All across the country, members of our State Climate Policy Network (SCPN) are fighting to make an impact on climate change in their communities. We have individuals in our Network from all 50 states, each experiencing climate change differently in their local areas and finding unique solutions to build resiliency efforts.

Abbie Corse is a 6th generation organic dairy farmer and sustainable farming advocate in Whitingham, Vermont. Abbie grew up on her family’s farm, The Corse Farm Dairy, and after moving away for school and work, she returned to help run the dairy. Abbie is also a member of the new Vermont Climate Council representing the Farm and Forest Sectors. The Vermont Climate Council was created in 2020 after the passage of the The Global Warming Solutions Act, which sets mandatory emissions goals for the state.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

What’s it like running an organic dairy farm in Vermont?

I said something to my father this morning that it was essentially feeling more and more to me like an enormous game of Whack a Mole. The most important thing to understand about it is the complexity of the systems in which you’re functioning. We are in equal parts, attempting to balance our relationship with the land and our animals, while also attempting to keep our bills paid. We’re currently in a drought here, which is deeply concerning. We’re really short on feed and we’re trying to plan out the year ahead, in terms of how to keep our animals healthy and our land nourished and resilient. It’s a big thought equation at the moment.

How have you seen the challenges that you’re facing change during your time spent in the agriculture industry?

I’ve been back working on the farm since 2008, but growing up I know we had drier years and wetter years. In the time that I have been back on the farm, we have had to get new equipment to account for the changing climate. The windows for the weather patterns that allow for dry hay to be made are shorter and shorter and fewer and fewer. Now, if we’re lucky, we may get three weeks at the height of summer where we can dry hay, whereas in the past it was not a problem. We’ve had grazing seasons in the times that I’ve been back on the farm where we couldn’t keep our cows on pasture for as long as we normally would have because doing so would be detrimental to the land. 

One of the tricky things is that what’s best for the land is not always straightforward and may look like keeping animals inside for a period of time because of the impacts to the land if they’re there too long or when it’s too wet or dry. But from a consumer standpoint, that might seem like a lack of animal welfare. In the long term, it isn’t and that’s where I think there’s still some work to be done to build out the understanding of this work. The reality of farming is that both things have to be taken into equal consideration, the relationships are cyclical and reciprocal.

I can imagine that all that would be really difficult to manage all at the same time, trying to do what’s best for your lands and animals while also considering your family’s stake in a farm that’s been around for how many generations?

With my kids being raised here, this is the seventh.

Wow, that’s incredible!

What’s even trickier about it is, in the marketplace, the consumer’s expectations of different things are ever increasing, so the number of factors that we are balancing as a farm in terms of regulations and certifications, etc. becomes more challenging. The economics of all of that are really complicated, but aside from the reality that if we don’t pay our bills we can’t do this important work, I don’t want to center economics. I don’t think that we stand a chance of making any of this work if the health of soil and land isn’t at the center of anything that we’re doing farming or otherwise. But, those equations are becoming more and more complicated for more and more farmers. The industry is becoming more consolidated — it’s less people driven and far more industry driven because of the trickiness of some of those realities, and I desperately worry about the repercussions so much when we lose small farmers. 

How do you see the agriculture industry fitting into the climate crisis?

It’s a nuanced question because the agriculture sector is both an enormous greenhouse gas emitter and hugely problematic in terms of land use conversion and deforestation. But as I see it, it’s also the greatest opportunity that we have. I think that land is everything. The way that we think about our food systems, and agriculture in general, as we move towards the future will determine everything. We need to be looking to our Indigenous nations and their stewardship of the most biodiverse regions in the world. We need to be listening to the stories of farmers in Africa and India and Asia and our migrant laborers and BIPOC farmers here. We need to be paying attention to how we factor ourselves into all of these equations. 

Humans have an impact on this earth, no matter what. I sometimes worry that when we’re not thinking about it in that framework, we start to think that there’s some way that we can prevent impact, but we can’t. It’s just a matter of how you choose to have impact. I think that with food systems there’s an enormous opportunity to reframe in ways that could have a beneficial impact on the world. Whether or not there’s the will or the ability on the part of the people who would need to actually do that, I don’t know. 

