Vermont Food, Resource, and Commodity Assurance Act

THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF VERMONT, 2027-2028 Biennium

                       H. ____
                       S. ____

BY __________ (Introduced by request)

CONCERNING THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A STATE PROGRAM FOR FOOD AND COMMODITY ASSURANCE TO ENSURE THE MATERIAL SECURITY OF ALL VERMONTERS, AND, IN CONNECTION THEREWITH, ENACTING NEW SECTIONS OF THE VERMONT STATUTES ANNOTATED RELATING TO TITLE 6 (AGRICULTURE) AND TITLE 33 (HUMAN SERVICES), MAKING APPROPRIATIONS, AND PROVIDING EFFECTIVE DATES.

                          A BILL FOR AN ACT

LONG TITLE

AN ACT CONCERNING THE CREATION OF THE VERMONT FOOD, RESOURCE, AND COMMODITY ASSURANCE ACT, AND, IN CONNECTION THEREWITH, ENACTING NEW SECTIONS OF THE VERMONT STATUTES ANNOTATED TO BE COMPILED IN TITLE 6 (AGRICULTURE), ESTABLISHING THE VERMONT FOOD AND COMMODITY ASSURANCE PROGRAM; ENACTING NEW SECTIONS IN TITLE 33 (HUMAN SERVICES), ESTABLISHING FUNDING MECHANISMS; MAKING APPROPRIATIONS FROM THE GENERAL FUND AND FROM STATE REVENUE SOURCES; AND PROVIDING FOR EFFECTIVE DATES AND IMPLEMENTATION SCHEDULES.

LEGISLATIVE ROUTING NOTE

Vermont does not have a citizen initiative process for statutes. Vermont allows constitutional amendment proposals through the General Assembly every four years but does NOT permit citizen-initiated statutory ballot measures. This bill must pass the General Assembly, the House of Representatives and the Senate, to become law.

FILING: A bill may be introduced by any member of the House of Representatives or the Senate. Bills are designated H. (House) or S. (Senate) followed by a number. Bills are filed with the Clerk of the House or the Secretary of the Senate.

COMMITTEE ASSIGNMENT: Upon introduction, this bill would likely be assigned to the House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry, or the Senate Committee on Agriculture. Because the bill makes appropriations, it may also be referred to the House Committee on Appropriations or the Senate Committee on Appropriations.

FISCAL NOTE: The Joint Fiscal Office prepares fiscal notes for all bills with budgetary impact, pursuant to Vt. Stat. Ann. tit. 2, Sec. 505.

FLOOR VOTE: Simple majority in each chamber (76 of 150 Representatives; 16 of 30 Senators). Governor's signature or veto override (two-thirds of each chamber).

SESSION: The General Assembly convenes in January. Vermont legislative sessions are not constitutionally limited in length. All members of both chambers serve two-year terms.

ANNUAL BUDGET: The State of Vermont operates on an annual budget with a fiscal year running from July 1 to June 30. Vermont has a graduated state income tax, a state sales and use tax, a meals and rooms tax, and various other revenue sources. Vermont's annual general fund budget is approximately $2.6 billion (FY2026 enacted). The fiscal argument for this bill is straightforward: the state and its residents already pay the full distribution markup on every food dollar spent. This bill redirects a single-digit percentage of that existing spending into at-cost distribution. Not more spending, better structure.

THE SANDERS COMPLETION, VERMONT'S DEFINING FRAME:

Bernie Sanders is the longest-serving independent member of Congress in American history. He represents Vermont in the United States Senate and has done so since 2007. Before the Senate, he served as Vermont's sole United States Representative from 1991 to 2007. Before Congress, he was elected mayor of Burlington in 1981 as an independent, defeating a five-term incumbent by ten (10) votes [SOURCE: Sanders Institute; University of Vermont Special Collections, Bernard Sanders Papers].

For forty years Sanders has argued that the market fails to deliver essential goods at a price working families can meet. He understands that the markup kills. He understands Galbraith's private opulence and public squalor. What that argument has always lacked is the distribution mechanism. A funding reform moves money, but money routed through commercial retail still loses roughly seventy-five cents of every food dollar to markup before it reaches the table.

This bill supplies the missing mechanism. It does not enlarge a subsidy and it does not raise a household tax. It removes the markup, the way the United States military commissary has removed it, at production cost, since 1867. Vermont, where Sanders first won office on exactly this concern, is where the at-cost model belongs.

THE COOPERATIVE ECONOMY: Vermont already practices communal economic models. Champlain Housing Trust (founded during Sanders' mayoral tenure, now the largest community land trust in America with approximately 3,000 housing units), Cabot Creamery (farmer-owned dairy cooperative since 1919, ~800 farm families), City Market/Onion River Co-op (member-owned food cooperative in Burlington, two locations, more than 12,000 member-owners), Vermont Federal Credit Union, and dozens of CSA farms. The cooperative model IS the at-cost distribution model. Vermont does not need to be convinced cooperatives work. Vermont needs to SCALE cooperatives to state infrastructure.

LEGISLATIVE FRAMEWORK: The General Assembly of the State of Vermont is a bicameral body consisting of the House of Representatives (150 members) and the Senate (30 members). All members serve two-year terms. This bill is designed for introduction in the 2027-2028 biennium.

