SmartTranscript of House Agriculture Committee's Zoom Meeting

[Eric Von Weberg ]: In the agriculture landscape and environment department that used to be plant and soil science, I had other names before that. My academic expertise is in crop diversity. We work on forage plants, things like alfalfa. We work on grain legumes, so beans, peas, lentils, chickpeas. We have a project on PFAS with colleagues at the University of Maine, which has really taken a lead in this area because of Maine's legislative environment. I am here to seek input on the priorities of the experiment station, which are laid out by the Hatch Act. This is what I'll get to first. Why don't we, [David Durfee ]: go around the table and just give you quick introductions so that you know who we all are and, representative Nelson, [Richard Nelson ]: we can start with you. Richard Nelson, new legislator from the town of Kirby, dairy farmer, class of eighty five. Wonderful. [Jed Lipsky ]: Jed Lipsky from one of the one. [Eric Von Weberg ]: So welcome. Fantastic. Morgan. I represent Grand Isle County and Yep. [David Durfee ]: West. And I'm David Durfee. I live in Shaftesbury and represent as well as Sunderland and Bostonbury down in Bennington County. [Speaker 4 ]: That is not Windsor four, primary, palm for Bridgewater, West Hartford, and then organic. [John O'Brien ]: John O'Brien are a percent royalty out of my hometown. [Speaker 4 ]: Greg Berg, Cabot, Danville Teaching, Apple farmer, Maple Leaf farmer. Yes. [David Durfee ]: One of our committee members, representative Boswell, is not here. Maybe in and out on Zoom. Yep. So we'll keep an eye on the screen in case there's a raised hand, and then you've Macedonia Yeah. Thank you. Who organized the meeting. Thank you. So if you could just, for the record, say your name again, and we'll get started. [Eric Von Weberg ]: Thank you. I am Eric Von Weberg, the director of the Vermont Agricultural Experiment Station. And it's I am here to seek input on the research priorities of the agricultural experiment station. Agricultural experiment stations were created by federal legislation in the Hatch Act of eighteen eighty seven. Land grant universities were created by Vermont's amazing Justin Morrill in the eighteen eighty two and then follow-up eighteen ninety. A Morrill Act, this took federal land in the west. There is a complicated story, sad story behind that. But that land, for Vermont and Minnesota, Iowa, California was sold, created an endowment and it took, it created agricultural colleges, that aim to have the teach the mechanical and agricultural arts. They were very much about making scientific farming. After those were established, UVM was the only institution in Vermont that stepped up to be the land grant, Middlebury, Bennington and others declined the opportunity because of the bridges attached to it at the time. UVM had to mortgage all of its buildings to meet the match. Once those were created, every state has one or more, several states have a few. It was clear that there was research expertise in those faculty and the Hatch Act was built, was set up to harness that expertise. The Smith Lever Act of nineteen fourteen created extension, so sorry, in most states, a county level activity. Ideally, these three overlap. Several of you have long connection to UVM and know that extension has moved in and out of the College of Agriculture at UVM. My personal opinion and I sort of beyond the scope is that extension, the College of Agriculture is much stronger with extension in it. But that is just my opinion. Alright. This is the original form of UVM's agricultural experiment station. The campus does not look like this. This is, looking at the main green from above what is now basically the Davis Center or Jeffords Hall. The area to the west of the main green was the initial research farm. By the 1930s, Burlington and UVM had expanded enough that the farms were moved out, farther away. So the Miller farm, which I'll talk about in a bit is, our dairy and equine center. It is visible from I eighty nine and is perhaps the most visible farm in the state, stewarding it and bringing it back to being the beacon of ideas for what makes agriculture sustainable is very high on my list. That's why I agreed to be the chair of animal and veterinary science. We have three other farms, the Morgan Horse Farm near Middlebury, the Procter Maple Center in Underhill, and the Horticulture Research and Education Center or the Hort Farm. A few of you know Terry Bradshaw from his work on apples. And that's a little bit hard to see, but it's nestled in suburban South Burlington. Because the farms moved out, agricultural experiment stations have taken a more virtual form. Technically, ours at UVM is the tenured and tenure track faculty in the College of Agriculture who are not covered by Smith Lever in extension. Ag experiment stations are usually considered stodgy, old fashioned, backward even, but seventy five percent of the publicly funded agricultural research in this country is done by ag experiment stations. Nationally, the system of state ag experiment stations is in the middle of a rebrand. We're now called ag innovation. I am doing all I can to not rename Vermont Center that. Rebrands are confusing, and we do ag innovation, but that's a pretty broad term. Regionally, the heads of the thirteen northeastern ag experiment stations get together. We are Ag Innovation Northeast. I I am wearing my pen. So as I said, this is laid out by federal legislation, the Hatch Act of eighteen eighty seven. This is older federal legislation, so it looks different than many more recent USDA acts. It allocates funds to each state's ag experiment station based on a formula, how much agricultural area