Setting the table

Your blogger was looking for more information about a bill introduced by Martha Fuller Clark in the NH Senate this session to establish a Granite State Farm to Plate program, and came upon this great article from last summer.

It starts like this:

Our nation is in the midst of the most widespread and devastating drought it has experienced in 70 years. So far in 2012, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has designated some 1,369 counties across 31 states as disaster areas.
The majority of those states are in the South, West and Midwest; the Northeast has mostly been spared of the ruin. But, since more than 90 percent of the food we eat in New Hampshire is produced in other states—including grain to feed our livestock—the drought is still taking a huge toll on our food supply.
“Basically, half the country has declared disaster, including large swaths of the grain-producing regions. That’s a major concern for New Hampshire farmers and New Hampshire eaters,” said agriculture commissioner Lorraine Stuart Merrill.

Read the rest while you're looking at your seed catalogues.

Update: and here's some information from the Vermont Farm to Plate program.