Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: On Tuesday, we went through a draft of this bill on municipal regulation of agriculture, had some changes that we asked them to make. And I think that's what we're gonna look at now.

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Great. Thank you everyone. Bradley Sheldon, Office of Legislative Council, and I'll go through some of the changes to the committee bill here. So this bill focuses solely on municipal regulation of agriculture by bylaw. And last time I was in, the committee asked me to make five changes, and then there is one other change that I'll discuss with you as well. The first of those changes is adding a grandfather clause. So this bill would prohibit municipal regulation of the construction of a farm structure as authorized under the required agricultural practices, except for construction of a farm structure within a tier one a area established in accordance with the controlling statute. Question was what happens if there's already a farm structure and and they'd like to prepare or improve that structure, so we added a grandfather clause. Municipality shall not regulate by bylaw the construction repair or improvement of farm structures built in a tier one area prior to 07/01/2026. That date is, I chose that date because bills are effective unless otherwise stated on 07/01/2026. That date can change for the committee's purposes. That's just a placeholder date that I chose. But if the committee has a different date in mind, that would be amenable to changing that.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: We

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: also just

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: oh, was there a question? Yeah. I think maybe we'll just take the questions as we go here. Representative Lipsky.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: Yeah. Under that tier one a highlighted, you refer to construction, repair, or improvement. But what about the expansion of a barn or an ag structure? Does expansion go beyond improvement?

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: We can we can add that language in there to clarify because I think arguably there could be an instance where a municipality wants to construe this narrowly. And and we could add in expansion or improvement to clarify that piece.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: That would be up to the committee.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah. So let's slide that. I think there may be more to say about this. Representative Bartholomew.

[John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: Well, and that same thing. It says construction. So if it's already there, why would you be constructing it?

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So the the word construction was left in there to just incorporate the act of constructing. So if a facility needed to be repaired or added onto, that might require some kind of construction. And we did not want, I think the purpose of this piece is to prohibit a municipality from regulating in a tier one area the repair improvements, expansion. If something is already there, we want an owner to be able to adjust it accordingly. And so we want to try to keep the language to meet that goal as broad as we can. Certainly, we can add or remove words as the committee deems fit.

[John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: Does wording cover if a farm structure is destroyed by fire and reconstructed?

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That would, yes, yes. That would include in kind of repair or reconstruction. But we can add language to anticipate certain situations just to kind of head off potential problems down the road. And right now the language is broad, but if we're anticipating things like a destruction of a fire destruction in a flood, we could add in reconstruction just to specify that for sure.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I would just think could be

[John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: just so many scenarios where a structure is old falling down, but they wanted to build something similar in the same place or lost. I just don't wanna get in the point where So

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I think, Bradley, we wanna yeah. I think the sentiment is we wanna have as broad, you know, language as as possible. But I'm gonna go a little bit farther and suggest that what what I think the committee was I think the committee was thinking about last time we spoke was not just the scenario that you've outlined here, but that brought more broadly a farm, an existing farm could not be regulated. So so in other words, if you wanted to put up a brand new bar, a brand new bar altogether or other farm structure, not not replacing one that had been lost to a fire, not expanding, not repairing, but just we need a new farm structure. That if you were already farming there, that there was, you know, sorry. That's what we were thinking about. Yeah. So again, I'm speaking of what I think the committee was feeling the other day, but just wanted to flag that. We can circle back. Maybe we should just keep trying. Free Taft Street, that's 's been the case? Well, pre tax rate, there hasn't been any ability for the municipality to regulate. In the farm structure world. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yep.

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So they could construct a new farm structure in a tier one a area if so long as they were already farming. That is a little bit different than what this is.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah. So so the distinction the distinction I think that we're making is in tier one a, the town can the town can sit can regulate some, land that's not currently being farmed, but if as of the date we choose, it's a farm, then it will remain exempt.

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Complexity to the issue here because the question then becomes what activities would the committee envision incorporating here, right? And so for example, if someone is gardening, does the committee consider that farming or is the committee limiting the conception of farming to farming that meets the minimum threshold requirements of the required agricultural practices?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah, I think it's the latter. Let's just flag it and we can we can come back to that. But I think you're on to it when you with your latter suggestion.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Okay.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: This Connected somewhat. Bradley, right now,

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: farm worker housing is not exempt from municipal regulation, I mean pre and post half street. Is that correct?

