This comment is from Niccola Milnes. She is an advisor to fight terrorism and conflict, and founder of a brand of children’s supplements called Little Boosties.
When my husband and I moved with our three little boys in Vermont seven years ago, it was not only the mountains or the welded communities that attracted us. It was the deep culture of the state of eating with the seasons, knowing our farmers and honoring the natural rhythms of the earth. They were not trends here – they were traditions.
Raised by a naturopathic doctor, I grew up before “well-being” was an industry, when you were to join cooperatives just to obtain organic foods. Eating locally and organically was not a matter of marketing – it was practice, ingenuity and respect for the earth. But over the years, the food landscape has changed. What was once a way of life has become a booming industry, and more recently, something else: a dichotomous political flash point.
Lately, I looked at a dismay something as fundamental as food has been trained in partisan debates. Priorifying healthy, biological and local foods must be considered too fundamental to be a political declaration. It is not a question on the left or the right – it is a question of feeding our families well. And at Vermont, it has always been a fundamental value.
As an advisor to the American Agency for International Development (USAID), in recent weeks, I have had a first row seat on how the political division can derail real progress. I also saw what is happening when the communities remain concentrated on what really matters. In Vermont, what matters is clear: the health of our families, the strength of our local farms and the sustainability of our food systems.
I remembered this last year, when forest fires have spread across the country and parents – including – rushed to understand how to protect our children from smoke and toxins in the air. It was not a political debate – it was a fundamental question of health and resilience.
This moment has reinforced what vermonters have always known: what we put in our body counts. This is why I started Little Boosties, a brand of supplements based on children for children rooted in the same values that have long defined this state – clean ingredients, transparency and respect for nature. Advocating for real food should not be a political statement. Let’s not let politics eat on the edges of what has always been the vermont.