Curran inducted into Vermont’s Ag Hall of Fame Chester resident, Black River Produce co-founder earns Lifetime Achievement Award

By Shawn Cunningham
© 2025 Telegraph Publishing LLC

Mark Curran’s life took an unlikely turn when the college philosophy major decided to take a year off and spend it as a carpenter and ski bum in Vermont.

Little did the Pennsylvania native know that — 51 years later — he would be inducted into the Vermont Agriculture Hall of Fame with a Lifetime Achievement award, which recognizes “those who have made a significant contribution to the advancement, improvement or development of Vermont agriculture over the course of their long career.”  That ceremony takes place on Wednesday, Aug. 27 at the Champlain Valley Fair.

It was 1974, and Curran and his friend Steve Birge, like thousands of young people at the time, headed to the Green Mountain state, settling into south-central Vermont. Instead of farming, they were looking for to start a business and realized that natural food stores were coming into vogue throughout the country.

Trips to Boston markets yielded better produce than what was available in locally, and their Ludlow retail operation — Black River Market — took off. Soon however, five, then 10, then 20 restaurants were ordering produce from their market.

And in no time, they sold the market and moved entirely into wholesale, with a twist. They decided to include the produce of farming friends and as much locally grown produce as they could find. Going from an abandoned livery stable in Ludlow to a building in Proctorsville, then to a complex in Springfield, Black River Produce kept growing and with it the local food movement.

Curran, who lives in Chester, says it wasn’t always easy. Burlington has a reputation for its hip food scene now, but as late as the 1990s, restaurant owners there were saying “don’t send us native produce,” he says. Still, the focus on local products continued and now Black River Produce works with over 200 Vermont producers and is known as Vermont’s premier locally sourced supplier.

In 2013, Curran and Birge bought an old Ben & Jerry’s plant, transforming it into a state-of-the-art 50,000-square-foot meat processing facility. That opened market opportunities for regional farmers who had been held back by the local meat processing bottleneck. Three years later, the two sold much of their stake in Black River Produce to Reinhart Foodservice, which later sold it to Performance Food Group, which has kept the iconic local name and logo.

Curran and Birge’s passion for food continues with their latest endeavor, Vermont Family Farms, focusing on maintaining Vermont’s agricultural working landscape in supporting hard working farmers.

Since 2003, the Champlain Valley Expo has hosted the Vermont Agriculture Hall of Fame, which honors Vermonters who have made significant achievements to Vermont’s working landscape. For more information, click here.