The Vermont Farm to Early Childhood Coalition is established with the aim of expanding farm to early childhood (FTEC) opportunities to a greater number of Vermont children, families, and communities and institutionalizing and embedding FTEC into state and local early childhood systems.

  • Vermont Farm to Early Childhood Policy Strategic Plan

    In 2023, the Coalition created a three-year plan to expand FTEC access across Vermont by strengthening stakeholder knowledge and awareness of FTEC, integrating FTEC into state systems, and pursuing sustainable and equitable scaling of opportunities.

    Read the plan

    young kids excitedly harvest potatoes from a raised garden bed
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    Mission

    To provide Vermont’s youngest children and their families equitable access to agricultural education experiences and locally grown food to create a foundation for their health and success.

    Vision

    FTEC engages families and communities, supports comprehensive child development, promotes nutritious eating and wellness behaviors, advances equity, and helps develop the next generation of responsible food consumers contributing to sustainable, equitable and just local food systems.

     

  • Families want what is best for their children, and they are thankful and appreciative when children are exposed to new, healthy foods. Some families feel that local foods are out of their reach for economic reasons, or simply because getting transportation to the farmers’ market is difficult. When parents learn that their children are more likely to eat Brussels sprouts because they’ve had them in school, they’re more inclined to spend their food dollars on healthy, local food because they know their children will eat it.

    –SUZANNE YOUNG, MARY JOHNSON CHILDREN'S CENTER, CHEF & FOOD EDUCATOR

    carrots
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    Coalition Core Values

    The Vermont Farm to Early Childhood Coalition supports and upholds the following values:

    Education

    • We value the voice and leadership of youth, families, and educators;
    • We support a comprehensive sequence of nutrition and food literacy from birth through 3rd grade.

    Equity

    • We acknowledge and seek to understand historical systems of oppression and inequity that exist in food systems and education;
    • We commit to shifting systems of oppression toward equity while supporting culturally responsive and reflective resources and practices and;
    • We support policies and programs that increase equitable access to and awareness of local food, food education, and farm to school and early childhood initiatives.

    Transparency

    • We value authentic, respectful, and shared leadership, power, decision-making, communication, and feedback with partners and community members;
    • We share leadership in a non-hierarchical structure, use consensus decision-making, and maintain clear, coordinated communication systems with partners and communities about who we are and what we work to accomplish.

    Relationships and Collaboration

    • We identify justice, equity, diversity and inclusion (JEDI) as strength;
    • We center opportunities to build meaningful relationships with communities and stakeholders through open membership with respectful sharing of personal experience, perspective, culture, and community, thus building our shared systems understanding, language, and goals.

     

    Meet our Coalition!