I recently found out that Bill Gates is the largest farmland holder in the United States, and that’s so concerning to me. If one (white) man is holding the majority of land ownership, how does that allow for having people on the ground who are well and whole to observe land and steward it as they know? I have a lot of conversations with scientific experts, nutritionists, nonprofits, ecologists, etc., but what I notice is that the way we think about information and the systems in which we deliver information are very bifurcated. They’re experts in their fields and that’s important, but what the workers do in farming requires expertise and is important as well. If you don’t have the people on the ground who can put into place what needs to happen, the science and expertise is essentially irrelevant. What the farmers and farmworkers are doing is metabolizing all of that external information and applying it, often within a framework of unpredictable and rapidly changing weather patterns and in the case of much of our agricultural workforce in this country, under impossible work conditions. 

If we’re doing this in what I would consider to be an ideal matrix, we would be building topsoil, maintaining biodiversity, creating climate resilience, and ensuring equitable dignified lives for the people that are tied into those systems. But, it tends to be that we like to talk about these systems, and these realities, as though they’re theoretical. This life is not theoretical. Ultimately, I’ve lived on the same tract of land for 30 of my 38 years. The observational and intuitive bank of knowledge that I have just by having been here is something that has value, it is expertise, it’s just a different approach, different data, a different type of expertise if you will. 

The thing that I run into a lot is people who’ve never farmed have all sorts of thoughts and ideas as to how something should go or how it should look or what the results should be. That’s not how farming works. It’s just not ever simple, it’s never straightforward. It’s a constant juggling of a million different factors to try to get to the best result at the end of the day, such that the land, the people, and the animals are all as balanced as they can be, generally within an incredibly tight budget.

You mentioned Bill Gates being the largest farmland holder in America; he’s also well known for seeking technological solutions for the climate crisis. How do you view the role of new technologies in agriculture?

There’s always room for new technology. There would be so much that we wouldn’t know if not for new technologies. What I think is sometimes missing in our search for new technologies is that we get really excited about “progress,” but we don’t do the hard work to filter it through the lens of what we lose in the adoption of a new technology. People, and their well-being, need to be at the center of how we engage in and incorporate technology. But instead, it tends to be that there’s a reactive approach versus a proactive, upfront engagement. Instead of coming to me or other farmworkers and asking, ‘what would you need to continue this work? What would need to be whole in order to keep the land and the ecosystem whole?’ Instead, we are generally handled as negligible, as though the work that I do every day would happen if I wasn’t doing it. When you apply this to Indigenous knowledge and wisdom it’s further compounded. TEK (traditional ecological knowledge) is technology, but because it doesn’t fit into our worldview of what a technology is, we disregard it as inferior, when in actuality it is how people were fed for millenia. 

In the United States, we don’t focus on feeding people. Actually, a lot of our agricultural land isn’t used to feed people — that’s a problem. I think that technology as we tend to frame it can be dangerous because while it’s shiny and exciting and can literally make all the difference, sometimes the simplest solution is the best one. It’s a balance of those things. It’s filtering through the technologies, adapting them when it’s necessary or beneficial, and it’s not disrupting the systems that don’t need touching, sometimes things are okay as they are.

I also really worry that technology automatically introduces commodification. I think a lot of the problems that are coming up in our agricultural systems are to do with the commodification of land. When money is at the center of anything, it’s not going to function for the benefit of the Earth. It’s going to function for the benefit of how you can make the most money. We try not to farm like that. We started rotationally grazing in the 60s because my grandfather noticed that the cows did better, the land did better, and the milk in the tank was better — and he got more money! That’s not that revelatory, he was just paying attention. We obviously live in a capitalistic society and I think that a lot of the technologies, particularly when it comes to agriculture, aren’t keeping people and land at the center. They’re keeping the economy at the center and that’s a flawed start.

That’s a good segue to the next thing I want to talk about: policies and regulations. How do you see the agricultural industry move in a direction that does put people at the center?

I hope that Deb Haaland being in charge of the Department of the Interior will help; an Indigenous approach to land will be critical to our shared future here. If you’re thinking about structures for policy making, you need an equal balance in your decision-making bodies between legislators, advocates, and the people who put the policies in action, i.e. your workers. Organic Valley, to whom we ship milk, is a farmer-owned cooperative. Our board of directors are farmers. Our committees are managed by farmers. The farmers are the decision makers, and in my opinion, that’s how it should be. So workers having seats at the table is certainly a start. Also having representatives from different parts of our industries. In dairy for example, you take the experiences of a six cow raw milk producer, a 50 cow dairy, a 1,500 cow dairy, a 70,000 cow dairy, and migrant laborers from any of those operations, and you add in organic or conventional to any of those descriptions, all those different people bring a different perspective. We need to stop assuming that we know better than the people who have lived experience. Whether that’s experiencing the things that you’re talking about changing or doing the work that you want to be done, and this doesn’t apply more relevantly than our erasure of BIPOC communities in how we tend, steward, and approach land.

