More than one hundred food system educators, state officials, students, and business people meet Tuesday, January 15, to discuss how to better prepare young people for careers in the expanding farm and food sector of Vermonts economy. The event was hosted by the Institute for Applied Agriculture and Food Systems at Vermont Technical College and co-sponsored by the Farm to Plate Network, the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund, the VT Departments of Education and Labor, and the VT Agencies of Agriculture, Food & Markets and Commerce & Community Development.
This conference, Connecting Employers with Education took place on the VTC campus in Randolph. It is the third conference in a four-part GroundWork series at VTC. Each of the four parts of this series explores various issues in Vermonts agriculture, energy, waste, business, and education sectors, with the goal of enhancing our collective understanding, planning, and coordination to invigorate our regional economy.
Tuesdays conference was an opportunity for teachers, administrators, guidance counselors, and other education professionals to engage with business owners, managers, supervisors, and employers in Vermonts food system. This type of meeting is timely, given the rapid growth of VTs food system and Governor Peter Shumlins inaugural address to legislators last week, outlining his plans to improve VTs public education system. In his speech Governor Shumlin said, Our education system, from pre-kindergarten to higher education, is the state's greatest economic development tool. He called on employers to engage with the educational system at all levels. Open your businesses to our schools. Let them interact with your employees, so they can see how they use their education every day.
The January 15 conference was opened with remarks VT Technical College President Philip Conroy who emphasized the importance of aligning the business and education sectors. We believe that the GroundWork we do here can become a national model for collaboration among all stakeholders to identify the immediate and longer-term skills needed in all sectors of the agricultural workforce, to educate students accordingly, and to invigorate these active partnerships among private, public, government and education counterparts, said Conroy.
Participants at the conference heard the results of a recent study by the Education and Workforce Development Working Group of the Farm to Plate Network, entitled Closing the Gap Between Food System Education & Employment. This study, conducted by researchers Holly Tippett and Wendy Meunier, asked, What are the education and training needs of Vermonts food system employers and is our education system aligned with these needs?
Tippett and Meuniers research identified gaps between current food system education and the skills needed by todays farm and food businesses. All of the employers they talked with were struggling to find qualified employees, and were looking for candidates with both basic accountability and responsibility, to more specialized skills. Tippett explained, As a state, we're doing a lot of things right in our food businesses and our workforce, but in some important ways we're not maximizing the impact of that work. She went on to say, With the rapid changes in the sector, the need for specialized skills can be urgent. Business owners feel they needed those trained employees yesterday, and they can't spend a lot on that training. Tippets presentation highlighted the need for clear pathways for careers in VTs food system.
The Closing the Gap report gives 10 recommendations, such as developing clear pathways to food system careers from grades 7 and 8 through to post-secondary courses and degrees. Other recommendations include providing regular opportunities for educators and administrators to collaborate on food system curriculum, and to improve the role of guidance counselors in helping students identify and pursue food system careers.
The education and employment communities then met in small groups to react to the studys findings and recommendations. By lunch time, the conference participants had named several action steps they could take to better align Vermonts food education programs with employers needs.
The fourth conference of this series, GroundWork: Aligning Educational Needs with Resources, will be held on March 12 and will follow on the progress made at this January 15 conference.
The Vermont Technical College Institute for Applied Agriculture and Food Systems serves the applied educational needs of agriculture, food production, waste disposal and energy production businesses in the region.
The Farm to Plate Network coordinates action among organizations across Vermont to achieve the goals set forth in the 10-Year Strategic Plan. The overarching goal of the Farm to Plate Initiative is to double consumption of locally-grown food.
This conference is made possible by support from the Vermont Agency of Education, the Vermont Agriculture Innovation Center, and Vermont Technical College.