HISTORY: This proposal originated in Colorado. The author, Imran Stanton Cooper, wrote the first formal version of the food assurance bill for the State of Colorado in 2015 and 2016, drawing on work developed over the preceding years, and presented it to a local Democratic Party chapter, which declined to endorse it. The arithmetic at that time, before the food-price inflation of the 2020s, was far more favorable: the Colorado program was costed at approximately $800 million for the state and approximately $90 billion nationally, and at those prices it covered a staple-foods baseline roughly six times larger than the baseline this bill proposes (see the fiscal baseline tables in the Historical Apoplexy supporting research). The chapter was focused on single-payer healthcare. The author's response was that a state can pay the farmer or it can pay the doctor: a population fed at production cost arrives at the clinic less often, and food security is the precondition that makes health reform affordable rather than its competitor. The Colorado proposal did not advance. The work was developed through the Sassafras and Maple Research Foundation (SMRF), a non-partisan political trade school registered with the Colorado Department of Higher Education, Division of Private Occupational Schools. The present version is the Vermont adaptation, recosted at current food prices and incorporating the research of the Historical Apoplexy series (Cooper, 2025-2026), a ten-paper academic work that provides the evidentiary foundation for this legislation. Vermont is the thirty-second state in this legislative series.

LEGISLATIVE DECLARATION

It is hereby enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Vermont:

SECTION 1. Legislative findings and declaration.

    (1) The General Assembly hereby finds, determines, and
    declares that:

    FINDINGS RELATING TO THE STRUCTURAL IMPERATIVE FOR STATE
    ACTION:

    (a0) Twenty-two federal government shutdowns have occurred
    since 1976, including a forty-three-day shutdown in 2025, the
    longest in United States history, which furloughed
    approximately 670,000 federal employees [SOURCE: Congressional
    Research Service R48832, 2026]. The United States House of
    Representatives has been frozen at 435 members since the
    Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929, producing a ratio of
    approximately 762,000 constituents per representative, the
    worst in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
    Development. Senate cloture motions numbered 49 in total
    between 1917 and 1970; they now exceed 2,000 per decade. The
    federal debt ceiling has been raised, extended, or revised 78
    times since 1960. Federal H.R. 1 (2025) shifted Supplemental
    Nutrition Assistance Program administrative costs from a
    fifty percent to a seventy-five percent state share, effective
    October 1, 2026. The federal machine is structurally
    overloaded (Cooper, Paper VII, 2026). Vermont has the
    authority to act under its own legislative power rather than
    await federal action that structural overload prevents;

    (a0a) THE MULTI-EXECUTIVE PRECEDENT. A single overloaded
    executive is not the only constitutional design available.
    The Swiss Federal Council has operated as a seven-member
    collegial executive with a rotating one-year presidency
    since 1848, one hundred seventy-eight (178) years, and
    sustains citizen trust above eighty (80) percent. The Roman
    Republic governed through paired annual consuls for 482
    years. Vermont itself was an independent republic for
    fourteen years, from 1777 to 1791, and in that period wrote
    the first constitution in the Americas to abolish slavery
    outright and to provide voting rights regardless of race for
    adult men [SOURCE: National Museum of African American
    History and Culture, "Vermont 1777: Early Steps Against
    Slavery"]. Structural
    reform of an overloaded governing machine is not radical. It
    is documented, and it is old. The arithmetic of government
    must be updated to the scale of the governed;

    (a1) DENIAL IS NO LONGER NEUTRAL. Inaction by a legislature
    possessing the authority, capacity, and documented need to act
    constitutes active harm. The burden rests on denial;

    FINDINGS RELATING TO FOOD AND COMMODITY INSECURITY:

    (a) According to the United States Department of Agriculture
    Economic Research Service, 13.5 percent of United States
    households experienced food insecurity in 2023, and 5.1 percent
    experienced very low food security. Vermont's food insecurity
    rate is approximately 12.2 percent (Feeding America, Map the
    Meal Gap, 2023), representing approximately 79,000 Vermonters
    who lack consistent access to adequate food in a state that
    produces massive dairy and agricultural surplus;

    (b) The United States Department of Agriculture Economic
    Research Service Food Dollar Series establishes that the farm
    share of the United States food dollar is 24.3 cents, with
    the remaining 75.7 cents allocated to processing,
    transportation, wholesale, retail, and food service markup.
    Total United States food-at-home spending is approximately
    $1.09 trillion; production cost is approximately $213 to $327
    billion. The difference of approximately $496 billion
    represents markup above production cost;

    (c) The cost to close the food insecurity gap for all 47.9
    million food-insecure Americans is approximately $32 billion,
    which represents 6.5 percent of the $496 billion markup between
    production cost and retail price (Cooper, "The Mathematics of
    Abundance," 2025);

    (d) The United States military commissary system, established
    by the Military Commissary Act of 1867 and now codified at
    10 U.S.C. Section 2484, has operated at-cost food distribution
    continuously for one hundred fifty-nine (159) years through
    approximately 236 commissary stores worldwide, delivering
    savings of 17 to 25 percent below civilian retail prices to
    approximately 2.8 million authorized users. This program is
    funded by all federal taxpayers but available only to military
    families and retirees, establishing a proven precedent for
    government-operated at-cost food distribution;

    THE DAIRY CRISIS, VERMONT'S FOOD DOLLAR MADE PERSONAL:

    (e) Dairy is the largest sector of Vermont's agricultural
    economy. The state produces roughly 2.15 billion pounds of
    milk a year [SOURCE: Vermont Dairy Delivers, 2024]. Vermont's
    identity, rolling hills, red barns, Holstein cattle, is
    inseparable from dairy farming. Yet Vermont dairy farming is
    in crisis. The number of dairy farms
    in Vermont has declined from approximately 11,000 in 1947 to
    approximately 636 in 2023 (USDA; Vermont Agency of Agriculture,
    Food and Markets). Vermont dairy farmers receive less for their
    milk than it costs to produce. The 24.3/75.7 split is killing
    the people who produce the food. Farmer suicides. Farm closures.
    Generational farms lost. The USDA Food Dollar is not an
    abstraction in Vermont, it is the reason the barn is empty
    and the farmer is dead. Division I bypasses the 75.7 percent
    markup that is destroying Vermont's agricultural identity.
    At-cost distribution pays farmers the production cost and
    delivers to consumers without the retail markup. The farmer
    survives. The consumer saves. The 75.7 percent dies;

    BEN AND JERRY'S, THE CORPORATE ABSORPTION:

    (f) Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield founded Ben and Jerry's
    Homemade Holdings, Inc., in Burlington, Vermont, in 1978.
    The company built its brand on a living wage, a social
    mission, and Vermont identity. In 2000, Unilever
    acquired Ben and Jerry's for $326 million. That Vermont
    brand was absorbed by a multinational corporation headquartered
    in London and Rotterdam. The ice cream is still manufactured
    in Waterbury, Vermont. The profits flow to Europe. Ben and
    Jerry's is the story of the markup in ice cream form: Vermont
    milk, Vermont labor, Vermont brand, multinational profit.
    Division I keeps the value local: Vermont production, Vermont
    distribution, Vermont benefit. No multinational middleman;

    THE COOPERATIVE PRECEDENT:

    (g) Vermont already practices communal economic models at
    significant scale. Cabot Creamery, founded in 1919, is a
    farmer-owned dairy cooperative with approximately 800 farm
    families. Cabot keeps profits within the cooperative, but
    still sells through the retail markup system. City Market/
    Onion River Co-op in Burlington is a member-owned food
    cooperative with more than 12,000 member-owners across two
    locations, operating at minimal markup. The Champlain Housing
    Trust, founded during Bernie Sanders' mayoral tenure in 1984
    as the Burlington Community Land Trust, is now the largest
    community land trust in America with approximately 3,000
    housing units. The trust owns the land; residents own the
    buildings. When a home is sold, appreciation is shared between
    the owner and the trust, keeping housing permanently
    affordable. This is communal ownership of the productive
    asset with individual benefit within the communal framework,
    the same philosophy as Division I's commissary model applied
    to food. Vermont's cooperative economy is the commissary model
    in miniature. The bill scales what Vermont already practices;

    THE CSA MODEL AT SCALE:

    (h) Community Supported Agriculture, in which the consumer
    pays the farmer directly and receives produce without retail
    markup, is practiced extensively throughout Vermont. CSA
    participation in Vermont is among the most established in
    the United States, with the Northeast Organic Farming
    Association of Vermont and the University of Vermont
    Extension both documenting a dense CSA network across the
    state [SOURCE: NOFA-VT; UVM Extension]. CSA is Division I's
    philosophy at farm-stand scale: at-cost
    distribution, direct relationship between producer and
    consumer, no intermediary markup. The bill industrializes
    what CSA demonstrates in miniature, at-cost distribution of
    all essential goods, not just one farm's vegetables;

    THE BILLBOARD BAN AS ANTI-VEBLEN:

    (i) In 1968, Vermont banned billboards, one of only four
    states in the nation to do so (Vermont, Hawaii, Maine, and
    Alaska). Thorstein Veblen documented conspicuous consumption's
    role in sustaining the markup, advertising creates artificial
    demand for branded products at premium prices. Vermont already
    rejected the advertising apparatus. Division I extends the
    rejection: eliminate not just the advertisement, but the
    markup the advertising supports;

    THE NORTHEAST KINGDOM:

    (j) Orleans, Essex, and Caledonia counties, Vermont's
    Northeast Kingdom, constitute the state's most rural and
    most impoverished region. Rural poverty is hidden by the
    postcard Vermont of covered bridges, fall foliage, skiing,
    and artisan cheese. Food insecurity in communities surrounded
    by dairy farms and maple groves, the production-insecurity
    paradox at Vermont's intimate scale, visible from any
    farmhouse window;

    MAPLE SYRUP SOVEREIGNTY:

    (k) Vermont produces approximately fifty (50) percent of all
    maple syrup in the United States, making it the nation's
    leading producer by a wide margin (Vermont Maple Sugar Makers
    Association). Maple sugaring is an Indigenous practice that
    predates European settlement by centuries. The Abenaki
    people, Vermont's Indigenous population, practiced maple
    sugaring long before Vermont existed as a political entity. Like wild
    rice in Minnesota, maple syrup connects Vermont's food
    identity to Indigenous knowledge. Division I's food
    sovereignty provisions honor the Abenaki origins of the food
    product most identified with Vermont;

    FINDINGS RELATING TO MANUFACTURING CAPACITY AND ABUNDANCE:

    (l) In 1925, geographer Albrecht Penck of the University of
    Berlin calculated that Earth could sustain eight (8) billion
    people when the world population was approximately two (2)
    billion. The United States has possessed sufficient productive
    capacity for universal material abundance since approximately
    1965-1970, over fifty-five (55) years. The United States
    possesses approximately 293,000 manufacturing establishments
    with the capacity to produce 19.5 to 29.3 times the consumer
    goods required for universal provision. Approximately
    seventy-seven (77) percent of this capacity operates below
    full utilization (Cooper, "The Mathematics of Abundance,"
    2025; Federal Reserve Industrial Production data). This
    constitutes the "Factory Proof", material scarcity in the
    United States is maintained through pricing and distribution,
    not productive limitation;

