Hello, 2021! So Long, 2020!

“There is much to admire about Salvation Farms. For me, as a business donor, I am most impressed with the organization’s productivity and efficiency. They deliver so much good and do so with so few resources.
Their board, staff, and volunteers have an unparalleled record of converting limited resources into the nutritional necessities that help so many Vermonters. I am in awe of their achievements.”

-Paul Ralston, Founder, Vermont Coffee Company, Middlebury, VT

We invite you to reflect on the past year of growth, learning, hardship, joy, and change with words from funders, farmers, and friends. Enjoy the opening letter of our 2020 Annual Report, as well as a few testimonies of our continued work to build locally nourished and supported communities. 

Salvation Farms was born fifteen years ago out of our founder’s understanding that we share a common vulnerability; that if necessary, we are not prepared to meet one of our most essential needs – to eat. Over the course of the last century the US population has become distanced from the source of our food; we are strangers to the ability we once had to provide for our individual and community food needs. In this past year, that fact became clear for many across our nation. The food system consists of many invisible connections that distance us from farms and bring food, almost magically, to the shelves of supermarkets and the plates of places we dine. This system has become so separate from our day to day, we eaters can fail to understand its complexities and vulnerabilities.

Here at Salvation Farms, we are rooted in the belief that farms are our salvation – they always have been and always will be. It is hard to imagine the human race returning to a life of nomadic foraging, so we must look to the first steps we made toward developing placed-based culture: agriculture.

 By relying on large systems that lay predominately outside of our influence, we are suspended in a position of dependency and blind faith that those systems will always be there, as we’ve known them to be. 2020 was a year in which we witnessed systems we depended on falter – the economic system, health care system, and the food system.

Salvation Farms firmly believes that small and diversified farms are the centerpieces and cornerstones of healthy, stable communities and cultures. While 2020 was disruptive and transitional on many fronts, it didn’t disrupt Salvation Farms’ commitment to its mission. It is more important than ever that Salvation Farms remain steadfast in its commitment to help Vermont model how a small population can assess and address food supply chain issues to increase the amount of food people in the state eat that is grown by its farmers. Salvation Farms sees so much potential in the wholesome surplus food remaining on Vermont farms – this food can help us build our future food system, one that is resilient, reliable, and available to more people, making it possible for us all to eat locally raised foods more of the time.

-Avram Patt, Board President & Theresa Snow, Executive Director

“I strongly believe that there should not be financial barriers to accessing healthy, whole foods or at the very least ways around financial barriers, which is what Salvation Farms provides.”

-Ryan Demarest, Naked Acre Farm, Hyde Park, VT

100% of farms report that Salvation Farms assists them in feeding more people in their communities while 75% indicate working with Salvation Farms increases their visibility within their community.

Read Salvation Farms 2020 Annual Report

“When COVID-19 shut everything down in March 2020 we were at a loss for how to proceed with gleaning activities. Salvation Farms was instrumental in providing resources, drafting safety protocol language, and setting up weekly planning meetings over Zoom with the rest of the Vermont Gleaning Collective member organizations. It was especially helpful to have Salvation Farms as the backbone for gleaning in Vermont stating that gleaning is essential work.”

-Peter Jenkins, Gleaning Coordinator, Northwest VT Healthy Roots Collaborative