Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: For the record, and then we can get started.

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: Yeah. Okay. I'm Heather Darby. I am an agronomist and soil specialist with the University of Vermont Extension.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: Heather, can you turn up your volume a little bit, or maybe we can do that here?

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: I don't know. Maybe you I I don't know how to turn up my volume.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: Yeah. Okay. Well, I'm not gonna ask you to share

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: the way up.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: Okay. Alright. We can we can hear you.

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: Okay. All right. Well, I was asked to talk a little bit about what it means to be prime agricultural soil or land. And of course, that terminology definition classifications, those have been designated primarily through the USDA, through the US government nationally, right? So across our nation, someone, people with lots of what I would say foresight and for very good reason, decided that we should identify lands in this country that are prime for agricultural production. So, I can imagine this was from a national security perspective, really being able to figure out where in our country are the soils that are best utilized for producing food to feed people, forage, fiber, and oilseed. All of those being used to feed the people of The United States and clothe them. And also now, living in a more global economy, clearly agriculture in The US may be feeding folks elsewhere as well. But you know, of utmost importance clearly is the ability for a country to feed and clothe and house its people. Right? So knowing that we have land that can do that is at the core of national security. So, the definition is not just a definition on paper, right? There are characteristics of soil that would make it more or less ideal for producing agricultural products. And you can kind of imagine soils that may not be ideal for agricultural production or food production, soils that are maybe very steeply sloped or very, very rocky, or also very, very wet, and may serve other critical functions like wetlands as an example, to protecting the people and the land in the country. Prime ag land, again, it's beyond just the definition on paper. It's really characterizing those soils that are best used to feed the people in our country. Now, again, that's for every state across the nation. Those soils have been identified and characterized and the characteristics agreed upon through the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service. And then within that national definition, there are also soils of state and local importance. And you can see here on the bottom, I say that the national definition of prime land was modified to include information that applies to soils in Vermont and obviously states other than Vermont too. But those are characteristics that are associated to kind of the amount of soil available to grow a crop. So, moderate deep depth to bedrock. As you know, we have a lot of what would be considered elsewhere shallow soils. And so prime ag land definition now includes some of the soils that are moderately deep, not just those that are very, very deep. Again, this classification is through the US government, through NRCS. And all this information is available to you in different forms. You can see those soils map, they're in surveys, they're online. So you can see what's been considered prime farmland. And again, within a state, there's also farmland of statewide, and then also of local importance. And those are identified by NRCS, UVM, likely the agency of ag as well, and you'll hear more about that within our state, right? So, they may not necessarily exactly meet the definition, the federal definition of prime farmland. But within our state, these are considered our prime farmlands. So, they're of statewide agricultural importance. And then in some cases, down to the more local level by the county of importance.

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: Now, you may have this document, you may not, you may

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: have seen it, but this is specific to Vermont. This is available online. It's available on the Act two fifty website. It's available through the agency of ag. If you don't have it, it's actually a really good read. It talks about the classification of farmland in the state of Vermont. Again, this is a document through NRCS, but contributions clearly made from statewide organizations as well. Again, I would recommend to you having this document handy. I'm sure you've seen it before and I'm happy to send it.

[Rep. Cooper]: Yeah.

