MONTPELIER — The Vermont Agricultural and Forest Products Development Board, known as the VAFPDB, recently announced the election of Lynn Coale of Weybridge to serve as chair of the board.
The VAFPDB primarily operates as an advisory and policy board performing in-depth analyses of the gaps, barriers and opportunities in the agricultural and forestry and forest products sectors that are either preventing or enhancing economic growth and sustainability within these sectors. The Vermont Agricultural Development Board was established in the 2010 legislative session (Act 158) and added four forestry sector seats to the board in August 2012 (Act 142) for the creation of the VAFPDB.
Lynn Coale has served as a VAFPDB member since the board’s inception in 2010 and was reappointed to the board to serve his second term in 2013. Coale occupies the Senate Committee on Committees’ appointed seat of a person with experience in providing youth with educational opportunities for enhancing understanding of agriculture or forestry.
Coale is the superintendent of the Patricia A. Hannaford Regional Technical School District in Middlebury. The school district offers career and technical education to 1,500 high school students and 30,000 adults in Addison County.
In his career he has been a high school administrator in Wyoming, as principal of Wyoming Indian High School. Coale has also been an adjunct professor for Central Wyoming College, the University of Wyoming and Regis University. In addition to serving on the VAFPDB, he serves on the following boards: the Vermont Farm to Plate organizations’ Education, Workforce Development and Strategic Planning committees, as well as the Vermont Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics Core Standards Review Committee.
He is also a member of the Vermont Farm Bureau and the Vermont Environmental Consortium, and serves a co-chair of the Addison County Workforce Development Board.
Other members of the VAFPDB are Jon Rooney of Monument Farms Dairy in Weybridge, Bob Rathbun of Seedway LLC in Shoreham, and Sam Cutting IV of Dakin Farms in Ferrisburgh.