and for schools so schools would be receiving funding based on the meals served um and they'd be receiving it as a reimbursement without having to apply for a grant um so making passing S 100 this year making universal school meals permanent um is a way to help schools and school meal programs continue on the path that they're already on without adding you know a big administrative and burden over the summer to try to readjust the program and um and keeps children and families full um from having to lose school meal programs um to have to lose their free breakfast and lunch and having to readjust to a whole different program that brings back the stigma and the shame and the separation based on income that we see in cafeterias under old programs so you know really that's that's what I wanted to share um I'll as as was in that document that Betsy said just as a a reminder of where S 100 landed so right now it's in the house education committee um and so we are are hopeful that we'll be able to work with that committee and go and then testify there and um help keep that bill moving and send it back all on over to you all with both breakfast and lunch included and so I'm happy to take any questions about any of that or share anything else that would be useful uh they uh have you have you had an opportunity to appear in house education in regards to the bill not yet no and because we sent it over with just the breakfast program didn't we yeah so uh it passed the senate with just breakfast included and then it included a number a number of other pieces that were passed in other legislation so the task force that rosie mentioned earlier um that was included as well as other language so the the nice thing is that the bill can be very simple um this year a lot of the different pieces were addressed last year the staff person for the agency of education rosie mentioned that connor floyd has been hired um so so really it's um what needs to be included is universal school breakfast and lunch in all schools and the funding mechanism which we continue to advocate that the funding needed the costs that's not covered by the federal government be paid for collectively through the education front through categorical aid rather than um putting that burden on individual communities and school budgets so to navigate kate webber's a cheer right she is and we were we did go in last year so I will say we were working with that committee they were making progress on the bill last year and just ran out of time before the session ended so we're hopeful that they'll be picking it back up and we'll be able to to keep moving forward boy that would it would be great if we could get that passed that's for sure um yeah so uh other questions for uh bay okay i guess we're good bay all right thank you so much yeah it's going to be very important for us to keep uh you know up to speed on this so if you know if we can help or if you think we can help let us know and with our colleagues on the uh could think would be uh very supportive of this on the house side I haven't chatted with caroline yet but um you know if you can get two or three other committees promoting an issue it would certainly help add count the numbers and you can get the numbers to pass it absolutely uh well we are happy to keep you anything else for bay right yeah well good um if um if not uh I guess bay will move on to carry from the food bank hi everybody morning it's morning it's nice to see all of you and and meet many of you I don't know that I've met you before my name is Carrie Stahler and I am the government and public affairs officer for the vermont food bank um my role is relatively new so I started with the food bank in uh late august um and I'm really here to to do what fea was talking about today is to sort of help paint a picture of where food insecurity is at in the state of vermont right now um and to talk to you a little bit about the funding that we're seeking to continue to support food and secure vermont tourism vermonters experiencing hunger through that work we do um linda has a document to share and if you if you want to share that right now linda it'll save everybody having to look at one more talking head um for a minute and i'll get it on you well visual variety um so just for perspective this year the vermont food bank is seeking um six million dollars in budget appropriation funds uh sorry budget adjustment funds and that um is with the house appropriations committee and um we've been speaking with house human services as well and that work is to address pandemic um response specifically um and then we're also asking for six million dollars for fiscal year 23 funding to support pandemic relief work um really what we're seeing and anticipating is that the need will continue to be high and that need will be sustained for the foreseeable future so this is the document we put together to sort of help understand what where where food insecurity was prior to the pandemic and where it is now so you can see the number across the top 27 percent of people in vermont are experiencing food insecurity most of this data comes from the n fact research team at uvm and doctors feral burtman and meredith um and i can provide the committee with links to their research if you'd like that afterwards to understand a little more deeply what's going on but i think the big takeaways here are that prior to the pandemic in 2018 the usda um told us that food insecurity rate in vermont was 9.6 percent well that was not a fantastic percent compared to the current rate of 27 percent 9.6 seems um like an ideal dream we're really uh you know at the at the height of the pandemic we were up to about 31 percent we're coming on very slowly um this is something that we've seen in prior crises like the um great recession in 2008 it took about 10 years for vermont to return back to the pre-recession food insecurity rate so we're again seeing that kind of trend with the pandemic that that while the economy itself may be recovering um food insecure households are recovering much more slowly specifically certain demographic groups are experiencing that at a lot higher rate than others so families with children are experiencing food insecurity at about a 5.1 um times higher rate than then families without children that's why it's so important that my you know colleagues are here from hunger free and and Betsy Stewart's feed these school meal programs um are really key to helping to support those