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: Okay. Now, if you really want to get into it and dig around for your own county or area that you represent, it's somewhat easy to do. It looks easy, press this button. But you can go to the web soil survey online, you can dial right down to your town, you can kind of zoom into even the little parcel that you live on, and you can see the soil type and description and characteristics of soils all over Vermont and actually all over the country as well. And you can see them classified as prime ag land or statewide importance, like I said, or local importance as well. So it's easy to find. Once you get into the soil survey, you got get acquainted with it before you can start getting information. But these maps are also widely available online. I'm sure if you wanted to see them, if you requested these from the agency of ag, you would be able to get them. Okay. So, what are the characteristics of prime ag land? And again, I think you can imagine the types of soils that would grow good crops, good food, and feed and fiber. They generally are those that have high soil quality by nature, right? So, and I say that meaning that as a farmer, you can manage soils to improve soil quality by implementing various practices. But some soils also just have the inherent properties of better soil quality. So, that would mean that they're higher in organic matter naturally. They have kind of a diverse mix, I would say, of soil textures. So it's not all clay or it's not all sand. It's a mix. We call those loams, loamy soils. They have good drainage. They are deep. There's lots of soil for the crop or food to grow and explore. They're minerally rich, so they have lots of nutrition and not too rocky, which is hard to find in places like Vermont. So, that's why we have soils of statewide importance. Topography is important. Usually prime agricultural lands are flat or gently sloping. And of course, again, in Vermont, we tend to have a hilly landscape with some valleys. So again, why we have ag soils of statewide importance, not just of the federal definition.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: Heather, do you mind if we ask a question now No. And Please do.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Representative O'Brien? Oh, just quickly, Heather, under physical properties, says low, erodibility.

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: Oh, yeah. Sorry. It's meant that's an extra comma there.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Okay. But it's

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: supposed to be was Yeah. Getting busy with my commas. Too busy. Low low erodibility. Right? So you would have both a slope likely that was a lower slope, not not as much slope, and soil particles that are not as prone to erosion.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: Representative Nelson has got a question too. Yep.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Yep. Two comments on topography, Heather. Flood, Windhamski River Valley.

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: Yep.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: I consider that some of the best ag land we have in the state of Vermont, although it floods from time to time. Would that make it not prime but of local importance?

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: Correct. So, if a soil is defined as having frequent flooding, which I believe is and I think I have it in here, more than two years in a row on average, it is not considered prime agricultural land. It would be considered likely of state agricultural importance.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: So thinking of, again, Winooski River Valley, it did flood two years in a row. That's not on average, but it does tend to flood springtime. Would that preclude it from being a primag soil?

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: It could. Yep. Especially if it was every year.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: And the next thing on slope, there's some really, really, really good soils growing

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: Yep.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Saw crops

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: Yep.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Because of slope. Would that preclude them from being prime ag?

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: Yes.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Or or would they could they be prime ag because of the crop they grow?

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: No. It's really about the soil characteristics themselves.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: K.

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: Yep. So it probably would not be considered prime agricultural land by the federal definition, but they could be designated as statewide, you know, prime ag lands.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Okay. Thank you. Because this is an Iowa.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: Right. Okay. Question. Just quickly, Heather.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: So if Vermont wanted to build a series of levees in the Winooski, could those soils be transformed into prime ag soils?

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: They could probably be reclassified at some point. Yep.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: Okay. Is that a periodic

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: thing? NRCS does constantly survey, right? So the maps and the map units, all of these things get I would say they have gotten better at finer details. So, think about how difficult it is to map the soils of Vermont. If you own land or you're a farmer, you know you can walk sometimes 50 feet in a field and have a completely different soil type. And if we're and this is how it's primarily been done, right? People go to the fields. They core the fields. They assess the fields. And so, you know, getting dialing down to exactly what's there, we've gotten better at that. But that also takes time, resources. There's new technology now that can be used. But this is like an ongoing, always work in progress. I mean, we just got a call maybe two or three years ago on my own farm asking NRCS asking if they can come out and do soil surveying. So those maps do get updated. As far as reclassifying those soils, now you have to remember, like a Masiskoye sandy loam or something like that can be found in different spots, right? So, just because one area has been modified to make it more conducive for agriculture doesn't mean the rest of the that particular soil type that's represented elsewhere in the state has undergone that same modification. So so it would be very difficult. Right? You could see where things would shift majorly in a classification scheme. Okay? And I could reach out to NRCS if you wanted their, I guess, schedule on going out and surveying. But if you looked at a survey map, I have some in my office from Grand Isle County from 1945, and then you look today, I bet you would see things have shifted and become more defined over time. So these are more specifics around soil characteristics. So you can see the soils are not frequently flooded less often than once in two years during the growing season. So, the question you were asking before, Richard, about, well, if they're commonly flooded maybe in the winter, early spring, but not during the growing season per se, they could be classified as prime. You can see slopes of less than 8%. We have a lot over 8% in Vermont that are farmed with, like Richard said, perennial forages, but they're probably not considered prime ag land on the federal designation level. So, you can see there's pretty specific characteristics here. Now, the bottom one is what has been modified. So, the soils are typically great or typically deep, greater than 40 inches to bedrock. And I'm chuckling a little bit because we have some of those in Vermont, but we have a lot that aren't. And so then it was added, but include moderately deep soils, 20 to 40 inches. So, we have more moderately deep soils in Vermont than we have deep. Deep soils are those found generally, I would say in the Midwest, places like Iowa, Illinois, Indiana. So, there are very specific characteristics. Those listed here, I believe these are most of them. I got these from NRCS. And there's details within this, obviously, as well. Like what is a growing season? That's going to change from place to place, state to state, region to region. But

