In 2008, the Vermont Agency of Agriculture began a three-year project to find the best ways to support food producers in using place based marketing strategies to offer high quality unique foods to regional and national markets.

France offers the most famous example of celebrating the taste of place. Their approach combines a cultural idea of “terroir” (roughly translated as taste rooted in the land of a region) with formal regulations that allow groups of producers to label products that can only be made in their particular region. Champagne is an example of one of these protected products; true champagne is made in a particular way with grapes grown in a particular place. France has since advised countries around the world in setting up similar systems. Our neighbors in Quebec recently started one of their own for Charlevoix Lamb.

A USDA rural business enterprise grant awarded to the Agency of Agriculture in 2009, along with matching grants from the Castanea Foundation and VT Dairy Promotion Council, funded work to start a conversation with dairy producers about approaches to Taste of Place. France’s approach serves as the starting example, but the end goal is to find the best strategy for Vermont.

Conversations happening in the spring, 2010, will identify:
• Specific research questions to be answered (and, where possible, provide the answers).
• Specific tools or other resources producers need to develop place-based products & product marketing
• How the Agency of Agriculture might apply and adjust the French approach to Taste of Place for the Vermont context.

Notes on work happening in the Hardwick region are linked from this page. If you are a producer involved in producing milk or cheese, we invite your feedback in the survey linked above.

Thank you to the Center for an Agricultural Economy and the Center for Rural Studies at UVM for helping coordinate this project.