there is in a state, how big the state is overall, how many people are in the state, how many people work in agriculture. Those numbers have shifted over time. Vermont has always at its best been a brave little state. So we get substantially less than Pennsylvania does. The legislation also has a stipulation that that federal fund to get that federal funding, the state matches it. So it has always been a state federal partnership. Every state has met that match one way or another. And because of that partnership, we are expected to do research of state and regional significance. Since at least the deanship of Tom Vogelmann and actually before the farm was rearranged, the the whole ag experiment station was rearranged in the late nineties. We use the funds to pay for a portion of faculty salaries. We provide about seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars in small faculty seed grants. We support graduate students. We want graduate students. They, many of them stay in the state. They have more advanced degrees, particular expertise, and they do all sorts of things from work for NRCS, take jobs in extension or elsewhere. We have a number who have started farms. We also use some of the funds to pay for our facilities in the to do there are some things we can do on private farms. I have a project with the Vermont Land Trust where we are on fifteen farms around the state, and we make management implementations in collaboration with those farmers to look at grazing as an opportunity to look at agroforestry. But there are some manipulations that we need to do on campus and we can bring students into that research better when it's on campus. So we use some of the funds to pay for those facilities. Question? I am happy to take questions and [David Durfee ]: Representative O'Brien. [John O'Brien ]: I just wondered what what is the match? Is it a fiftyfifty or is it [Eric Von Weberg ]: It is. The baseline is fiftyfifty. So we receive one point five million from the federal government in hatch funds extension, and I'm not authorized to speak specifically about extension. They receive one point nine million in Smith Lever funds every year. And, my understanding, though, being on the record, I wanna put a caveat in it that I I'm not in extension. I work closely with several people in extension like Heather Darby, Joshua Faulkner, Juan Alphas, and others. Most of those funds are allocated to the salary the eighty percent base funding that the extension faculty [David Durfee ]: receive. There are dozens. [Richard Nelson ]: Thank you, chairman. How is extension now? Is Heather Darby's a rock star [David Durfee ]: Yep. In our [Richard Nelson ]: in our world? Yes. She is. And the extension out of UVM now was not the extension. It's not my father's extension. It's much more progressive progressive. Great great research. Great help to firms of all size in the state. So how is extension now associated with that? [Eric Von Weberg ]: So extension is treated like a department within the College of Agriculture. K. So there were some back end changes that occurred when Extension was pulled into the college, and those were intended to generate cost savings and efficiencies. So things like handling paperwork with federal grants. Heather has about fifteen pages of federal grant, federal donor and other grant state grant funding. So to help her manage that more efficiently, ideally, pulling it into the college did that. It was also intended to create more collaboration. So if you recall my first slide, it's a Venn diagram, and there should be some overlap, your father's extension before the age of the Internet, the model was supposed to be that research was done by people on main campus. Extension agents went out and interpreted it and presented it to their farmer partners. That has changed substantially because of, among other things, the Internet. We, particularly in Vermont, I work closely with a number of farmers in different fields. We have amazing farmers who try different things. Their experiments are frequently unreplicated or they're specific to their farm, but extension has transitioned from going out and presenting to much more of a collaboration with the farming community. That's part of, I think, what you mean by being progressive. And main campus has shifted some too. Many of us do, like me, on farm research, so we work in parallel with extension. Extension, particularly Heather, but Heather is not alone. Joshua Faulkner, Mark Canela, Chris Callahan, to name a few of many, all have active visible research programs that serve the state and we work in parallel, but there are some things where the teaching mission is closely aligned with the research and the outreach that it makes sense to have it on main campus. That's the agricultural experiment station. [David Durfee ]: So just on your last bullet point and then to represent a right question in our state budget every year, there is a an appropriation for specifically for the, as a match. Yeah. This had [Eric Von Weberg ]: And I'm not, I am not here to speak to the match. I'm here to speak to the priorities that we use to to run it. But, we we are very thankful for that. That is, an engine of that keeps the not only the institution running, but allows us to do research and teaching and outreach to the state. So as I said earlier, our researchers of state and regional significance, ag experiment stations have partnered together across state lines from early in the Hatch Act. And there are some challenges. I will note a few. PFAS is one of them since it's on your minds, but things like biosecurity. Bird flu should be on our minds. It's a major concern To run projects across state lines, we partner together, and we have multistate