Category: Vermont

Farm bill negotiations put food aid on the line

Posted on July 2, 2012 |

• Vermont
• agriculture
• farm bill
• Featured
• hunger
• legislature

By Andrea Suozzo

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Senate approval of the 2012 farm bill last week has Vermont nutrition officials and advocates alike worried about funding for SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program formerly known as food stamps.

“The need for food (assistance) is at an all-time high,” said Jeanne Montross, executive director of Helping Overcome Poverty’s Effects in Middlebury. “Losses to the SNAP program are going to mean more people going hungry, and it’s going to lay an even higher burden on our food shelves.”

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Demand spikes for Vermont food assistance

Posted on May 31, 2012 |

• Vermont
• 3 Squares
• Featured
• food
• health
• social services

By Andrew Stein

VERMONT — Like thousands of Vermonters, Kristen Andrews turned to the food assistance program 3SquaresVT when she had exhausted all other options. In the fall of 2011 her income dropped, and the local educator and mother of four filed an application for help from the federally funded program formerly called Food Stamps.

But Andrews, a Lincoln resident, never expected the application would lead to a mistake that doubled her family’s health insurance premium. And she couldn’t have foreseen the long and arduous process of straightening it out.

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Farmers struggle with visa program

Posted on May 17, 2012 |

• Vermont
• agriculture
• Featured
• H2A

By Andrea Suozzo

VERMONT — On a gray May morning in Monkton, Norma Norris and Denzel Rankine were hard at work planting tomatoes, watering seedlings in the greenhouse and painting tables in preparation for the upcoming summer season.

Rankine, 48, comes to Norris Berry Farm from his home in Jamaica for six months each year through the federal H2A guest worker program, arriving in mid-April and staying until the end of the season in the fall.

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USPS may cut hours to spare post offices

Posted on May 14, 2012 |

• Vermont
• Featured
• services
• United States Postal Service

By Andrew Stein

VERMONT — The U.S. Postal Service last week put forth a plan it says would save rural post offices, including several in Addison County that have been on the chopping block.

Instead of closing post offices, the agency is proposing to cut down the hours of some 13,000 rural post offices nationwide, including more than 140 in Vermont and 11 in Addison County.

The local towns that could see a change in post office hours are Bridport, Ferrisburgh, Granville, Hancock, Monkton, North Ferrisburgh, Orwell, Salisbury, Shoreham, Starksboro and Whiting.

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