[Rep. Cooper]: A follow-up.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: Yeah. Another question. Heather, just a

[Rep. John O'Brien]: follow-up. Does NRCS ever reclassify depending on, say, like in Vermont, as you've led this through agronomic practices, the soil improves so much that NRCS says, this is now prime soil because we've got an extra six inches of topsoil.

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: No, no, no. Nope. Because we have to think about, I mean, clearly management is plays a huge role in how productive a soil is regardless of how prime it is, right? Prime soil is more forgiving, right? It's easier to farm. It's easier to grow things. When you get outside of prime, you got to do a little more work. It's harder. It's harder to maintain the quality of the soil. It's harder to grow crops. You to pay more attention to how you as a manager manage that soil. As a farmer myself, but you know, in general, it's difficult to farm in Vermont. We have difficult soils. And we have to manage them differently and farmers do to have them be productive and also protect them from environmental forces basically. And those forces are rain and the climate. So, just because a farmer is doing an excellent job and is maybe getting yields and productivity equal or greater than what someone on prime ag land is getting. It doesn't reclassify it. But it is something to be proud of. But yeah, that's not how it works. And again, we're looking at these of national importance. Think about this from a national security perspective. And our ability as a nation to feed ourselves. Now, most people, what they have on their tables often does not resemble anything that has come out of a field, like a chicken nugget or there's a lot of processed food, a Frito or whatever. It doesn't look like a piece of corn or chicken drum or thigh. So, there's really this lack of, I think, connection to why in the world would we be worried about this or thinking about this or why did anybody think about this to begin with. Because we are largely disconnected to what it means to eat, or maybe what it means to not be able to eat. And again, largely the convenience and abundance, and of course not for everyone, of food that we have makes us further removed from the importance of what it means to have agricultural lands in a nation and protecting those. Right? And then within a state, thinking about our own people. We are here for the people of the state of Vermont to keep them safe, right? To clothe them, to feed them, to make sure the people of our state have what they need to be successful. And at the core of it, right, it's our ability to feed, clothe, etcetera, have a clean environment. And so that's why within Vermont, again, we never think of this. It's so critical to know that we can take care of ourselves. And part of that is eating, right? So, these are really, really important designations and why we're you know, adamant about protecting these lands.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: And a couple of ones

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: we have make them as good as possible.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: A couple of hands said there in response or reaction to those very profound thoughts. Representative Lipsky.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: Thank you, Heather. My first question has to do with and I'm not stigmatizing Addison County, but they were sort of famous for blue or gray clay soils. How how does clay

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: Yeah.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: It's not an organic really, not loamy. How how does that figure into these

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: Yeah. Yep. Stratum.