    (m) The grocery industry operates with approximately 47.9
    million food-insecure Americans alongside $32 billion in
    unmet need, which represents 6.5 percent of annual food
    markup. This constitutes the "Grocery Proof", the cost of
    feeding every food-insecure American is a rounding error on
    the existing food economy;

    FINDINGS RELATING TO THE GALBRAITH AND VEBLEN FRAMEWORK:

    (n) John Kenneth Galbraith documented "private opulence and
    public squalor", the coexistence of extraordinary private
    wealth with degraded public services. In Vermont, the ski
    resorts of Stowe and Killington coexist with the food
    insecurity of the Northeast Kingdom. Middlebury College
    charges more than $62,000 per year while dairy farmers in
    the same county cannot afford their own product. The
    Galbraith framework is not abstract in Vermont. It is the
    view from every hillside;

    (o) Thorstein Veblen authored The Theory of the Leisure Class
    (1899), which introduced "conspicuous consumption" and
    "production sabotage", the deliberate restriction of output
    to maintain prices. Vermont's billboard ban is anti-Veblen in
    practice. The state that banned conspicuous advertising should
    ban the markup that advertising sustains;

    FINDINGS RELATING TO THE FRESCO RESOURCE LIBRARY:

    (p) Jacque Fresco (1916-2017), designer, futurist, and
    inventor, developed the concept of the resource library, a
    system in which goods are available for community use rather
    than individual purchase, eliminating the need for ownership
    of infrequently used items. The Fresco Resource Library model
    operates in three tiers corresponding to use frequency:
    Tier 1, constant-use goods (food, personal care, consumed
    and replenished continuously, available to all); Tier 2,
    semi-permanent goods (clothing, household items, replaced
    periodically, available through community membership);
    Tier 3, permanent/durable goods (tools, equipment,
    recreational items, long-lasting, shared among community
    members through
    demonstrated need or training). This model extends the
    commissary principle from food to all material goods;

    FINDINGS RELATING TO RETAIL COLLAPSE:

    (q) The ongoing consolidation and closure of retail
    establishments across the United States demonstrates that
    the retail markup model is economically unsustainable even
    on its own terms. Dollar store proliferation in food deserts,
    pharmacy closures in underserved communities, and grocery
    store departures from low-income neighborhoods confirm that
    the private retail model fails precisely where it is most
    needed. Division I establishes public infrastructure that
    does not depend on profit margins for continued operation;

    (q1) THE HISTORICAL AND BIOLOGICAL PRECEDENT. At-cost
    provisioning of a population is not novel and not untested.
    In approximately 27 BC the Emperor Augustus formalized the
    annona civica, the monthly grain distribution to roughly
    200,000 Roman citizens, administered as civic infrastructure
    in the same category as roads and aqueducts. Augustus was a
    tyrant. The proscriptions of the Second Triumvirate listed
    roughly 300 senators and 2,000 equestrians for death, and
    Suetonius records that Augustus ordered a Roman knight named
    Pinarius stabbed on the spot for the offense of taking notes
    at a public assembly (Suetonius, Life of Augustus 27). Even
    Augustus, who would have a man killed for taking notes in the
    wrong room, understood that hungry citizens are broken
    infrastructure. The annona operated for more than 400 years.
    The Emperor Nerva expanded it with the alimenta, state-funded
    rural loans whose interest was redirected to the nutrition of
    orphaned and destitute children; the Tabula Alimentaria from
    Veleia (CIL XI 1147) is the bronze inscription that recorded
    those loan amounts and child-support payments, and it still
    exists and can be visited at the National Archaeological
    Museum in Parma. The Mabu Co archaeological site on the
    Tibetan Plateau, at 4,446 meters of elevation, records a
    sedentary settlement sustained for roughly 800 years
    beginning approximately 4,400 years ago (Yang et al., Nature
    Ecology and Evolution, September 2024). The Azolla Event
    records a single freshwater fern, in symbiosis with the
    cyanobacterium Anabaena azollae, drawing down enough
    atmospheric carbon dioxide to help drive the Eocene
    hothouse-to-icehouse transition across roughly 800,000 years
    (Brinkhuis et al., Nature 441, 2006). Three records converge:
    a 159-year commissary statute, 400 years of annona
    archaeology, and 49 million years of biological geology
    (Cooper, Papers III, V, and VIII). Provisioning at cost is
    the oldest documented function of organized society. Not
    charity. Engineering;

    (q2) THIS ACT IS NOT GOVERNMENT OWNERSHIP OF THE MEANS OF
    PRODUCTION. The contrast case is the municipal grocery store
    proposed in New York City under Mayor Mamdani, in which the
    city itself owns and operates the store. This Act does not
    do that. It redirects existing tax expenditure, including the
    Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program dollars the state
    already spends, through at-cost distribution centers that
    contract with private producers and distributors. Vermont
    farms stay privately owned. Vermont trucks stay private.
    Processing stays private. The government operates only the
    retail point, at production cost plus a five (5) percent
    surcharge for facility maintenance, which is the exact
    pricing model the United States military commissary has used
    since 1867 without ever acquiring a single farm. Costco
    demonstrates the same near-cost, volume-purchasing,
    membership model entirely within the private sector. Currency
    survives. The free market continues for everything above the
    floor: luxury, custom, specialty, and rare-substrate goods
    are bought and sold as before. This Act provides a floor, not
    a ceiling, and not a replacement for the market economy;