I know that you’re a member of the newly created Vermont Climate Council, representing the Farm and Forest Sector. Can you talk about your work there and why it’s important for the state?

Vermont’s emissions have risen in recent years; they have not gone down as some of the other states surrounding us. A lot of the other states around us have begun this climate work and have actually put forth their plans. We’re just beginning and we’re functioning on a very tight deadline. I am co-chairing the agriculture and ecosystems subcommittee as well as serving on the full council. That work is assessing agricultural emissions and how they can be reduced, but also really trying to thoughtfully consider resilience and adaptation methods. What does a sustainable economy look like with people and land at the center? What do food systems that focus on sovereignty, and food security and local foods look like? What does it require to put that infrastructure in place? 

Certainly we need to act on climate change with rapid attention, but there are a lot of people that are already in a state of emergency and we can’t hope to move forward on climate change if we haven’t addressed that in the process. 

How do you address issues like food sovereignty in a more equitable way — while centering people who have historically been left behind?

As a privileged white farmer I’m sure I’m not the best person to answer that; which is a large part of the problem. Yes, we’ve been farming for awhile, but how many families were removed from land so that we could be here? Those are some of the first questions. You have to understand how we came to be where we are. And then, you have to not only listen to what communities of color are saying, but resource them to put in place what they say they need. And that requires a leap of faith, which is a hard act for a lot of people, but it’s what needs to happen. It’s also talking about the less than sexy things. It’s where the slaughterhouses are and where the aggregate facilities are. Where and who are the distributors, how do those fleets of vehicles move about the state, are they electric? How are you crafting your food supply to make sure that you can produce food as close to people as possible? Where are the food deserts? Who isn’t being fed? Do you have culturally relevant food for the people who are here? Are we resourcing BIPOC communities such that they can access land and resources to grow those foods for their people? Food is everything. It’s culture, it’s life, it’s nourishment, it’s fun. It’s what brings us together. It can be joy, pain, and stories. I think sometimes the very first step is just making sure that people have access to that wherever they are, that they can find those pieces of home from which to take nourishment.

Absolutely. I think that food really is one of those things that is a non-negotiable issue. We have to do food first or simultaneously with everything else, but it can’t be left behind.

Many people take food for granted. It’s one of those things that we can assume is ubiquitous and that it will always be there, but particularly in the face of climate change, that can change on a dime. As we saw with COVID-19, our food systems are very brittle. We had a discussion about it at one point in our subcommittee, that the focus of Vermont’s Global Warming Solutions Act is that the greenhouse gas emissions need to be reduced. And it’s like, yes sure, but we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and in the process address how to feed our people, how to nourish our people, how to keep them whole. For whatever reason, we don’t tend to put food at the center, and to even further boil it down, we don’t put soil at the center. We don’t have food without healthy soil. Without that we don’t eat or have clean water or air. We need to somehow put that back at the center. The health of the soil will provide, but we have to make sure that it can.

Is there anything that we didn’t touch on that you think is important to talk about?

Just to reiterate, there is something missed in policy creation when you don’t have people at the table who know how to do, and actively do, what it is that you’re talking about doing. A person engaged in the work will automatically spot gaps and issues that you will never think of if you’ve never had to do it. If I could make one message resonate with advocates it’s that I’ve been in rooms where I’ve nearly walked out because it was so clear to me that nothing that I was saying was going to matter. The climate emergency is terrifying for everybody. If you’re reading climate data on a regular basis, it’s amazing to me if you’re not actively terrified. But having said that, you’re never going to change any of it if you don’t have on board the people who have to do the work to change it. The only way that I think that you’re going to get them on board is to demonstrate to them that you see them as valuable in this process, that you understand what it is that they’re doing everyday, and the value that they have to the greater public.

Whether that’s your grocery store worker, or a migrant laborer, a meat packer, your farmer, or an Indigenous person that teaches traditional ecological knowledge; some people need to step aside and some listening needs to be done.

Thank you so much for sharing your perspective with me, I think it’s really important for people to hear!

Of course, I really appreciate it, thank you!

Featured Image: Photo courtesy of Abbie Corse