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No, it's not. That's not my understanding that farm housing is exempt or it is not exempt from municipal bylaw.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Right. And moving, going forward then in Act 181, is anything changing

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: as far as farm worker housing goes in the various tiers because if you don't have to do a know act two fifty permit for housing insert tiers, if that's also including farm worker housing.

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm not familiar if that act is affecting farm worker housing as it relates to this bill. This bill does not necessarily affect farm worker housing either, but I can look into that bill to see to what effect it does have on farm worker housing. I'm not sure the question as it pertains to municipal bylaw. If you can clarify that for me, might be helpful.

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: Yeah, I'm just wondering with various jurisdictions changing with Act 181, whether we talked a lot about farming and exemptions, that farm worker housing has always been its standalone in some ways from exemptions. If anything to do with that, we should consider with this language.

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Does the committee want to include farmworker housing to be exempt from municipal bylaw regulation? I think that would be a substantial change.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Let's let's no.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah. No. Let's let's flag that as something we need to better understand. But right now, which I don't think it's covered at all Got it. In the section of the statute. Yeah.

[John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: John? If I understood that your comments correctly, I'm wondering why we would need b at all because it just is talking about structures. So wouldn't a cover all of that? They can't regulate farming that, you know, that meets the threshold for their reps. Why do we need b at all?

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Construction of farm construction of farm structures is is distinct from farming practices as such.

[John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: In in the required agriculture practices?

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: Yeah. Yes.

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And the rules have, or this statute has always made a distinction between farming and then the construction of farm structures. It's included both of those historically as distinct entities. And in particular with this bill, this bill does create an exemption for construction of farm structures in tier 1A areas. So it would, unless you want to remove that exemption, this bill would require those things to be distinct because it is not permitting a municipality to regulate farming practices in tier 1A areas. This bill just permits a municipality to regulate by bylaw the construction of farm structures in tier one areas. So that distinction is very important to keep in this bill if the committee wants to keep that distinction of constructing farm structures in tier one areas. So it would be crucial to keep that for that purpose.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: So existing language and statute, it's struck out there in the top of A, it says required agricultural practices, including the construction of farm structure. So we're striking that. And then what's added, the new language that follows doesn't talk about farm structures. So instead we've got farm structures in B, so you split them out and then taking the additional step of saying, but for those structures, tier one A would would not, not apply that.

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That that is correct.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: So let's keep going. Okay. I know there's still questions about this, but let's keep going to see what else is here and what other questions we might have.

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Right. We changed the right to grow food to growing food. And this is a question for the committee. I put this language in here after construct after, you know, based on discussions that I had with Mike about things for the committee to think about in terms of what this right entails. And so we changed the right to grow food to growing food and then added here for use of the landowner's household or non paying guests. And the idea is that the conception of this right to grow food was for the homeowners or the property owners purposes, own purposes, and not necessarily for sale. If the committee is envisioning protecting the sale of food or something of that sort, So envisioning what an individual might be doing with that food. We'd recommend putting in language to address that and to make sure that that activity is also exempt from municipal bylaw. If the committee is not anticipating that it would like to protect individuals for their ability to sell food in these circumstances, you know, it can leave as is. That language isn't there to flag that issue for for the committee here.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah. I I think that the distinction between selling it and using it for yourself is important one. That's really why we've added this section here. Why we're talking about the right to grow food. I know that that specific expression is problematic. So you've changed that and thank you for that. And I think that adding this clarification is also useful, because as soon as it becomes a B and B or a small inn and you're serving meals, then I think it bleeds over into the farming as a business question that is in the other parts of the statute. So to me anyway, makes sense. Representative Nelson. So we're setting these rules up in tier one a to protect the individual's right to feed themselves. Setting them up actually everywhere. So the the individual's right to feed themselves would be in any town that current where and currently, there is no right.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Okay. So but in tier one a, we're not working on setting it up to be a commercial airport, commercial fire. We're setting it up to this right now we're under tier 1A.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah,

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: yeah. So button 1B we can envelop Whatever you want. The rest of us.

[John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. The

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: way this is written. Yeah.

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Actually, can clarify that.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Clarify that. Yeah.