    (q3) THE AUTOMATION OBJECTION, ANSWERED BEFORE IT IS RAISED.
    The objection that this Act threatens distribution jobs
    inverts the actual sequence. Autonomous freight is already in
    commercial operation: Aurora runs commercial driverless
    truck service on the Dallas-to-Houston corridor with no
    safety driver in the cab. Retail closures eliminated roughly
    7,300 United States stores in 2024, and closure
    announcements accelerated into 2025. The jobs are being eliminated by the
    retail collapse and by autonomous freight, not by this bill.
    This bill is what catches the displaced worker: at-cost
    food provision holds a hard floor under the household while
    the labor market resets.
    At-cost distribution eliminates the profit markup layered on
    top of distribution labor; it does not eliminate the labor.
    The military commissary employs truckers, stockers, and
    clerks, and has done so since 1867 while removing only the
    markup. Adam Smith warned of exactly the worker stranded by a
    life of a few simple operations. This Act catches that
    worker rather than abandoning him;

    FINDINGS RELATING TO PUBLIC HEALTH:

    (r) Michael Marmot's Whitehall Studies (1967-present),
    examining 10,308 British civil servants, all employed, all
    with healthcare, none in absolute poverty, found that the
    lowest grade civil servants had three (3) times the mortality
    rate of the highest grade. Standard risk factors (smoking,
    cholesterol, blood pressure) explained less than forty (40)
    percent of the gradient. The gradient applied to heart
    disease, cancer, lung disease, depression, and suicide.
    Hierarchy itself is lethal, not poverty, not deprivation,
    but the gradient;

    (s) Robert Sapolsky's thirty-year study of baboon troops in
    the Serengeti demonstrated that subordinate males showed
    elevated cortisol, atherosclerosis, and impaired stress
    recovery. When a tuberculosis outbreak killed the dominant
    aggressive males in one troop, the surviving subordinates'
    cortisol levels normalized. The biology followed the social
    structure;

    (t) Carol Shively's thirty-year study of female macaques at
    Wake Forest University demonstrated that subordinate status
    produced visceral fat, atherosclerosis, and heart disease
    through a cingulate cortex serotonin pathway. Hierarchy
    causes heart attacks;

    (u) Elizabeth Blackburn received the Nobel Prize in 2009 for
    demonstrating that chronic psychological stress shortens
    telomeres, the protective caps on chromosomal DNA.
    Caregivers of chronically ill children showed measurably
    shorter telomeres. Poverty and subordination age the human
    body at the cellular level;

    THE GRADIENT IS THE DISEASE:

    (u1) The four findings above are one finding. The Whitehall
    civil servants all had employment, all had healthcare, and
    none were in absolute poverty, and they died on a gradient
    anyway. The baboons had no money and no schools, and they
    died on a gradient anyway. The macaque and telomere studies
    report the same result at the level of the artery and the
    chromosome. The gap is the gradient, not the deprivation.
    Treating sickness downstream of an untreated gradient is
    documented to fail across four research programs, six
    decades, and three species. Hierarchy itself kills. This is
    why at-cost food provision is structural and not charitable:
    the economic gradient the markup steepens, the dairy farmer
    paid below production cost, the Northeast Kingdom household
    choosing between food and fuel, is the same gradient the
    research above documents to be lethal. A program that
    delivers food at production cost flattens that material
    gradient at its source rather than funding the sickness
    downstream of it. A policy that knows the gradient kills and
    declines to act on it is not a neutral policy; denial is no
    longer neutral (Cooper, Paper V, 2026);

    (u2) Bowles and Gintis named the right disease at the wrong
    site. In Schooling in Capitalist America (1976) they
    correctly identified socioeconomic stratification but
    incorrectly isolated the school as its engine. Stratification
    is the ocean, not the cup. The gradient is the disease;
    schools are downstream of it, as are housing, wages,
    healthcare access, food pricing, and criminal justice. The
    gradient runs through every institution, and targeting any
    single institution misses the structural mechanism. This
    correction matters for a working family reading this bill:
    this Act does not accuse a grocer, a trucker, or a county
    clerk of building the hierarchy. They work inside it. The
    bill addresses the gradient itself, which is the only target
    that does not require a villain (Cooper, Paper V, 2026);

    THE HOMOGENEOUS GRADIENT:

    (v) Vermont is approximately 93 to 94 percent white, the
    second-whitest state in America after Maine (U.S. Census
    Bureau). Health disparities exist WITHIN this homogeneous
    population, between wealthy Burlington and Stowe and poor
    Northeast Kingdom communities. This proves Marmot's hierarchy
    operates on CLASS, not just race. Vermont's gradient is
    class-pure, no racial confounding variable. The hierarchy
    damages its own demographic. The markup does not discriminate
    by race, it discriminates by position. Vermont proves it;

    THE CONSTITUTIONAL ANCHOR:

    (w) Chapter I, Article 1 of the Vermont Constitution
    (adopted 1777, retained in the present 1793 Constitution)
    declares that all persons "are born equally free and
    independent, and have certain natural, inherent, and
    unalienable rights, amongst which are the enjoying and
    defending life and liberty." Chapter II, Section 68
    establishes an affirmative state obligation that "a
    competent number of schools ought to be maintained in each
    town." The Vermont Supreme Court has held the obligations
    embedded in this Constitution to be judicially enforceable
    where state capacity to act is undisputed (Brigham v.
    State, 166 Vt. 246, 692 A.2d 384 (1997); travels to Lane 3
    with the companion Vermont Education Modernization Act).
    The defense of life is the first natural right named in the
    Vermont Constitution; the defense of life against an
    avoidable food gradient is the operational form of the same
    duty. The duty exists. The question is operational, not
    justiciable. Denial is no longer neutral;

DIVISION I

VERMONT FOOD AND COMMODITY ASSURANCE PROGRAM

SECTION 2. Vt. Stat. Ann. tit. 6, Sec. 4901 is enacted to read:

4901. SHORT TITLE

This article shall be known and may be cited as the "Vermont Food and Commodity Assurance Act."

