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"They don't have to do that, but they know that part of being in Vermont is the open working landscape," Audet said. The public also rallied to help Vermont farmers after flooding from Tropical Storm Irene last August ravaged farm fields and carried away feed and even some cows. People donated money to help farmers rebuild and volunteered their physical labor. Still, Robert Cropp, a dairy marketing specialist and professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, doubted most people would pay more for milk or other products to support family farms. "Most consumers are far removed from the farm," Cropp said. "They don't understand agriculture and how food is produced and things of this sort." Keep Local Farms raised $220,000 over two years. After paying taxes, it sent $100 checks to 1,370 farms
-- or about 75 percent of the dairies left in New England. It's rethinking that approach after hearing from farmers, and might provide grants that could help multiple farms rather than individual payments. "We had far more success than we expected, and yet it wasn't enough to be meaningful to the pockets of dairy farmers on a long-term basis," said Gary Wheelock, executive director of the New England Dairy Promotion Board. He added, "What we heard over and over ... was we want to enhance public understanding about who we are and what we do. The money's great, but if we don't have a license to farm, if people don't understand who we are, and our ability to farm in our local communities is reduced, it threatens the viability of our farms." ___ Online: Keep Local Farms: Family Farm Defenders: http://familyfarmers.org/
http://www.keeplocalfarms.org/
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