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: I'm gonna show you. I'm going to show you. So there are other designations, right? I told you there's state, there's prime, there's unique farmland. We don't have any of those designations in Vermont, but they do exist in some states, so unique farmland. It's usually specific to maybe a high value food or fiber crop. We don't have any of those soil types designated in Vermont specifically. We do have statewide importance. And again, this is a lot of words here. These are identified through the passage of Act two fifty. And then we have, I'm going to go to local importance. And those are identified obviously on a local level. And that's where some of the Addison County clays come into play. Or in Franklin County or other counties where these lighter textured soils or maybe gravelly or sandy or clay soils come into play. They're extremely important to agricultural production on a local level. And there's more of these, I just listed a few. So you can see here, some of these have higher slopes, some of these have what would not be considered sort of the best mixture of textures like the Masiskoille loamy sand is really like a beach sand. It doesn't have a lot of organic matter in it, but it's very important to farmers in Franklin County. So there are soils of local importance that are designated for sure.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: I really thank you for that. The notion of a matter of national security really strikes a chord with me. I remember nineteen sixties, there was a book called Limits to Growth, and it was talking about a global perspective. An area of the land was one of the key components for in that study. And I'm glad to see that the state of Vermont, the USDA considered food production to be so critical. Yeah. Really interesting.

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: Yeah, think if you think about just in, let's say more recent times, this is becoming The importance of this is continuing to elevate as we see events, I guess, like COVID, right, where we started to see some real holes in food system in The United States and beyond. What did that mean to people as they started to not see food on store shelves? Where did they turn? They turned to their neighbor. They turned to the person next to them growing food. And I think it was maybe the first time in a very, very long time, maybe since the 60s, that all of a sudden people started to recognize that maybe the food wasn't always going to be there on the store shelf. And if it wasn't, where would it come from? And so, you know, unfortunately, it's funny how fast we forget, like something like that. But really, that was a important moment in time where people were turning to their neighbors that could grow food, that were growing food, and had to go to them, had to go to them to get the food that they needed. Very, very different than how we normally operate. But again, really puts perspective on the type of land and agriculture we have around us, next to us, and then on a larger scale in our country. So, we can't forget that we have to take care of ourselves first, unfortunately. Sounds selfish. That sounded selfish.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Thank you. Representative Nelson. Yeah, thank you. Doctor. Darby, The avian influenza shortened up the egg supply in our local markets, supermarkets, big stores. And we had we have we're lucky up in Orleans County. We have a couple real prolific chicken farmers. And people to this day are still buying their eggs from them because even though they could've went to $7 a dozen, they main their paying their price all the way through. And even though they are a dollar, dollar and a half dozen more than the supermarket great deal, we still support them.

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: Yeah.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: So, yeah, you're exactly right. When it you're familiar with the municipal regulation, the supreme court ruling that came out last spring? Yep. Okay. So we're working on that. And, you know, it's it's not lost on me that a lot of development takes place on our best added soils. Our best added soils because they are of proper slope and well drained and easy to work. And we're working on important protections for agriculture in tier one b and whatnot to protect us from having 251 rules of farming out there. Your thoughts on that?

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: Yeah. If I mean

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: you don't have immediate thoughts, Heather, since that's not the topic at the moment on the agenda Okay. We can ask you to collect your thoughts and

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: Okay.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: Great. Come back.

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: You know, I think part of the challenge here, of course, is, you know, we can protect our agricultural land. There's a lot that's already been developed, used for other purposes. The way it is. It's good ag land, but it also means it's good for other things too, right? It doesn't mean it's prime ag, and so it's not good for building on. It's also good for building on, right? It's good for a septic system. Challenge here is we not only need land that we can farm, we need a vibrant, sustainable farming community to be able to utilize the lands that we have for agriculture. And so, to say that we can't use the prime ag land for something else, But we have no one to actually farm it anymore and produce food for us. Like that's a problem. That's a different topic. But you know, that is reality. And then you have farms that also are really struggling and may need to sell that prime land. Maybe for retirement, maybe just to stay in business. We don't want that either. So, I think there's just, there's complicated lots to think about. But you know, that is reality. I hear farmers say that all the time. Well, yeah, you know, it's good ag land, but I want to retire. There's nobody here to farm this. So, I'm going to sell it for development. Like we are putting ourselves in not a great place again, for the people of Vermont, when we don't have people here to produce food to feed us. And and that's a whole another that's a whole another issue to have a vibrant agricultural economy.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: Heather, I had I had two questions just as we went through. One was actually in response to follow-up to representative Lipsky's or maybe it was representative O'Brien's question about land about soil be being convertible from based based on, you know, good practices. I was wondering whether if on the other hand, you had bad practices. So before we began to recognize a half century or so ago that we were depleting soils by not, you know, using the best practices, would would land that had been planted year after year with the same crop eventually Is there a scenario where that land could become not primary or prime agricultural soil by the definitions?