hatch projects. Heather Darby's name has come up several times. Heather is unique in extension in that she is also in the ag experiment station so that multi state funds can flow to her program in Anne Hazelrigs to study, pathology problems, diseases of crops that spread across state lines. The same happens in entomology. The northeast extension and ag experiment station directors have a set of priorities. I've got the link on the slide, so that it's in the public record. The northeast agenda, has us developing viable, sustainable, and equitable food systems. Your afternoon, testimony from Meredith Niles and others will talk about, some of the food security issues. Meredith is in the ag experiment station. We aim to lead effective adaptation and mitigation of a changing climate. We may change the wording on that, but the simple fact is the kinds of floods, thaws that we get in maple production that have changed when and how people tap the two years ago two years ago, the late frost that impacted much of our apple production. We are working on addressing these. Some of them may be are well beyond our our capacity, but these are some of the big challenges that we face. And then promoting environmental, human, and community health. Locally, these are our priorities and this is what I'm here to seek input on. You will see that these seven priority areas are incredibly broad. They basically encompass all that the thirty eight faculty in the agricultural experiment station do. Tom Vogelmann wrote these broadly intentionally, and we are following other states and having them be broad. There are other states, that have been somewhat more prescriptive and taken more specific input. Faculty, when they're hired, they are not paid entirely by the agricultural experiment station. So, I would never tell Heather what to do. Heather's right on target all the time. But none of our faculty, we may hire in a specific area, but we we have long traditions of giving them freedom to explore particular areas. However, I think the challenges we face are are such that taking input on specific problems, listening to you. Tom had a history of going out to each of your districts, getting on your farm, having lunch if that's agreeable, and, looking at what's there on the ground and then taking that back so that when we hire or when we give suggestions to our faculty, we're it's very clear that we're listening. I'm gonna stop here for a moment, but I I'm also happy to come back to this at the end of my presentation. Senator Branche. [John O'Brien ]: It's a minor an AES entity, minor institute in New York. Like, UBM works from [Eric Von Weberg ]: We work closely with a minor. They do not receive Vermont Hatch funds directly because they are, I believe and I I think I I am just bearing a caveat in case I'm wrong in the recording. I believe as a private foundation, their structure's a little bit separate. We have a close articulation agreement in them with them in animal science so that our students who wanna specialize in conventional dairy can go over there and get the expertise that they have. We do not have the land base at the Miller Farm next to campus to run a modern conventional dairy. We are at, I believe, well, the number has shifted. We just lost a cow, but we're in the forties for the number of, dairy cows in our teaching herd at UVM. And we are bringing in substantial amounts of external food because there's about one hundred farmable acres that we have to feed those cows. It's not sufficient. We have nearby conventional dairies that many some of our students go to, but we we have a close agreement. A number of our faculty have have and continue to do close research with them. They are well set up to do contractual research. So a faculty member could use hatch funding and, and pay for work on, say, feed with cows there. In fact, one of our new AES faculty members who, among other things, is going to study feeding food waste to dairy cows to look at the nutritional milk quality impacts of that. It's a way around particularly Burlington, but everywhere to help with feed shortages and maybe increase the welfare of the cows. She's likely to have a portion of her work over there. [David Durfee ]: And the over there is the minor institute. Is that [Eric Von Weberg ]: It's in Chasing, New York. So it's on the other side of the lake. [David Durfee ]: Just a boat boat ride away? [Eric Von Weberg ]: Just a boat ride away. Yes. Representative Lipsky. [Jed Lipsky ]: Yeah. I apologize, you know, the vocabulary words just over My apologies. Is at all. You may have addressed this, but under extension and how you those, you know, prioritize Yeah. Areas. We're also tasked to or asked to fund what are called the extension services that are conservation districts Yes. Who asks some type of service. Is there any overlap between what they're responsible to provide in various regions versus [Eric Von Weberg ]: You have stumped the chump slightly. [Jed Lipsky ]: Well, these are we're always asked, and they're entire need of support. [Eric Von Weberg ]: Yes. My understanding is that they frequently are housed or co housed with NRCS district offices and that they have close articulation agreements where NRCS can hire conservation district staff to work on their work. As a researcher, particularly for our project with the land trust that has a number of farms in the Northeast Kingdom near Paulette as well, we've tried to work with the conservation districts as partners on that. In terms of the funding details, I would need to get back to you, and then I think my understanding is that they're separate, but I should verify that to be accurate. The other thing is a forester that I did not say because it's outside of