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And so this applies anywhere. And so this piece applies in tier one areas or in other areas, and it protects an individual's right to grow food for their own purposes flat out wholesale no matter where you are. If an individual were to want to grow food and sell it for their own purposes, they might be subject to the required agricultural practices rule, they be required, they might be subject to some other municipal bylaw. So that activity of selling food is not necessarily exempt from municipal regulation. What this does is exempt from municipal regulation, growing your own food for your own purposes and non paying guests anywhere.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: So this is I just wanna say that on the one hand, we wanna be cautious about taking already a complex puzzle to solve here and throwing in this really new concept. This has nothing to do with pre III, post CAF III. This is a different thing. Everybody who has been thinking about this over the summer is in agreement that it would be useful perhaps to have in statute this right to grow food for your own use. And having so I but I think it's important that we be clear that it's for your own use. It's not for selling to anybody, either as a breakfast or out of a farm stand or anything else. It's for your own use. Non paying guests, of course, that would count too. But I think you just want be careful about not having this expanded to something that somebody else who's currently on board with it says, no, that's not what we're doing.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: Question I have is overlap with the property bill, number, right to grow a food bill on our wall. That has to do with apartments and houses, HOAs and whatnot. I'm just wondering the overlap here of, say I own an apartment house and you know, said yes, perfectly fine for you to grow some food, but it needs to be done here versus there because I don't want, maybe I'm worried about having plants too close to the house, creating mold on the building, things like that, being done in such and such a way. This obviously has to do with municipalities, would that take away the authority of someone from apartment buildings to be able to say where they would like the food to be thrown or how it

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: would be thrown?

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That's an excellent question. So that bill would not impact, or this bill would not impact a property owner's right to determine how their own land is used. And so this only says that municipal bylaws can't regulate that activity. But as the law is right now, if you're renting out your apartment or renting out your home, you can in a lease contract feasibly homeowners associations could put in their contract, you can't have a garden. And there's no law right now that prohibits property owners or homeowners associations or mobile home parks from doing that. And so the bill that's on the wall there would prohibit as far as I know, unless it's changed since I saw a draft and it has been a while since I've seen her draft of that bill, but would prohibit a property owner from including that in a lease term. And it would require a property owner to allow a tenant to have like a vegetable garden or something of the sort. And those related but distinct issues.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: So this

[John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: language doesn't fix that and I guess the one word that I'm worried about here is it's this owner's household. So if I'm renting a property and the owner of the property says, sure, you can have a garden in your backyard. I can't adhere because it's for the owner's household, not the renter's household. Shouldn't it say occupant? I I don't know what it should say, but I don't I don't know if if the owner if you're renting a property and the owner says you can grow food

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Mhmm. Don't have a

[John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: problem with that. This says, no, it's gotta be for the owner's household.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Mhmm.

[John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: Am I reading it wrong?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I think you're reading it right. Bradley, is there a do you agree? Is there a solution?

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Could say I'm just making a note. Because it doesn't say the owner is actually growing the food, but you're right.

[John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: It's got to be

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: changing into occupants. Excuse me. I'm sorry.

[John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: But the food's gotta be used by the owner's household, not the renters. Yeah.

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And so we might be able to change that to occupant, but let me me confirm and get back to the committee on that piece. I think that that might be a little bit more complicated. And if we could just clarify just for the sake of clarifying and to remove any ambiguity, that's certainly the most ideal situation there.

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: Let's keep going. A community garden, right? My reservations are about growing food too. When we talk about agriculture, it's just a wider universe. So when you think of horses, if somebody has an animal rescue, even if they're livestock for food, but they're never going to slaughter them. It just seems like And then the things like flower gardens, pollinator gardens. There are a

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: lot of agricultural things that don't fall under growing food. So, your concern is that we are being too restrictive in that language, and you would like to make the right a bigger right, but not the bread to our food.

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: That definition of agricultural. And I agree with you. What you flagged, I think this whole topic should go in other legislation somewhere. I think it's really tricky to add it to this, even though it is municipalities. But it just strikes me as a chain of worms.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Good. Let's keep going here.

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And that would, if we were to include additional like flower gardens and pollinator things, that language should change. So we'll put a

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: pin in

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: that. Section D, for use of the owner's household or non paying guests, We added that as a caveat here for raising, feeding and managing livestock. We also clarified here to get the intent correct. So for use of the owners, household are not paying guests provided the land base is sufficient for appropriate nutrient waste management as determined by the Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets and the raising, feeding or managing of livestock is otherwise in compliance with the required agricultural practices rule. So what this anticipates is if you are raising, feeding or managing livestock, you both have to have a sufficient land base for that and also follow the other water, mostly water quality requirements, some training requirements that are in the required agricultural practices rule. And so that is, this was in another version here but this kind of isolates that language to make it more clear that that would be a requirement for households who are raising livestock.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: Representative Bos- Yeah, I mentioned this before and it's small and maybe not worth stirring the pot about, but what about adding guinea hens? I mean, we actually had testimony here that somebody literally had harassment from their neighbor bringing in guinea hens. I mean, if we're gonna exclude roosters, it honestly feels to me like it would be appropriate to exclude guinea hens from the automatically acceptable