families who are experiencing food insecurity and provide stability for those children um the other group that really was challenged during the pandemic were households that experienced job disruptions the gentleman we um have featured on this is tom he he was a taxi driver and a volunteer ENT his taxi job disappeared during the hate of the pandemic he has been able to get back to work but that loss of work was a real setback for him and so he needed the support of public and community and federal meal programs in order to access food um linda if you scroll down the other one that really surprised all of us at the food bank in this was that that women were seven times more likely to experience food insecurity 7.3 um exactly and we know that women often have lower incomes women often have less secure social security there are a whole bunch of contributing financial security factors here but just um the stark contrast of that 7.3 number was really um eye opening even to those of us who serve food insecure populations regularly um thanks linda i think that's it for this um document so that really sort of paints a broad picture of what food insecurity looks like from a data perspective what i can also tell you is that from the perspective of the food bank's work we are still seeing really heightened um needs based on those who are accessing our programs and the amount of food that's that's going out of our distribution centers so in 20 in our fiscal year 2020 our fiscal years are part of that we align with the federal fiscal years but um due to the pandemic we distributed 19.6 million pounds of food this past fiscal year that just ended in september for us we distributed 17.6 million pounds of food so still really high um our initial calculations were that we would be down near 13 million pounds of food for this coming year ending in october ending in september that actually looks like it's going to be off and we're going to be up closer to 15 million pounds of food so you know we're already seeing um higher than estimated food access needs in the the first three months of our fiscal year you know the last quarter of 2021 um one of the ways that we're able to measure that in particular is through our veggie and go program which I think you're all very familiar with our Vermonters feeding Vermonters program and that some of that produce does go out to people directly through our veggie and goes those were originally created to help hospital and school communities give better access to their patients and their families to produce right now they're really kind of de facto food box programs now that the federal food box program has ended so we're seeing really high turnouts at some of those um including our new port derby location which is a new location that started during the pandemic uh every month we've seen an increase for the past three or four months we've seen an increase of about a hundred households more per month um we we sort of hit what has been our pandemic record with 604 households accessing that veggie van go site in december um so overall throughout the pandemic those veggie van go events have seen about a 46 percent increase in households accessing that free fresh produce um you know understanding that people are using that in the same way they were using a food box program we're looking at how to how to better support families particularly in those really high access regions like new port or bennington sites are seeing a lot spring field and gifford hospital both continue to see high turnouts for those so um really trying to make sure that people get their needs met through that um and like fey said you know and like i just mentioned the federal programs that were available and the local programs that were available during the sort of higher peak of the pandemic i'm not sure how to refer to it now um previously in the pandemic we're really key to supporting people and their food needs but many of those have ended rental assistance has ended you know now the child tax credit has also ended so we're preparing um and trying to be ready to make sure that that we have the food and the the resources that people need to access that food when those um dips really hit households and we're anticipating another one of those shortly as that child tax credit is not coming to families in january um i will also add that that one of the questions we've gotten are who who are these people who are accessing food who who are these people who need this and really a majority of people who are who are food insecure in vermont are working vermonters they are employed they do have income coming into their households they don't have enough income to put enough food on their table for their family um or they're having to make really difficult choices between things like heat housing and food um that is being made worse by inflation um inflation is currently outpacing wage increases and so we're really seeing this hit working families um harder than other other crises maybe have in the past um i will say that that the funding that we have received from the legislature has allowed us to work with our 300 plus network partners and community partners to address local needs in ways that those local communities can best use that's really what we're hoping to be able to do with the funding we're requesting from the legislature is continue to work with our network partners to understand those local needs and to provide the resources needed to to address you know each community's needs in its own way um we know that food insecurity doesn't look the same for everyone in every part of the state um and i'm happy to answer questions i'm also i can also give kind of a brief update on some of the vermonters feeding vermonters work that we've been doing and and some of the one million dollars we did receive in fiscal year 22 is going to support local farm um food purchases so if that's information that you would be interested in i'm happy to do that but i don't want to go on too long um no well thank thank you carrie uh there are questions from committee members senator pierce yeah thanks carrie you know i think it's fair to say most of us uh or if not all of us be eager to to help in any way we can our focus has been on school meals and i'm wondering if you have any data or even anecdotal sort of stories where that back up our our belief that this is a key way to particularly the data about families with kids what stands out as as greater rates