my scope of work is the McIntyre Stennis program. So it's the third a fourth federal program, McIntyre Stennis Act. It funds work in forestry and conservation. That the Mac UVM is a land grant receives MacIntyre Stennis funds. Those are run by the Rubenstein School of Advantage, by the Rubenstein School of the Environment. I know less about them because they're outside of my college. I have collaborations with several people who receive MaxDennis funds, Julie Galford, for example. I believe they have the same arrangements as the Hatch and Smith Lever funds, but I am not certain about that. So I'll [Jed Lipsky ]: All your, you know, seven or eight bullet points on this slide, there's a lot of overlap in several agencies. We are aware of that. [Eric Von Weberg ]: Areas. Within UVM, we often have cross college collaborations. An institution like UVM that goes back to the seventeen nineties, academics build towers and, you end up people end up siloed and we cross them. These were written to be intentionally broad and, ideally, they do impact state agencies, federal agencies. And if we at our best, we are collaborating closely. Vermont's too small for multiple people to do the same thing. [Richard Nelson ]: Representative Nelson. Yeah. Just speaking to the minor institute program and having a son that went through there and not nephew as well. Unfortunately, not too guarantee COVID. [David Durfee ]: There. [Richard Nelson ]: It's it's a rock star program. Yeah. It's led by nutrition side. It's led by Katie Ballard [David Durfee ]: Yep. [Richard Nelson ]: Who is the class of eighty four from UVM, PhD in nutrition now. And Wanda Kaylor [David Durfee ]: Yeah. [Richard Nelson ]: Runs the lot with the the the kids in the program side, and she's class of eighty five. [Eric Von Weberg ]: Katie Ballard is affiliated faculty with UVM, so she is in the animal and veterinary science department. She is. And that'll that allows graduate students who wanna work at the minor to cross over. She does not always attend our faculty meetings because she's obviously in Chaney, not Burlington. But the agreement has largely worked. The place is a rock star. I agree. For undergraduate students, they frequently have so many friends and activities in Burlington that getting them over there for extended periods of time is is something that we're working on. [Richard Nelson ]: You you gotta like living out there. [Eric Von Weberg ]: I I grew up in a town of two thousand people behind a dairy farm in upstate New York, and you have to like it to do it. Yeah. [Richard Nelson ]: You know, the the the cream program is still going full throttle. [Eric Von Weberg ]: Still going through full throttle. I would as the chair of the animal and veterinary science department, I am keen to build a program called SCIM, or at least work with my faculty to do that. And the idea is that the CREAM program has an incredible acceptance rate for students into veterinary science, doctor, med programs, but we can only get a few students through it at a time. We would like to build opportunities for a greater number of students in our, animal science programs to go through it. So because of the hands on nature of milking cows three times a day, having a a broader range of activities that are skim is, so something we're aiming to do to to meet the needs of as many of our students as we can. [Richard Nelson ]: Are are you trying to reinvigorate the dairy science program at UBM? Is that what I'm hearing? [Eric Von Weberg ]: That is something I would be happy to talk about after this. That is outside of my Scoville slides, but I think, dairy is still the largest sector we have in agriculture. There is there are many ways to have working lands in Vermont that give a mixture of environmental sustainability and economic viability that I think are within the broad scope of what I think many would desire. But it is hard to imagine an agricultural future in Vermont that does not have animals on the landscape. [Richard Nelson ]: And do you still work closely with Shelton Shelton Farms, the one next to it? Used to do we used to do work down there. [Eric Von Weberg ]: Mich Cove, Nordic Farms, Vilow Ridge Farm. [Richard Nelson ]: No. These are different farms now. Yeah. [Eric Von Weberg ]: If I may, I'll I'll continue and take this up later. Dairy is incredibly important to Vermont and we are well aware of that. Great. Alright. So I'm gonna quickly touch base on the fork, the farms that we have because they receive a portion of our Ag Experiment Station funds. We have a Procter Maple Center, Miller Research and Education Center. This is where our dairy herd is and where some of our horses are and our Horticulture Research and Education Center. I'm also going to touch on the Morgan horse farm, although it does not receive AES funds. Each of these farms is intended to serve the overlapping mission of research, teaching, and outreach. At Procter, I'm happy to report we have a new scientific director, doctor Tim Rademacher. We were able to recruit him out of Quebec. We are are thrilled to have his energy. Our hopes include expanding expanding staffing up there, working to increase public outreach, using some of the facilities to hold more more meetings, to have more classes going through it, to have the public up there more often. For those who have been there, it's a beautiful center. It's got an amazing view, but it is in many ways a cutting edge maple facility and making sure we provide support to this iconic sector is remains critical. And having a yet energetic young director, I think, is an amazing step in that direction. Miller is right next to the UVM campus. It's less than a mile away. It is walkable for our students. It is also visible