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: category. Any other thoughts on that? Not all that to And my

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: that's what's the problem with roosters. If roosters weren't noisy, I don't think they would be on that list.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Can you dechromal? What? Can you dechromal? No, you de beak them? I

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: don't think so, but I am not an expert on that topic. Ask the consultant about that.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Would you flag that and maybe Let's just go ahead and actually add that, Bradley.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Okay.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: Uh-oh. Our list is growing.

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Did we say monkeys? I I I think that might not be

[John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: I'm seeing

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: a numbers of

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: live stories.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Getting very acme. Monkeys. Does and and perhaps I missed it beginning by commercial agriculture following all of this, where it is firm for sale. It is that under the definition of farm and network creating that covers that, that'll hook hook not all into, but hook with the RAPs. And I'm not talking so much tier one a as I am tier one b. Betty?

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That's a that's a that's an excellent question, and that is farming for profit so long as that that is more than I think it's 2,000 So only profit. It is the goal. The goal being profit. If if the farming has more than $2,000 in sale, they are subject to the required agricultural practices rule and therefore are exempt from municipal bylaw. And so that is captured, and that's statewide. Tier one, there is no tiering exceptions or contemplation in that piece. As long as it's, you have more than $2,000 in sale, you're subject to the required agricultural practices rule. And then that kind of reestablish that does reestablish the pre tax street status quo.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Yeah.

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Moving on a little bit here, I'm going to scroll past this definition because I define food as articles or agricultural commodities for human or animal consumption. So if you're growing food that you're going to feed a horse that you have or something, that food would incorporate that. And then we define agricultural commodity. This is defined elsewhere, but means any food in its raw natural state, including fruits and vegetables that are washed, colored or otherwise treated in their unpeeled or natural form. And that's defined elsewhere in the statute. The last change here is or there's two more changes here. We should change this to on passage. It's an easy one. And the other change here is asking the secretary of agriculture, food and markets to adopt rules to implement the sections here to determine whether for purposes of raising, feeding, or managing livestock, a parcels land base is sufficient for nutrient and waste management. Just one second. So essentially asking the secretary to make rules that would help people decide what a sufficient land base is for their farming activities and then create a process for owners or municipalities to petition the agency of agriculture, food and markets to determine whether a parcels land base is sufficient for nutrient waste management for raising, feeding or managing livestock. So kind of creating a process for owners or municipalities to do that.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: And then you changed the final effective date too, I think, to reflect conversation we had the other day. Yep.

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. And we reflect that change that to on passage. Yeah. I think I mentioned earlier, but it's the effective date of any act is July 1 of the of the year of that year unless otherwise indicated. And I think the committee indicated that they would like this bill to be effective on passage. And if there are no more questions about this piece, I do wanna talk about cannabis briefly because that was the last piece that the committee asked me

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: to address. Yeah. Before we get to that, Bradley, just I I wasn't sure when you were back in the previous sections skipping over the definition of commodity, where where that fits into this agricultural Yeah.

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And so the agricultural commodity, we have the definition of food means articles or agricultural commodities. So articles is just like any kind of item that is used for human or animal consumption. And we also wanted to just highlight agricultural commodities as part of that, and then added the definition of agricultural commodity to clarify that it's food and it's raw or natural form and some things that it includes. Just to clarify what we're talking about in this section, I think the notion was that we didn't necessarily want a municipality to or

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: the committee didn't want

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: a municipality to be able to prohibit the growing of food for feeding their goats that they have or something of the sort. And so we wanted to make sure that food had that definition of both for human or animal consumption just to clarify that piece and then including the agricultural commodity piece in there required a separate definition.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: So if we're if we're saying this this is the right under the right to grow food, you would Correct.

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: Your own food. That's correct.

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So we refer food as the right to grow food.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah. And and if we're saying you can have a couple of goats or you can have a cow or you can have flock of chickens, it stands the reason, I guess, that we would also be saying, and you can grow the food that you need to keep those animals growing.