SECTION 3. Vt. Stat. Ann. tit. 6, Sec. 4902 is enacted to read:

4902. DEFINITIONS

As used in this article:

    (1) "At-cost distribution" means the provision of goods at
    the actual cost of production, processing, and distribution
    without retail markup, following the model established by the
    United States military commissary system under 10 U.S.C.
    Section 2484.

    (2) "Commissary model" means a government-operated or
    government-contracted distribution system that provides
    essential goods to eligible persons at cost, as demonstrated
    by the 159-year operation of the military commissary system.

    (3) "Essential goods" means food, household necessities,
    personal care items, and other consumer products designated
    by the Commissioner of the Vermont Agency of Agriculture,
    Food and Markets as necessary for basic human well-being.

    (4) "Food insecurity" means the condition described by the
    USDA Economic Research Service as limited or uncertain
    availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, or
    limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in
    socially acceptable ways.

    (5) "Fresco Resource Library" means a tiered community
    resource system, as conceptualized by Jacque Fresco (1916-
    2017), operating in three tiers: Tier 1 (basic necessities
    available to all residents), Tier 2 (standard goods available
    through community membership), and Tier 3 (specialized
    equipment available through demonstrated need or training
    certification).

    (6) "Markup" means the difference between the cost of
    production and the retail price charged to consumers, as
    documented by the USDA Food Dollar Series showing a 24.3/75.7
    split between farm share and distribution/retail share.

    (7) "Production cost" means the actual cost of growing,
    manufacturing, processing, and transporting goods, exclusive
    of retail markup, advertising, and profit margin.

SECTION 4. Vt. Stat. Ann. tit. 6, Sec. 4903 is enacted to read:

4903. VERMONT FOOD AND COMMODITY ASSURANCE PROGRAM

    (1) There is hereby established the Vermont Food and Commodity
    Assurance Program within the Vermont Agency of Agriculture,
    Food and Markets.

    (2) The program shall:

    (a) Establish and operate at-cost food distribution centers
    in each of Vermont's fourteen (14) counties, with priority
    placement in counties with the highest rates of food
    insecurity, beginning with Orleans, Essex, and Caledonia
    counties (the Northeast Kingdom);

    (b) Contract with Vermont agricultural producers, including
    dairy cooperatives such as Cabot Creamery, maple syrup
    producers, and CSA-model farms, at production cost plus
    fair margin, eliminating the 75.7 percent retail markup
    chain;

    (c) Distribute essential goods at cost to all Vermont
    residents, with no means testing for Tier 1 (basic
    necessities) and community membership requirements for
    Tier 2 and Tier 3 goods pursuant to the Fresco Resource
    Library model;

    (d) Coordinate with the Champlain Housing Trust and other
    Vermont community land trusts to integrate food distribution
    infrastructure into existing community-owned facilities;

    (e) Partner with City Market/Onion River Co-op and other
    Vermont food cooperatives to use existing cooperative
    distribution infrastructure for at-cost delivery;

    (f) Establish maple syrup sovereignty provisions in
    partnership with the four state-recognized Abenaki bands,
    honoring Indigenous food practices and ensuring Abenaki
    communities benefit from the at-cost distribution of maple
    products that originate from Abenaki traditional knowledge;

    (g) Ensure Vermont dairy farmers receive production cost for
    their milk through the at-cost distribution system, bypassing
    the 75.7 percent markup that is driving farm closures and
    farmer suicides;

    (h) Integrate with Vermont's existing farm-to-table, CSA,
    and food cooperative infrastructure to scale at-cost
    distribution without duplicating existing community systems.

SECTION 5. Vt. Stat. Ann. tit. 6, Sec. 4904 is enacted to read:

4904. FRESCO RESOURCE LIBRARY, VERMONT IMPLEMENTATION

    (1) The Commissioner of the Vermont Agency of Agriculture,
    Food and Markets, in coordination with the Secretary of the
    Agency of Human Services, shall establish Fresco Resource
    Libraries in each county, operating in three tiers:

    (a) Tier 1: Constant-use goods, food, personal care items,
    household consumables, replenished continuously, available
    to all Vermont residents at cost without means testing;

    (b) Tier 2: Semi-permanent goods, clothing, small
    appliances, household equipment, replaced periodically,
    available to Vermont residents through community membership
    in the resource library system;

    (c) Tier 3: Permanent/durable goods, tools, recreational
    equipment, seasonal items, specialized machinery, long-
    lasting items shared among community members through
    demonstrated need or training certification, rather than
    individually owned.

    (2) Resource libraries shall be housed in existing community
    facilities where possible, including town halls, community
    centers, and cooperative buildings, to minimize infrastructure
    costs and maximize community integration.