from I eighty nine. For many who are considering UVM as a place to work or study, it is the most visible symbol that we are a land grant institution. Our due to the largesse of Senator Leahy, UVM now hosts the USDA Agricultural Research Service Research Group. They are working on investments in some of the barns that have not been actively used for many years. And that is part of revitalizing this, looking at how we manage our dairy herd and bringing it into alignment with some of the approaches that smaller dairy farms use is on our mind. We, the news of losing a dairy farm a week in Vermont is, has been going on probably my entire life. A lot of that has been condensation into larger farms in the parts of Vermont that are flat enough to allow that, parts of Franklin and Addison in particular, but not just there. There was a time in perhaps the 50s, maybe even the 70s, where a forty acre farm with forty cows was viable in a way that it is perhaps not now. There are ways that a farm with a smaller land base around a hundred foot acres like ours, might better reflect the conditions that those farms have. And I we we are in the middle of a strategic planning process that is considering many of those approaches. We have an obligation to Vermont's dairy industry that includes teaching people to do all sorts of agriculture. Our large conventional farms are there. We currently use best management practices from Heather that include cover cropping and no till approaches. We are also in South suburban South Burlington, where those approaches are not necessarily in line with the values of all of our students or our neighbors. So there are there are other approaches that we are taking input on. The horticulture research farm is nestled behind the Heritage Toyota complex. It is in a unique site geologically. It's a former lake bed of Lake Champlain. So those who know the Champlain Valley, sandy soils are basically unheard of, except this site. Virgin's Clay is, my favorite soil type, and it is the exact opposite of this. This is a multi use farm. We have both conventional organic production. We have large apple orchards. We have the tree program for the city of Burlington, and we house a range of training programs. We have a number of campus greenhouses that receive funds. These are essential to our teaching and research mission. And we have the Morgan horse farm. This is a historical farm. It is on the historical registry. The Morgan horse is for many, the most iconic symbol of Vermont. The farm is gorgeous. It is also far enough away from Burlington. Using it in our teaching mission conflicts with a three or four hour lab block, you know, where a student might have a four hour lab and you or a three hour lab, then you use the entire lab period to get there. Nonetheless, its management is is very much on our minds. Alright. So I'm going to circle back to my core mission to let other questions bubble up. I've already talked about the formula. We hedge funds have been stable. They have not grown with inflation, because every state receives them. And because every state receives them, they have not been cut in the past. But they have also not grown. So no representative in Washington is likely to advocate for increasing them because the benefits go to all states rather than an individual state or district. Revitalizing what we do is very much on my mind. Getting stakeholder input, thank you, from all of you, is top of mind with that. And making sure we have priorities that fit the needs of the state and our agricultural sector is where I'll end for a moment. I'm happy to take your questions and comments. I've put this in so it shows up in the record. I'm happy to take emails or other forms of communication, and thank you. [David Durfee ]: So, yeah, let's see first of all if we've got questions. [John O'Brien ]: Did you have a question? Yeah. Just just quickly, our chair is a board member of Vermont State University. Yes. I wondered what kind of collaborations are going on there, like, the dairy farm, for example. [Eric Von Weberg ]: So the the most active one is in the dairy program, the two by two plus two articulation agreement. I've had some preliminary meetings with some of the staff, some of the teaching staff there. I'm very excited in my other hats role as the chair of animal and veterinary science to work closely with them. I will be the academic advisor for those students as they transfer in and the chair of ASI becomes the advisor of transfer students who come in. I think it is an amazing starting point. I would love to see more students go through that program. You know, the size of it is is digitated. Due to turnover there, my understanding is it's been less active than it had been, but I am very hopeful that that will remain vibrant and that as we as we move out of a strategic planning process at Miller that we have the sort of facilities and welcoming environment that makes those students want to work there. We we have had those discussions more broadly around agricultural discussion. The number of programs in place is outside of the purview of the ag experiment station director, But certainly, we've welcomed those students. I have looked into, although we weren't able to make it work, providing graduate training to some of the faculty at particularly at Vermont Tech, where the a master's degree is sufficient for teaching at it's a more than adequate qualification for teaching that many of the courses there. But for the faculty, we're retaining faculty there, particularly in the midst of major reorganization, is one of many challenges the state college faces. If we can help provide PhDs for those who want to pursue them, create pathways that are flexible enough for those