Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Steven (Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Was that this would go through more than one committee. In the league of cities of towns is sort of the principal person responsible for helping towns do zoning in the state. So we wanted to partner with them because we thought they would be influential here, and we care about their opinion. But so they they have agreed with us on the the town should not be zoning farming almost everywhere in the state. They disagree. And I can't remember now right off top of my head if it's tier one areas or tier 1a and 1b areas, but they want the authority to regulate in downtown village centers and planned growth areas. They in those areas, at least for 1a, which which is, you know, subject to future mapping, they want to be able to zone farms just like they would zone anyone else. They have reasons for that, which are totally reasonable. It's just that we believe that we don't need to regulate by area, we can regulate by property, meaning that if there is a farm right now that's successful on six acres in a planned growth area, let them farm just like any other farm in the state. It could be that because they're in a planned growth area, it's going to be that farm won't last because there's going to be the land is worth so much, or maybe they don't want to be in that area anymore. But it could also be that farm will thrive and maybe even thrive more because it has more neighbors and can sell its products. So we just don't want to limit farm. We don't think there's any reason to limit farming anywhere where there is land to do it properly. But that's where we came up with a one acre threshold because we recognize that you can't have, you know, a lot of livestock in a subdivision. And so we kind of trying, we're seeding, we're agreeing with the league that there are some places that livestock isn't appropriate. You can't have 50 cows in Downtown Montpelier, just can't, there's no way that's going to work. And right now under the RAPs, there's nothing that prohibits that. So it doesn't work, but it's not actually prohibited, which is why we sort of try to come up with this livestock. Let's make sure anybody can have livestock as long as they have enough land to manage the nutrients and they manage the waste. If you've got the land base to do that, you can have livestock, you can be farming. But what we to sort of think about the town's density concerns and neighbor concerns, we thought one acre was a fair threshold that if you got less than an acre, the town can regulate the livestock. If they want not poultry, we sort of say you can have your chickens. But if you have cows on less than an acre, the town can decide whether or not that's appropriate. And that was a it was a balance. It's not there's no magic number about what's right, but under an acre. You know, you're starting to talk about more densely developed areas and you're talking about it's hard to manage waste on under an acre. If you're in certain areas, you might be able to easily have a couple of goats and the town might not care if you do, and that's great. But if you have a quarter of acre or a tenth of an acre as we had in one case, and you try to have goats in your basement, that it doesn't really fit the RAPs. And so we were okay with the town being able to regulate in those instances as they want to, but it's a compromise. The idea is we recognize there are corollary interests. You know, the towns have interests in being able to protect their residents and farming to farm certain types of activity. You've got to have the space to do it. And so that was yeah.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency)]: We may have looked at the definition of poultry a year or two ago.

[Steven (Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Turkeys? So the way that we proposed it, it's any domesticated bird. And we had that conversation about the Guinea hens. And I so because we did exclude roosters in our proposal, but but there may be some other things that ought to be addressed. Okay. Okay.

[Unidentified committee member]: Steven, like what you proposed, is that remind me and perhaps the rest of us about right to grow. What do you have? Do propose?

[Steven (Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: We proposed that, and the league was supportive of this, which was terrific, is that anybody can grow plants. And and somebody raised, and I just talked to the chair about this too, that cannabis ought to be excluded from that because that's it's not something that we regulate something that the cannabis control board does. The but and the town was good with this. Anybody can grow plants because that's not where the problems arise. Interestingly, right now, that right doesn't exist. I don't I'm not aware of anyone, any town that's regulating growing plants, but they could right now. And so why not protect that? That's kind of it's a gap in our opinion. Like anybody should be able to have a garden that wants to have a garden. So let's let's make that explicit in the law. And that's what we propose as plant. We treated livestock differently because they do pose because of the waste, because of the feed, because of the infrastructure that can be needed. They pose different issues than, you know, an era of, you know, the line of carrots do.

[Unidentified committee member]: One more question. Yeah. And I know we gotta keep it short. So tier one a, they'd like to have some control, but not total control on. And some of that was if somebody had a six acre garden in a dense area, like the tier one a area and had a farmer's market, they wanted to be able to control those you know, the access points of vehicles, the traffic in and out. But in tier one b, where they wanna have control, I have a lot of concern because a lot of our communities that don't fit that dense like Rutland or Burlington, South Burlington, Mount Mount Bay are here. Here, a lot of our other communities are tier one b. And where do they wanna grow tier one b? Into those farms that are adjacent to those villages because our soils our soils, our primate soils are highly desirable to grow houses. And that's where I think we really need to work to protect and get zoning out of farming. Well, and thank you for that. And that's kind

[Steven (Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: of our our response to the league, they have legitimate interests. I'm not trying to belittle those in any way, but our kind of response to them about playing growth areas is playing growth areas equals current farms or it can. So, you know, if a farm can be successful, let's not talk about driving them out. Let's talk about treating them like everyone else. And obviously towns need to grow and that needs to happen and it will, but you don't, that doesn't necessarily have to be at the farm's expense, especially if the farm doesn't want to, farm wants to keep farming because that's the overlays. We keep losing farms and farmland. Anywhere So where it's viable, let's not make it harder.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency)]: Does the agency have data that could help us get a sense of how much farmland there is in those land growth centers and in the village centers and downtowns?

[Steven (Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: That's a great question. I mean, we know where Primag soil is because that's mapped by the NRCS, the federal NRCS. But that doesn't tell you a lot without, you know, overlaying it. We don't have a registry of farms in the state. We have a registry. We know all the dairy farms and we know some, we know a lot of the farms, but they're not registered with us. So it's not a straightforward process. We certainly know we know land totals, but a lot of that is from survey data from USDA. There's I mean, town zoning maps are probably one of the better ways to sort of see how things are currently used. But a big fear of local zoning is not just that you can apply zoning to farming, but you can prohibit farming. Once you have that authority, you can over farming, you can say you can't farm here right now that while before the Supreme Court decision that couldn't happen, but now it can. And so that's another fear about how we're like in a planned growth area, arguably a town could say no farming here anymore because we have water and sewer. Know, that's a legitimate interest, but we don't think we need to go that way when farming is so critical and when ag land is so vulnerable because it's the easiest to develop. It's cleared, often flat. It's in great locations oftentimes. So, you know, we that's why that's why we lose it.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency)]: Right. I think we'll stop there.

[Steven (Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Thank you for Thank you so much. Bye.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency)]: Yep. Well, so we're back at 01:00. We have several other things on the agenda today, but we'll make time to see what people's reactions are percolating over lunch. This wasn't a lot of that. Yeah. Okay.

[Steven (Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Well,