of food insecurity so i'm just wondering if you can kind of uh help us understand the relationship such as you see it between school meals making them more permanently accessible and and our food insecurity generally well i think that the fact that families with children are five point one times more likely to experience food insecurity might be that piece of data that you need um we aren't necessarily talking to people who are using our services about whether they also use school meals um i think the assumption is that while schools are offering those meals families that are food insecure are likely using them um that might be something that that hunger free has a little bit better anecdotal stories about um and i can i'm happy to have a conversation with fey and figure out if there's something that we can provide to the committee to support that yep um thank you um do you know um or could you tell us how are Vermont producers are they supplying quite a lot of food to the food bank um you know from our Vermont farmers you know i will say that um our vermontese feeding vermontese programs started as a five hundred thousand dollar a year program purchasing um you know that that dollar amount from local farms and that was done two ways that was done through bulk purchases that were delivered directly to the food banks so pallets of food where we had to work with the largest of vermont farms to do that because not everyone can deliver you know multiple pallets of potatoes um and then the other portion of that is through grant funding to our local network partners and they're able to purchase food directly from farms with that grant funding so that means that smaller farms can support those you know those folks in those community food shelves um that program was so successful and the support that we received from the legislature really helped to establish that and the food bank is looking at expanding that to one point five million dollars this fiscal year um knowing that that funding um is available allows us to forward contract with farms so that they know to buy the seed they know to plant you know that they can count on that funding coming through so um not only are we working on making sure that program is established and sustainable but you know trying to expand that as we're able and it looks like we'll be able to do that you know there there are always there's always more right there's always more that we'd like to be able to do in that particular way um and I will also say one of the things that we found with that program we I think we really based our model on main's model and one of the things they said was when we purchase food from farms they're more likely to donate food and we found that as well so farms that we're purchasing from are more likely to invite us to come glean on their farm and harvest produce after they've been able to sell it through their csa or to their you know farmer's market or you know local wholesale clients and that has meant more local food available to us to distribute as well yeah that's that's great they're interacting and helping out it's in out the door to people that need it um other questions for cary no I guess not well thank you very much cary uh for your time this morning and I'm sure we'll um we'll be back in touch um you know and stay tuned with our food issues uh with us yeah thanks for the opportunity to be here yeah uh jean hamilton hi jean hi hi everyone um thanks for inviting me in today i'm jean hamilton and i'm the state wide coordinator for the vermont everyone eats program which is housed out of sevca the southeast vermont community action agency um funded through a contract with accd um i'm really excited to give you an update on everyone eats and tell you where we're going from here um i did send some slides that i think linda shared with you all i'm not going to present them today but they have a you know more detailed background for um in in case you're interested in diving deeper so just as a refresher everyone eats is a innovative program that um we created together across the state um it started in july of 2020 to really address some different mutual crises we were experiencing particularly tied with this pandemic so a significant really damaging disruption to the restaurant economy and to the local farms and food producers who uh service those restaurants as well as the just outrageous rise in food insecurity that we just have been hearing about um the you know prior to the launch so between march and june of 2020 there were a number of grassroots initiatives that popped up around the state that used restaurants to make prepared meals for of all the vermonters and people experiencing food insecurity as well as interest from the mass feeding task force and exploring a pilot project to actually do a state or federally funded program and so all of that converged and we were invited into house commerce to present this concept um you all as a legislature approved a five million dollar allocation from the cares act to get the program launched we thought it would be a five month project uh and since then the program has extended again and again and again um we're now going on over 18 months it's a 24 million dollar program that has subsequently been 100 fema funded so even that initial five million dollars of cares act money um when you know we did not end up using and instead have received all of the funding for the program from fema as recognition of this program being a part of vermont's emergency feeding plan related to covid so the way the program works is that we buy prepared meals at ten dollars a meal from over 260 restaurants all around the state the meals are distributed through many many diverse channels that are operated by 11 different community hubs so the hubs um you know are on the ground in communities and really working with other partners like food shelves health clinics daycare centers um you know pop up meal distribution sites so all all manner of different sites to make the meals as accessible as possible to individuals and really leveraging that local knowledge of you know where people are where their gaps in other food resources and the meals are distributed to anybody who self-certifies that covid has negatively impacted their access to food or are otherwise experiencing food insecurity there's no application for them to fill out they just need to be able to certify that they fall under that eligibility um and they uh i'll just note