faculty to pursue an advanced degree, but also do their job, have, home life, adequate recreation. So if it works for the people involved, it has to work for the people to work. If we can do that, I think we can be we have a good partnership. We can deepen it. Other questions? [David Durfee ]: Other any, like, immediate feedback recognizing that we might all need a little time to digest and think about it. But are you open to reacting [Eric Von Weberg ]: to here to listen to you, and it will be you with my full attention. I am happy to to come at five in the morning and chat further if that's desired at some point. I'm happy to go muck out a barn too if that's desired for for a [David Durfee ]: little bit. [Richard Nelson ]: If you got one piece, select yourself in a five and a one. [Eric Von Weberg ]: I do not. Yeah. [David Durfee ]: The dairy farmers in the room, may be up that early. I can't say whether the rest of us are. [Richard Nelson ]: A month or early, but it takes me an hour and twenty minutes since [David Durfee ]: I hear. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [John O'Brien ]: Yeah. It's one yeah. One more quick question. Does the farm bill have any [Eric Von Weberg ]: It has funded? Has a very big impact on funding. So the what I have been in my role as the director of the Ag Experiment Station since last January. I have been the chair of animal science for functionally about seven days. I was brought into that role because I spent a substantial portion of last spring and summer writing a research facilities act proposal and a dairy business innovation center proposal to renovate and expand some of what we have in Miller. So in in my actions, revitalizing dairy has been very much on that on my mind. The Research Facilities Act, well, the RFA is nestled within the farm bills. USDA NIFA, National Institute for Food and Agriculture Funding. It's the part of USDA that gives out research grants primarily to land grant universities universities of a similar ilk, private or public non land grant institutions can apply. The RFA funding is a particular line within that. It's been offered as a pilot program. So our horticulture for our hort farm received one of, I believe, five of the initial round of grants. It's put up a new three season barn that we can use as a flexible teaching apple storage space on the hoard farm. We sought it for biosecurity funding at Miller to reduce some of the bottlenecks around handwashing that in a bird flu outbreak could be the most dangerous. We also have to have as many cows as we have. We are in the, in a, in a sensitive watershed on like Lake Champlain and we have stewardship obligations that I was hoping to address. In discussions around the farm bill, there's been bipartisan support for a, the number has shifted. It's been as high as ten billion dollars for Research Facilities Act funding. Every land grant institution has the old barns that UVM has. This is something that when I was a postdoc at UC Davis, we use greenhouses from the 1950s. UC Davis is an amazing research institution. But when you're using a greenhouse that has peeling lead paint and all sorts of other things, you've got a deferred maintenance problem. We don't have peeling lead paint to the best of my knowledge, but Davis did when I was there in two thousand and seven. That act is intended to do that. We are running a strategic planning process in part so that we can be very competitive for that funding. So I'm hopeful around that. The Hatch Act is within the farm bill. So the the thing the the updates that we get about where those negotiations are are that it got punted. It will be in the next Congress. I there's I won't place any wagers on what happened. But the Hatch Act, Smith Lever, those have a century or more of bipartisan support around them. So That's encouraging. Yes. [David Durfee ]: Other you you [Speaker 4 ]: mentioned wanting to work with farmers to even decide what what research to be doing. Is that am I correct in saying that? [Eric Von Weberg ]: We our mandate is to take broad stakeholder input on what we study. So we in addition to talking with all of you, we approach our the college board of advisors and they which includes a number of of farmers. We will have a Vermont poll question coming out in a few weeks around this to take a broad representative for Vermont funding. I will be in front of the Ag Leaders Group. It's a group that John Roberts at FSA currently runs. Friday is his last day. We will see who runs it in the future, but it includes a number of farmers. I regularly attend most of the farming conferences in the state, and I try to listen from NOFA that appeals to one group to several of the conferences that Heather Darby or others in extension run. We use those avenues. I am always happy to listen to particular farmers, and and we get them. I appreciate that some farmers are more willing to reach out to UVM than others. And I'm not sure with the email address I have and that I had a hearing problem as a child. And even if I grew up behind a dairy farm, I'm not sure I sound that way. And that's out of my control. I I I years of remedial speech therapy. Nonetheless, I'm very interested in hearing that input. It's not always trivial to get it. [Speaker 4 ]: Yeah. I just I know the research center [Eric Von Weberg ]: Yeah. [Speaker 4 ]: Specifically, you know, some of what they're they were coming out with. We were all waiting to hear, you know, heat salts. You know? And so there's definitely and with technologies changing all the time, there's always something there that nobody necessarily wants to be beginning big on themselves. And if and if that's a a way [Eric Von Weberg ]: to try it if somebody's tried [Jed Lipsky ]: it at UVM. Take off of the shoulder of [Speaker 4 ]: of some of the dairy farms, you know, wanting to try something, but not sure if it works yet. [David Durfee ]: And [Eric Von Weberg ]: yeah. I am very interested in talking about that and and listening to that if there are ways that we can get that technology and try it. And it it doesn't interfere with, for example, core teaching functions [John O'Brien ]: Yeah. [Eric Von Weberg ]: Then, yes, I can say that many of my faculty in animal science in particular are very enthusiastic about that. We have a relatively new faculty member who is a expert on virtual colors, and this can be useful for a range of operations. We have one of the farmers I work with with the Vermont Land Trust has had several hundred head of beef cattle in around Craftsbury out with one generation of these collars. The Vermont phone network wasn't quite up to the first round of the collars, but it's largely worked. For those who want to move towards grazing, collars are almost essential, if you wanna move cows regularly. And that's one example. I'm working on getting an experimental biodigester, for a few of our faculty, And, you know, some of the work on things like food waste feeding food waste, I think, is could be in that. But, yeah, I'm very interested in listening. [John O'Brien ]: DTC has one for sales. [David Durfee ]: Who knows? Chairman, thank you. [Richard Nelson ]: You touched upon PIPAs when you first came in. That's that's gonna be the new PCP issue [David Durfee ]: Yeah. [Richard Nelson ]: In Vermont. I I feel they they be on. I think we need to get ahead of it. Where where do you see yourself going with this in in in related to, biosolids? [Eric Von Weberg ]: So I have not prepared testimony on this. I am working on contributing to a proposal with colleagues at the University of Maine. Although I think they have some frustration that as I've taken on administrative responsibilities, I haven't digested their proposal on remeasuring transfer factors from the soil. So PFAS moves in a lot of ways. How it moves from it can move in water. Plants take up water from the soil around them as well as many other things. But the although it moves in water, that movement is not a single factor. Plants are selective in what they take up and they're selective at different growth stages. And depending on what the plant is, it may be different as well. So we have been proposing an experiment to study that in part so that we know how much we can predict is going to be in the plant. So we know whether it's safe for a cow or a person to eat it. I agree with you that this is an emerging area. I agree with you that how we handle biosolids, we need answers to this to give good answers to that. One of the reasons I'm taking input on these priorities is we are considering we have given the seven hundred we use seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars at the federal allocation to support graduate students. And there's broad interest at UVM in maintaining that. Those grad students study. In some cases, they could study topics like this. We give another portion out as grants to faculty to maintain capacity in their research programs. When we do the math on that, it's a pretty small amount that goes to Heather or to somebody else. I am considering a shift in that spending allocation. So we keep some larger pools to give slightly larger grants to faculty so that we can stimulate them to tackle challenges like this. Or I've had folks at the Intervale and other organic farmers in narrow valleys that talk about, well, these are the federal rules around how we handle produce that's been exposed to floodwaters. There are real health concerns around that. There is fecal coliform in floodwater. We don't want people eating fecal coliform. But there's also there is a concept of protective immunity. Plants have other microbes on them naturally, and that's expensive research. There's interest in us studying that. And so I am contemplating keeping priorities that are largely written like this, but maintaining a pool of funding from Hatch to stimulate research on emerging questions. Because the short answer is I don't know what to do with biosolids. I'm not sure anyone there are others who likely have better advice that I would encourage you to call. That might include Heather. We have a new faculty member in my other department who has a history of work on PFOS. She is a soil chemist. But everyone is frustrated when a scientist gets up and says this with good reason. But this is a new enough area that we sincerely do need more research to understand whether those by when you apply biosolids, how much PFAS do they have? What form is it in? Is it going to move into the plants? Is it going to move into the how quickly will it move into the water? Does the texture of the soil between from a sand to a Vergennes clay that the difference is the size and the charge of the particles that matters for PFAS because it determines whether or not PFAS is going to stick to the soil and not get into the water. So like those those questions need answers. Or ideally, they would have answers, I think, in the short term. If I were a farmer, I would not put them on my fields. And I would want legislation saying no. But that's I'm not here to speak to that, and that's That should not be taken as more than knee jerk public response. Is there, just backing up [David Durfee ]: a little bit then, is there research taking place now locally at UVM or around the state? [Eric Von Weberg ]: There is I am aware of early steps towards research, with a faculty colleague and myself. I am aware of research in Maine that's very active in this area. Colleagues at the University of Maine and at