Vermont struggles to get local dairy and beef into schools

WEST GLOVER, Vt. — On a recent picture-perfect fall day, the Bennett-Robb family was hanging out in a pasture with their small herd of grass-fed beef cattle.

While farmers Lila Bennett and Dave Robb looked on, Sam, 12, and Willa, 7, petted a caramel-colored steer. The animal was one of several dairy bulls the family has raised since they were just a few days old and newly arrived from local dairy farms that have little use for the bull calves born to their herd.

Now 19 months old, the animals soon would become ground beef, which Tangletown Farm hopes to sell to Vermont schools in place of USDA commodity beef, a school lunch staple.

The Vermont Agency of Agriculture reports that 870 cow dairies produce 2.6 billion pounds of milk annually, along with dairy beef from an estimated 26,400 to 33,000 cows.

According to the 2012 agricultural census, dairy products — milk, dairy beef and forage crops grown for livestock — account for about 80 percent of Vermont's total agricultural sales, making dairy farms by far the largest economic force in Vermont agriculture.

And while the farm-to-school movement has made great strides getting local produce from apples to broccoli into the schools, milk and beef face their own set of hurdles despite their apparent abundance and prominence in Vermont's agricultural landscape.

"Dairy is the signature Vermont agriculture," says Katherine Sims, executive director of the Newport-based nonprofit Green Mountain Farm-to-School. "Our kids should be drinking 100 percent Vermont milk and eating Vermont cows, because it's high quality, and it's good for our farms, but the devil is in the details."

From bulls to culls

As the Tangletown farmers have learned, getting locally grown beef into schools has many challenges: sourcing and raising the animals efficiently, navigating the processing and distribution channels along with federal school food guidelines —