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: No, it still wouldn't change it. It would change the federal definition for sure.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: Yeah, yeah, okay, that's what I figured the answer was. And then on your very last slide, you don't need to bring it up again, but I just wanted to sort of understand definitions. So this was the additional farmland of local importance, and you indicated that the lands can be identified that way by the appropriate local agencies. Would that be the conservation districts?

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: No. It's still it would still include NRCS, probably UVM, and the agency of agriculture.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: Okay. So it's done not at the stream local county No.

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: They have been identified on a very local level to be of

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: importance. Representative O'Brien. Heather,

[Rep. John O'Brien]: just this discussion makes me think if we map Vermont and we look at just those sort of federally classified prime ag soils, are certain crops, do they need those prime ag soils? Like I know you're an enthusiast of growing grains in Vermont. So it sounds like, even if we lost a great prime ag soil like Williston, we can still grow great carrots through great agronomic practices in other places on non prime ag soils. But are there certain crops where we really need those prime ag soils like wheat to grow?

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: Okay, yeah. So, I mean, some crops are going to require deeper soils to, I mean, like, let's just think of a carrot as an example. Right? You can't grow carrot in two inches of topsoil. We have, you know, places in Vermont where we only have a few inches of topsoil and people do grow agricultural crops. And that's why places like Vermont, we grow great grass. It's very appropriate crop for our state and our landscape. So, when we're thinking about agricultural contributions, feeding livestock and gathering solar energy, converting that through photosynthesis into food for livestock. Like Vermont's a great place to do that. Great climate, great landscape. And some of those soils would not be good for some other crops. And primarily, I would say because tillage is a critical component of growing some of those crops. And so on those soils, they're too like at too much of a risk for erosion and crop failures. I do want to go back to this question about the local importance. And I want to restate that those designations would still come. They could come at a local level. They could come. The recommendation could come from a conservation district. But the I believe the final decision still has to be agreed upon by NRCS, right? So, a conservation district couldn't just designate that on their own. They could recommend that it be made of local importance, but that sort of concurrence has to come from the NRCS state conservationist. Okay. So just wanted to reiterate that it can come from a district, but it would have to be you know, agreed upon at a higher level.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: Approved. Yep. The while we're on that subject, do you know whether USDA has a person in place in Vermont heading NRCS?

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: Yes. Yes. Travis Thomas Thomason is the state conservation lead. He's a state conservationist. He's also come covering New Hampshire at this time.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: Yeah. Okay.

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: Maybe that's but he

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: What what's his last name?

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: Thomason.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: Thomason.

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: Thomason, Thomason, T H O M A S O N.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: Okay. Thank you.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Representative Cooper.

[Rep. Cooper]: Hi Heather. I'm just wondering when you had the slide about soils in Addison, Rockland County, they kind of hit the top and it was 15% slope. There, once you go past 15%, does that automatically trigger a different soil type? I'm wondering how the soils are classified based on slope a little bit, I guess is

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: my question.

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: Yeah. So you could have an Adams loamy sand with zero. So there's zero to three, believe it's like three to five, five to eight, eight to 15, and then over that. So they're ranges of slopes that are designated to the soil type. So an Adams Lomi sand, you can have an Adams Lomi sand on a zero to 3% slope. You can have it on, a three to 5%, and you could have it on an eight to 15% as well. So, you know, somebody who's doing the soil survey went out and, you know, cored into the ground, they identified it, the characteristics, and they shot the slopes of wherever they were.

[Rep. Cooper]: So, what happens when we

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: go over 15%? You live in Cabot.

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: Yeah. There are fields that are over that. They would not you also got to think about driving equipment right up and down those slopes. So, you know, if those fields are in agricultural production, they are likely in pasture or possibly hay. And I'm sure if there are any farmers watching now, which they probably aren't, they're probably somebody saying, I got a slope of 18% and I've got my you know, they're worried about their tractor, you know, sort of rolling over. But yeah, those fields are probably ingress.

[Rep. Cooper]: The reason why I ask is a lot of municipalities in their bylaws, you're not allowed to build houses on anything over 15 Yeah. And if we're talking about trying to develop our soils of statewide significance or prime, and but the only place where the files can be built is on where those soils exist. I tried to make my case with when I was on the planning commission cabinet that that was not a good rule.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: Thanks for a great walkout basement. I love walkout basins. Obviously,

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: there's push and pull on all sides here. Like, I think everybody understands that that land that's good to grow food is good to build houses, and we need places for people to live. And so, you know, again, it's thinking about what we need now and into the future and our state is going to look like. At the end of the day, people have to eat. I don't care if there's a million people living in Vermont, they all still have to eat. And where will that food come from? Do we want it to come from here or will we rely on everyone else?

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: I

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: think we've seen we need a combination.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: One more question, think representative O'Brien.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Yeah, Heather, I just wondered, I mean, there's always the exception and I'm thinking about maple, which grows great in Vermont on non prime ag soils on slopes, and it's a great crop. It seems like that interesting sort of tension between climate and soils. Maple's a really interesting case.

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: Yeah, I would agree. There are other designations for productive forest soils, just like there are agricultural soils. And those are also designated through NRCS. And I'm not entirely sure that I believe that does include maple in those designations. So, it's designated for commercial timber and then other specialized uses like maple, sugar, Christmas trees. So it does sort of on the edge of kind of ag and productive forest soils. So

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Vermont's mapped also for prime forest soil?

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: Well, it's called productive productive forest forest soils. Soils.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: Okay. And

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: and, yes, that's also a federal. And I believe that's also found in act two fifty. So

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: we are gonna hear, as I mentioned, from the agency or on this subject tomorrow. And I think it would be interesting either tomorrow or another time to look, actually look at a map or at some of the, it doesn't have to be a map of the state, but at some level, what would be useful, I guess, to look at. But what it's not just conversation just reminds me that the entire state is mapped by the USDA with agricultural soil types. Am I right? It's not just open land, but all the 75% of the state is forested, is also classified one way or the other.

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: Yeah. Here's one of the examples of the maps that you can access. This is actually in Grand Isle County. So you can move around. So you can see the different soil types. Click on them. To the left, you see a box. This is an Amenia silt loam, zero to 3%. You can see what area that encompasses, right? And then you can go look at the information on the map and you can see here is it considered prime ag land? And it says, yes, this is prime. If it's statewide importance, it'll say state here. It tells you all kinds of different information, the high slope, the low slope, the type of water table, does it flood, gives you a ton of information about about the field or about the soil itself. And, of course, you can zoom out and go anywhere anywhere in the state.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: The Derby. Yep.

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: I know. Where's that?

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: It's quite a few.

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: But yeah. So here's a cabin.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: No, ma'am.

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: 13 to 15% slopes, very stony. Over here. It's not prime soil, state or otherwise. But I imagine that that's a hayfield somewhere in Cabot.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: Alright. We better we better wrap up, Heather. You very much for this introduction.

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: And I'm sure whoever's coming through the agency tomorrow can get into greater detail on all the specifics, but it's an overview.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: Great. Well, I'm sure we'll have you back at some point later in the spring for other topics. So thank you.

[Dr. Heather Darby, UVM Extension Agronomist]: Alright.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: Nice to see you. Remember, you keep going on at

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: the March.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: Exactly. We're gonna take a short break.