Mofca, the Maine Organic Farming and Garden Association. One of them was our graduate student, before he went to Mofca, and I would be thrilled to come back and talk about their work. I am not aware of other work, but I have not prepped that question, so I could easily be overlooking further work. [David Durfee ]: It sound it sounds like if you're looking for feedback from us, that might be something to hurt, but on the list. Yeah. [John O'Brien ]: But I'm not a scientist, but I can just what this committee's done a lot of work on neonicotinoids. Yeah. And if I was looking at PFOS, I would be like, if it's traveling in water, research needs to probably be done on pollinators or then take macro, whatever it breaks, etcetera. Yeah. [Eric Von Weberg ]: Because if it's causing cancer potentially in humans, then all those And and perhaps a broader range of afflictions like Yeah. Metabolic disorders. Exactly. Yeah. [David Durfee ]: I see resilience, the the last bullet item there. And, maybe you can speak more about what that might encompass in this context. We were thinking a lot about, of course, changing climate and severe weather events Yeah. And and how farms can be resilient in in face of that. I I don't know what whether there's, you know, an obvious direction that research would go to looking into that, but it's definitely, you know, definitely a concern as you know. [Eric Von Weberg ]: It is. So, the egg experiment station and extension put our priorities in together. So the first six of these we share, both of us have the potential to put in several ones. And this last one is, technically an extension one. There is, even if I speak just specifically to farming communities, there are a range of family and individual level resilience challenges on a range of farms. So, for example, childcare is a major one. You have safety issues on many farms. There is a long history, and we have labor laws that allow children to work on farm machinery at a younger age. But for certain ages of children, you are there are a set of safety challenges. And there is research around the country on those risks and how we support farming communities in that, in that childcare is expensive and letting children having children at home can be one of the benefits of farming. You are with your kids. There are it's well known that there's a range of mental health challenges around farming, particularly in a broader economic context where its economic viability is, is one of the biggest challenges we face, basically as a rural state. So, these are this is within formally here, it's within extension extension's purview, but, I know that many of my colleagues on the faculty who are in the Ag Experiment Station think extensively about this. Perhaps most one of my colleagues from Craftsberry, who happens to be who live on his family farm and commute into Burlington on a regular basis. Who would that be? Travis Reynolds. Travis Reynolds. K. His father was at UVM. [David Durfee ]: We'll look it for you. Right. Did you have anything else that you wanted to share this morning? [Eric Von Weberg ]: You have asked great questions, and I have noted the interest in Pfasz. I have I have the enthusiasm for dairy. [David Durfee ]: We're just a week into our session, and this today is Wednesday. So, yeah, it's really in our fourth or fifth time getting together. We're we're hearing from well, as you noted, we're hearing from doctor Niles this afternoon on food insecurity. We've heard from the AT and T agriculture and the department of forest and parks and recreation. We'll be getting more testimony from outside the the state government. So I think over the course of the next few weeks, we'll have we'll begin to have more craft, more thoughts on the things that this, you know, this man is interested in. And then there'll be things that we might be interested individually that might make sense [Eric Von Weberg ]: to have you. I I am here, and I am happy to take input later. Feedback, suggestions, build connections. [John O'Brien ]: I wonder if assuming you have a school of sort of public policy or just from an agricultural point of view, I just wondered if like, I'd wonder with Steven Sterling College, like, as far as we talked about ag education last year at the high school level, but even that sort of advocacy Yeah. [Eric Von Weberg ]: For certain agriculture. So Meredith is our agricultural policy expert, and she is coming in next. She does not have a whole school built around her. Public policy is split across existing units from political science. Our Gund Institute for the Environment, which is not an academic department, but is a institute intended to bring together all of the not only UVM researchers, but external experts with interest in policy. This has been something where they've had they have a policy person on staff intended to work with faculty when they have research of immediate policy significance so that we we make those recommendations. And we the faculty who may be excellent scholars but less adept at, making themselves taking the jargon out of what they say so that it's clear that they're speaking in appropriate plain English. We we do have some of that, but we don't have we are a small enough institution that we don't have the pub school of public policy that I am outside blanking on the spot, which has happened before. [David Durfee ]: Alright. Well, good. Thank you very much for Thank you. Joining us this morning. Yep. I appreciate the opportunity to provide input as well as, ensuring what you're doing. So

Play Clip Play Full Video Pause

SmartTranscript of House Agriculture Committee's Zoom Meeting

This is useful for seeing what happened at the meeting without wading through the whole transcript: