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Ben & Jerry’s Legal Bedfellows: From Big Tobacco to Monsanto
Ben & Jerry’s Legal Bedfellows: From Big Tobacco to Monsanto

Ben & Jerry’s Legal Bedfellows: From Big Tobacco to Monsanto

Michael Colby2020-09-17T12:27:52-07:00May 2nd, 2020|

Bold Solutions for Clean Water
Bold Solutions for Clean Water

Bold Solutions for Clean Water

lara dickson2020-05-01T10:35:01-07:00April 20th, 2020|

Vermont Rising: Beyond Big Dairy
Vermont Rising: Beyond Big Dairy

Vermont Rising: Beyond Big Dairy

Michael Colby2020-04-14T07:25:21-07:00July 2nd, 2018|

LATEST NEWS

Big Dairy is NOT Essential
Big Dairy is NOT Essential

Big Dairy is NOT Essential

Michael Colby2020-06-10T06:57:39-07:00June 10th, 2020|

Vermont Governor Phil Scott’s proposed $50 million bailout of Vermont’s industrial dairy industry is the wrong solution to the perennial economic pain being inflicted on our farm economy. While the assistance is necessary, it must come with a plan to transition away from the cheap, commodity model that is bankrupting dairy farmers by design AND polluting our waterways. Without such

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CAFO DAIRY WATCH

Big Dairy is NOT Essential

Video Alert: Clean Water or Factory Farms?

The number of CAFO dairies in Vermont, those with more than 700 cows that practice permanent confinement, have more than doubled in a five year period. This rapid increase in factory-style farms has coincided with a dramatic increase in water quality issues, including a rapid rise in cyanobacteria outbreaks. This video features images from Vermont’s Addison

Tales of a Captured Agency: Antibiotic Enablers

The VT Agency of Agriculture’s conflicting – and confounding – dual roles of promoting and regulating the dairy industry remains at the heart of the state’s inability to move on from a destructive industrial dairy model. Time after time, the Agency’s cheerleading of Big Dairy -- even while it pays Vermont farmers less than the cost of production! – takes

CLEAN WATER

Water Warrior: Remembering Rob Hemond

Carmi was more than Rob Hemond's hometown lake, it was his livelihood. He seemed to know about every drop of water in the region. He also seemed to know everybody.

Video Alert: Clean Water or Factory Farms?

Forbidden Grazers, Dirty Water

This 2-minute video summarizes the dilemma facing Vermont’s industrial dairies. The footage was obtained during the tours RegenVT gave of what’s being called the “Ground Zero” for the state’s dairy pollution, Franklin County. It features footage of confinement dairies, a 7-million gallon manure pit under construction, and Lake Carmi’s cyanobacteria-infected water — and ends with

REGENERATION

Our Mission: Healthy Farms, Livable Planet

Vermont agriculture remains dominated by corporate colonialism, where mostly foreign (out of state and out of country) corporations are exploiting our resources and labor while accumulating great wealth elsewhere – London, in the case of Ben & Jerry’s and its owner, Unilever. The ice cream giant is now awash in nearly a billion dollars in sales a year and yet

Back to the Future: Regeneration Now.

The great poet and sage, Gary Snyder, wrote: “When making an axe handle, the pattern is not far off.” And so it is with reforming agriculture. The pattern is not far off. It was only 60 years ago that Vermont was 10,000 farms richer. It was organic agriculture before there needed to be an organic agriculture. And it was intensely

The Path Forward: Regeneration Agriculture in Vermont

The battleground over industrial agriculture has, understandably, been centered around GMOs for the last two decades. In the U.S., the GMO debate has largely revolved around labeling, both nationally and, more successfully, on a state-by-state basis. Vermont, of course, was the first state to pass mandatory GMO labeling requirements, a law that takes effect in July 2016; if, that is,

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NEWS

Big Dairy is NOT Essential

Big News: The Power of Regeneration

Regeneration Vermont hit the ground running in the New Year. Our research and advocacy work led to the Vermont Attorney General filing a lawsuit against the state’s largest confinement dairy operation. The enforcement action alleges that in 2017, Amanda and Mark St. Pierre expanded a barn and built a new 10 million

In the News: Where Are the Pesticide Reports?

Our efforts to get the Vermont Agency of Agriculture to follow the law and publish annual pesticide usage data -- something they haven't done since 2013! -- were highlighted in this Vermont Digger article earlier this month. We’ve been monitoring Vermont’s pesticide usage data for nearly 25 years, publishing several reports, including “Vermont’s Atrazine Addiction (Food & Water/1997)” and “Vermont’s

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