GENERAL PROVISIONS

SECTION 6. Vt. Stat. Ann. tit. 33, Sec. 6901 is enacted to read:

6901. FUNDING AND APPROPRIATIONS

    (1) The General Assembly shall appropriate funds from the
    General Fund, and may direct revenues from designated tax
    sources, to implement this Act.

    (2) Implementation shall be phased over three (3) fiscal
    years beginning with the fiscal year following enactment:

    (a) Year 1: at-cost food distribution centers in the three
    Northeast Kingdom counties (Orleans, Essex, and Caledonia)
    and Burlington;

    (b) Year 2: expansion to all fourteen (14) counties;

    (c) Year 3: full statewide operation, including the Fresco
    Resource Library tiers established under Section 5.

    (3) The fiscal argument for this Act is set out in full in
    the closing notes: the state and its residents already pay
    the full distribution markup on food, and this Act redirects
    a single-digit percentage of that existing spending into
    at-cost distribution. It is not new spending. It is the same
    money buying food rather than markup.

    (4) Vermont's cooperative economic infrastructure, community
    land trusts, food cooperatives, dairy cooperatives, and
    credit unions, provides existing institutional capacity for
    implementation, reducing startup costs below what a state
    without cooperative infrastructure would face.

SECTION 7. SEVERABILITY

If any provision of this Act or the application thereof to any person or circumstance is held invalid, the invalidity shall not affect other provisions or applications of this Act that can be given effect without the invalid provision or application, and to this end the provisions of this Act are declared to be severable.

SECTION 8. EFFECTIVE DATE

This Act shall take effect on July 1 following its passage by the General Assembly and signature by the Governor.

CLOSING FISCAL NOTES

    THE FEDERAL SNAP COST-SHIFT. Federal H.R. 1 (2025) increased
    the state share of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
    administrative costs from fifty percent to seventy-five
    percent, effective October 1, 2026 [SOURCE: Public Law
    119-21, 2025]. Vermont currently routes SNAP benefits through
    commercial retail, where 75.7 cents of every food dollar pays
    for markup rather than food (USDA Food Dollar Series). Routed
    at cost through Division I, approximately 95 cents of every
    dollar reaches the recipient as food. That is a 3.9-fold
    increase in food delivered per program dollar, and it offsets
    the federal cost-shift the state did not request.

    DIVISION I FOOD PROGRAM TARGET. Division I serves Vermont's
    population of approximately 647,000 residents [SOURCE: U.S.
    Census Bureau, Vintage 2025; Vermont Department of Health].
    The correct fiscal denominator for a state food program is
    the state-only operating general fund, not the all-funds
    total budget. Vermont's enacted general fund for FY2026 is
    approximately $2.625 billion [SOURCE: Campaign for Vermont,
    FY2026 State Budget Overview; NASBO, Vermont]. Per-capita
    state-only general-fund spending is therefore approximately
    $4,057 per resident. At that level, the base-minimum fiscal
    table applies: Table 2, $309 per person per year for a
    25-item core-staple baseline at production cost (30 percent
    of cheapest retail price, USDA Food Dollar Series
    methodology). The Division I target is $309 multiplied by
    647,000 residents, or approximately $199.9 million per year,
    which is approximately 7.6 percent of the FY2026 general
    fund. The full 37-item baseline, Table 1 at $609 per person,
    would require approximately $393.9 million per year, or
    approximately 15.0 percent of the general fund; it is
    retained as the program expansion goal. For reference,
    Vermont's FY2027 appropriations act, H.951, totals
    approximately $9.334 billion across all funds and remained in
    committee of conference as of May 2026 [SOURCE: Vermont
    Legislature H.951; NASBO].

    THE FISCAL CONVERGENCE. The arithmetic says ending the food
    gap costs a single-digit percentage of the markup the state
    and its residents already pay. The operational template has
    run for one hundred fifty-nine (159) years inside the same
    federal apparatus Vermont already funds through federal
    taxation. Augustus, who would have a Roman knight like
    Pinarius killed for taking notes in the wrong room, ran the
    annona for four hundred years because hungry citizens are
    broken infrastructure (Cooper, Paper III, 2025). Vermont is
    not asked to attempt something untested. Vermont is asked
    to deliver to its own residents what the United States
    military commissary has delivered to military families since
    1867, a system Vermont taxpayers have paid for across that
    entire period without a single in-state commissary store
    they are permitted to use.

    THE THREE-RECORD AUDIT. The operational record extends past
    the federal commissary statute. The Tabula Alimentaria
    bronze inscription at Parma still exists and can be visited;
    it records four hundred years of Roman state-funded child
    nutrition under the Emperor Nerva. Suetonius records
    Augustus ordering the Roman knight Pinarius stabbed on the
    spot for taking notes at a public assembly. The same
    Augustus, the tyrant who would have a man killed for taking
    notes in the wrong room, treated hungry citizens as broken
    infrastructure and built the annona as the remedy. This Act
    is the same engineering, not charity, in the lineage that
    runs from Augustus and Nerva to 10 U.S.C. Section 2484
    (Cooper, Paper I, 2025). Denial is no longer neutral.

    THE FISCAL LOCK. The argument that Vermont cannot afford this
    act is refuted by the state's existing expenditure on the
    less efficient version of the same function, while the state
    simultaneously absorbs a federal SNAP cost-shift it did not
    request and funds, through federal taxation, a 159-year
    at-cost commissary system its own residents cannot enter. The
    money is already being spent. The only question is whether it
    buys food or buys markup. Denial is no longer neutral.

