At “Who will milk the cows? Dairy farms, farmworkers, and our communities”, the Greater Hardwick Community Forum Committee, East Hardwick Grange, and St. John the Baptist Episcopal Church of Hardwick will bring together a panel of Vermonters with decades of experience in the dairy industry to talk with citizens about Vermont agriculture and the effects of new immigration enforcement policies on our farms and their workers. The forum takes place at the Hazen Union School Library on North Main Street in Hardwick at 7 pm on Wednesday, May 17.

“This is an urgent issue in our small state—when Vermont farms struggle, so too does Vermont’s entire economy”, said a letter to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) expressing concern about the impact of increased immigration enforcement on Vermont’s agricultural economy, signed by Senators Leahy and Sanders, Representative Welch, Governor Scott, Attorney General T.J. Donovan, and Vermont Farm Bureau President Joe Tisbert.

The four panelists come to these issues with different perspectives and experience. Each will speak for a few minutes, followed by an open conversation with the audience.

Louise Calderwood of Craftsbury, former Vermont Deputy Secretary of Agriculture (1998- 2006), now provides government relations and business development services to agricultural businesses and producers. Louise ran a dairy farm with her husband Randi and still runs their maple sugaring business;

Abel Luna, of Burlington, Campaign and Education Coordinator for Migrant Justice, a Vermont organization working to build the voice, capacity, and power of the farmworker community to organize for economic justice and human rights. Abel is a former farmworker, from a family of farmworkers;

Jon Lussier, of Hardwick, has spent over 40 years in the agriculture business. He is manager of Northeast Kingdom Sales, a company specializing in farm auctions and the buying and selling of cattle;

John Roberts, of Cornwall, Vermont, immigrated to Vermont from the United Kingdom in 1974, managed Shelburne Farms for three years, then ran his own dairy farm for 35 years. He currently works for the VT Agency of Agriculture as a small farm water quality specialist (and notes that he represents himself on this panel, not the agency).

Moderating this lively panel will be Riva Reynolds of Stannard, who researched the organic dairy industry in Vermont as a graduate student at UVM. While raising two children she manages online sales of her family's maple syrup farm business and writes her blog at woodandgrass.wordpress.com about food, farms, and family.

The Greater Hardwick Community Forum Committee is a group of citizens organizing events on topics of interest and relevance to Vermonters across the political spectrum.

For more information, contact: Paul Fixx, pfixx@pfixx.net, (802) 441-4599