that you know economics definitely play into that for people but also issues of quarantining um you know there are other reasons why people's food access may be limited that aren't economically based certainly school closures um or having to stay home from school limits students access to school meals so those are some of the reasons that we're seeing people access everyone eats meals you know of course this has been a big source of supplemental income to restaurants we are right now in the process of celebrating two million meals distributed so that's 20 million dollars that we've injected into the restaurant economy um another cornerstone of this program has been that we did include a local purchasing mandate from the beginning so all of the restaurants are asked to buy at least 10 percent of their ingredients from Vermont producers and what we've seen is that the average is actually more like 37 percent so really uh you know a hallmark of um all of the work that we've done together over the past decades to to promote local purchasing to build that expertise something that has been really exciting for me working on this program is seeing that we have some restaurants who are so expert at it you know and they're they're buying lots and sometimes up to 85 percent of their ingredients are local we also have many restaurants who have never purchased locally before and this has been really a gateway for them where they felt they had to build some local purchasing relationships and it's so exciting to see that um developing with you know different different kinds of restaurants so I'm really excited to share that success with you and um yeah just there's so much I want to tell you but I'll another sort of great success of this program has been the way that we've leveraged um intersectionality for lack of a better word so really uh working together across silos we are operated um under a steering committee that we call our task force that everyone eats task force it has about 20 members on it that represent the business community the hunger relief community three different state agencies so accd agency of human services and agency of agriculture and it's just so interesting and exciting to look at issues like food security local community economic development and local agriculture and food systems across these sectors rather than in silos and the kind of work we've been able to do together to see how can an innovative program in a windfall like everyone eats plug into the landscape and really fill in gaps and find innovations has just worked so much better because we've been able to have conversations that are informed by these different stakeholder groups you know together looking at one goal rather than feeling in competition or you know more commonly just not in the same room um so the program has now been extended to April 1st we're really excited about that we were um supposed to end in December and just very nervous about ending this this important program during the holidays and during the winter we've been able to extend because um you know one just acknowledgement that the program is really successful there's very much ongoing need as we've just heard from a food security perspective also an economic perspective um and then the other aspect is that FEMA at a federal level has continued has continued authorization to reimburse COVID expenses at 100% rather than their normal 75% so there was a sort of clear pathway for us to be able to extend that contract with ACCD so great news we've got another three months of programming of course that the immediate impacts of that programming are a primary benefit but you know it's something that we've really been looking at over this last 18 months of working together is is what are the lessons we're learning and what are the innovations we've developed that we can actually you know bring forward with us even beyond COVID so we're we're deep in those conversations now with with our task force also you know bridging over to the mass feeding task force and with our community hubs uh and so some of the things we're working on right now you know sort of first and foremost where we're thinking about what does it mean to continue this program we did participate in the nutrition security summit that happened last fall with USDA and FEMA and presented everyone eats interested in thinking about you know what are some some possibilities for for continuing to find federal funding to support this program um and then otherwise you know what other funding sources are there that might continue to support this concept at different scales we're also um looking at how do we um work together across other uh in partnership with other prepared meals provider so the meals on wheels community the school meals community to to really you know have like a strategic conversation about what's recognizing that prepared meals are such an important food resource and um that we have some opportunities to strategize together to improve uh some of our practices and to fill in some of the gaps that we know you know people are falling into who need prepared meals but may not be eligible for some of the pre-existing prepared meals programs you know I think local purchasing is a really interesting theme to think about across these programs and so excited about the local purchasing incentive in schools and you know lots of meals on wheels providers and the congregate and senior meals providers are do have local supply chain relationships and as we've learned from all of the local purchasing initiatives it's just so much stronger if we can work together and really build that expertise and that technical assistance um in a comprehensive way uh so that's some of the work we're doing you know at the hub level we're seeing some really interesting innovations um from those organizations as they're thinking about you know potentially an end to the FEMA funded everyone eats because they know they want to keep doing this work for example Vermont Farmers Food Center in Rutland just got a hundred thousand dollar grant where they're going to uh once everyone eats is over start hiring chefs to come into their food center and make prepared meals and actually use that as a workforce training program you know the community kitchen academy is a great example of a really amazing program that we've had around for that food bank and capstone and others work on just again really thinking about how do we bridge solutions across issues that are challenging our community you know around workforce development around workforce for restaurants around the restaurant economy and around food security and local economic viability a couple other just examples of some of the innovations that are coming out of our hubs there's an organization in middlebury called the giving fridge that is looking to pilot some amazon style uh refrigerator and freezer locker so that they can actually have meals based in the community that are very easy to access and food safe chest are helping hands and springfield family center in the southern part of Vermont is developing a community fundraising program with their restaurants where restaurants will actually list a menu item that says buy a meal for a neighbor and raise money so that people you know individuals can help support feeding their neighbors in that way so those are some examples so everyone eats has been a tremendous just an outrageous success there are thousands and thousands of people who participate in this program in one shape or another so many people think of this as their program and take a tremendous amount of pride in it um you know it's been really interesting to think about and to push the boundaries of what does it mean to be a very low barrier to entry program and also this reciprocal aspect of by receiving a meal i'm helping a restaurant you know we've heard from many participants just how much that reduces the sense of shame and stigma and really increases the sense of pride in in asking for help and knowing that they're helping their community become stronger in that way um so those are all themes that i i'm so happy to share with you i really encourage you to look for how everyone eats is showing up in your community in the slides i share with you you can see the list of community hubs so you can see who's the community hub in your community there's also a list of all of the participating restaurants so definitely encourage you to frequent those restaurants and support them um and then also really encourage you to think about how can we leverage this momentum that we've had with this program to support other initiatives um you know like we've talked about today here but also just other initiatives that you see coming up in this session we've just mobilized an incredible community of people behind this program um that obviously brought a lot of money into the state so it's it's really an exciting moment and finally i um want to acknowledge that this program really launched because of the visionary support of you all and your colleagues in the legislature and so thank you so much for for doing that and um yeah just really proud of what we've been able to build together happy to take any questions or you know thank you very yeah uh senator palina yeah hi it's uh it's a really good project i agree i was pleasantly surprised to hear you say that femo was funding it i just i didn't think that was a case and i was gonna ask you initially whether you thought that was going to continue but i've got the pressure for you said that we're not sure if it's going to continue but they seem to continue to extend it little bits here and there anyway but if i remember correctly you said that the restaurants get paid ten dollars a meal is that the case that's right and when in doing it how do you incentivize the local purchasing do they get an additional payment on top of that ten dollars or how does that how does that work how do you encourage them to buy local yeah great question so we just require that restaurants purchase at least 10 of their ingredients locally so that's that's a baseline um you know what we've seen is that there's sort of a natural incentive and i think we've seen this in in a lot of other areas of local purchasing is that people actually find a lot of satisfaction in working with local vendors the quality of ingredients is very high the the sense of having a relationship with a local producer is satisfying and also marketable and so you know what we find is once people get over the barrier of not knowing how to do it that there's there's sort of a natural incentive of wanting to do more um i will say that you know ten dollars a meal for some restaurants feels like oh that's great for others it feels like that's not worth it for us you know with the really rapidly rising cost of ingredients you know ten dollars a meal feels like less than it did two years ago um we also know that ten dollars a meal is you know relative to sort of what we see in the in the charitable food system feels very high i think the the average reimbursement for meals on wheels is like three dollars and fifty cents or something so you know it's it's a pricing is a really interesting question and um we we continue to look at it all the time with all of the sort of complexity of those impacts so the buy local thing is kind of baked into the deal to begin with from the start that's right that's great thanks yeah that's pretty good to get some of the restaurants are up to 37 percent buying local foods that's that must have really helped out our time shares and all our small veggie producers around Vermont especially during the summer there are other questions for gene no uh car are you all set yeah um well thank thank you very much for the report is very uh and and helpful thanks again and uh Betsy uh is there anything else that uh or anyone else that we've missed that uh we'd like to get on i think um we've presented to you um you know what we see for this session that would make a difference and where things are i think as we learn more about the budget and um other things unfold we'd be happy to circle back senator star and um keep you updated and um let you know what the next steps are yeah well we certainly uh appreciate all the testimony that we received this morning and certainly want to thank you and the rest of the panel that came in um i know you know the committee is very interested in making sure that our people get fed and our children are fed and so uh thanks to for the offer of keeping us up to up to speed on on everything and certainly um you know on how the house is doing with uh with our bill on universal meals um so if there are no other questions from me and the committee members and if you don't have anything else uh Betsy um thanks a lot for your again for your time this morning we certainly uh appreciate it thank you so much for having us today really appreciate that yeah thanks yeah thanks everybody