REFERENCES

---

The research and citations supporting this legislation are drawn from the Historical Apoplexy series (Cooper, 2025-2026), a ten-paper academic work, and from the following primary sources:

FOOD, COMMODITY, AND ABUNDANCE ECONOMICS: - USDA Economic Research Service, Food Dollar Series (2023) - USDA Economic Research Service, Household Food Security in the United States (2024) - 10 U.S.C. Section 2484, military commissary no-profit pricing; Defense Commissary Agency, established 1867 - H.R. 1 (2025), Public Law 119-21, SNAP administrative cost-share provisions - Penck, A. (1925). Earth carrying-capacity calculation. - Galbraith, J.K. (1958). The Affluent Society. - Veblen, T. (1899). The Theory of the Leisure Class. - Fresco, J. (2007). Designing the Future.

CLASSICAL, HISTORICAL, AND BIOLOGICAL PRIMARY SOURCES: - Smith, A. (1776). An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Book V, Chapter I, Part III, Article II (Glasgow Edition, Oxford, 1976). - Suetonius. The Lives of the Caesars, Life of Augustus (Loeb Classical Library). - Appian. The Civil Wars (Loeb Classical Library). - Cassius Dio. Roman History (Loeb Classical Library). - CIL XI 1147, Tabula Alimentaria of Veleia (National Archaeological Museum, Parma). - Yang et al. (2024). Lake-centred sedentary lifestyle of early Tibetan Plateau populations, Mabu Co. Nature Ecology and Evolution, September 2024. - Brinkhuis, H. et al. (2006). Episodic fresh surface waters in the Eocene Arctic Ocean. Nature 441, pp. 606-609.

FEDERAL STRUCTURAL OVERLOAD: - Congressional Research Service R48832 (2026), 2025 government shutdown economic effects. - Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929. - Swiss Federal Council, collegial executive (established 1848).

VERMONT-SPECIFIC: - Act 107 (2010-2012), state recognition of Abenaki tribes. - Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets, dairy farm statistics (2023). - Vermont Dairy Delivers, The State of Dairy (2024). - Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association. - Campaign for Vermont, FY2026 State Budget Overview; NASBO, Vermont; Vermont Legislature H.951 (FY2027). - U.S. Census Bureau, Vintage 2025; Vermont Department of Health, population data. - Feeding America, Map the Meal Gap, Hunger and Poverty in Vermont (2023). - Champlain Housing Trust; Cabot Creamery Cooperative; City Market and Onion River Co-op. - Vermont Republic Constitution (1777). - Sanders, B., Burlington mayoral tenure (1981-1989), Congressional career (1991-present).

HEALTH AND HIERARCHY: - Marmot, M. (2004). The Status Syndrome. - Marmot, M.G. et al. (1991). Health inequalities among British civil servants: the Whitehall II study. The Lancet. - Sapolsky, R.M. (2017). Behave. - Shively, C.A. et al. (2009). Social Stress, Visceral Obesity, and Coronary Artery Atherosclerosis. Obesity. - Blackburn, E. and Epel, E. (2017). The Telomere Effect. - Bowles, S. and Gintis, H. (1976). Schooling in Capitalist America. Corrected per Cooper, Paper V, The Targeting Error.

HISTORICAL APOPLEXY SERIES (Cooper, 2025-2026): - Paper I: Historical Apoplexy, Concept Definition (2025). - Paper II: Historical Arc (2026). - Paper III: The Mathematics of Abundance (2025). - Paper IV: Stolen Futures (2025). - Paper V: The Targeting Error (2026). - Paper VI: The Resuscitation Document (2026). - Paper VII: The Structural Overload (2026). - Paper VIII: Venus Prime (2026). - Paper IX: Saturnian Persia (in research). - Paper X: The Maturity Void (2026).

END OF BILL

              Vermont Food, Resource, and Commodity
                       Assurance Act

                   State of Vermont
              The General Assembly, 2027-2028

"Vermont already produces the food and already pays the markup. This Act keeps the food and ends the markup."

                    Imran Stanton Cooper
              The Amanuensis, 2025-2026

         Historical Apoplexy (Cooper), Paper Series
              Supporting Legislation

---

Verification notes & full source chain

Constitutional path: Legislative path only.

Distribution-model precedent: The U.S. Defense Commissary Agency (10 U.S.C. § 2484), operational since 1867, sells groceries at cost plus a five-percent maintenance surcharge with no profit allowed by law. 2.8 million authorized users, 236 stores worldwide, $4 billion annual sales, $1.3 billion federal appropriation paid by all taxpayers including the 330+ million civilians denied access. This bill extends the same at-cost distribution model to all residents of Vermont.

Public-health-equity evidence: The Marmot Whitehall Studies (1967-present), Sapolsky's Serengeti baboons, Shively's cynomolgus macaques, and Blackburn's Nobel-winning telomere research establish that hierarchy itself kills across four research programmes, six decades, and three species. The gap is the gradient. Food assurance reaches beyond bare survival because the gradient damages population health even where calorie minimums are met.

Abundance arithmetic: 293,000 U.S. manufacturing facilities at 77 percent utilization; 19.5-29.3× the productive overcapacity required to provide universal abundance in consumer goods. 47.9 million Americans food-insecure; $32 billion ends domestic hunger; $496 billion is the annual U.S. food-industry markup over production cost; the gap is operational evidence of manufactured scarcity, not evidence of resource constraint. See Paper III, The Mathematics of Abundance.