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That's correct.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: That's sort of the idea. And

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: and I think that those were some concerns raised by the committee in our conversations last time. So we incorporated that in here.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: So the I know a lot of the new language here and the complexity such that there is any complexity is related under the right to grow food piece. And we heard a couple of committee members suggest a few minutes ago that perhaps we should be looking at that as a separate bill. While we're thinking about this now, does anybody else feel strongly one way or the other about this? We don't have to decide, but kind of interested in getting the sense of the committee on that one.

[John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: You already opined a day. Do you have? Well, you wanna refine your- The vegetable part seems very simple. When as soon as we add the animal pieces, it gets really pre World War two, many households would have a cow or chickens or a pig, but they don't anymore. And when we start talking about limitations on that, we don't we got we've got all these issues about water quality and adequate space and all of that to deal with. Plus, we've got the noise. We've already talked about roosters in Guinea fowl, and then suppose someone wants a buffalo, a pig. If you've ever had a pig and it you touch it and it doesn't wanna be touched, it is really noisy. Ostriches, what about those? They can be lethal if they get out, yet, you know, they're kinda considered domestic in some areas. So where do you draw the line? It's just that animal piece makes it so complicated. Yeah. Not the vegetable part simple.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: I I I don't disagree with you.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: Representative Burtt, I guess I agree on some parts, but I disagree on the part that people don't have animals anymore. Maybe not near Montpelier, but this Cabot could decide to regulate by municipality anything under the wraps if they chose to go. And there are plenty of my neighbors who have raised If I didn't have another farm to go alongside it in acreage, I have four pigs this year that perform my own consumption, I have plenty of neighbors that do a lot of things like that. So it's quite common in our state.

[John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: I'm not talking about farms, I'm talking about growing your own food, not

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: But these are, yeah, I'm saying people that only own a few acres and might decide to raise a pig for themselves or or have chickens or have a cow.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: I I think out in Cabot, which is in tier three country now, so you guys just don't throw a cow. But no. But in tier one a, I I agree with you, John. You know, you get in tier one a where you have dense house, know, are we gonna let somebody have 14 goats living in their basement and coming up to see daylight for if they see daylight. I mean, I just that's

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: So the I think the 14 goats in that scenario might have to pass luster with the agency. I think that's what we're you'd be asking here.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: And Yeah. But I think someone with a small coop with 10 chickens or a dozen or 20 chickens that they collect the eggs and and maybe have some eggs and meat birds is I can speak to how this works now.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I can't time. But I do wanna say, Joe, just to be clear that when I said earlier that all three parties in these conversations had signed on to the Right to Grow Food, the agency's position on livestock was just chickens, like a small flock of chickens. I think that they were not talking about anything beyond chicken. So that's the word is worth.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: Right. Go ahead. I replaced this question. Okay. Alright. Okay. So but the agency of ag did propose in theirs to drop the the acreage down to one acre. Yeah. There

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: were differences. Which we

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: don't have language for that here. Yeah. So that's feel like that helped to cover the base where, yeah, and it's under one acre really, you don't have a land base to have livestock, maybe some poultry. So I agree with that. But if we're trying to go from the rats to down to almost no acreage, but still allow livestock, think that's tricky without being able to bring the wraps down to one acre and then let there be a process for establishing, does the land base based on, because every piece is different. But I think if you have four acres, that could potentially be a beautiful place to have a pig

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: or a

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: cow or whatever. This isn't going to do anything. Or it's going to be a problem because in tier 1A or somebody trying to have two pigs on a half an acre in the village, they stink. They're turning the backyard into a mud hole. So I think that's what I kind of align more with the agency of Ag's language overall. In terms of somebody who, I mean, that one to four acres, if somebody wants to homestead, I feel like it's a very crucial piece to make sure we're covering properly. Yeah, okay.

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: All right, so just Bradley and committee, I'm just wondering, let me use an example. So I have a sheep farm in Tundraage following the wraps and BGS agrees to lease me the State House Lawn to put 20 sheep on it. So I have control, that's part of my farm, right? I'm sorry. So I'm just saying, if I have a farm following the wraps, say even in tier three, but I lease land, I was just using the State House Lawn as an example, lease land even in tier 1A, are we going to run into trouble with that sort of thing? And even to the point where I could build a shepherd's hut, a farm structure there, because whoever landlord is agrees that I have power to farm on this parcel in a 1A

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: here. So this bill does not restrict farming in tier 1a areas. It only restricts construction of a farm structure in tier 1A areas. So it kind of breaks out and highlights that specific piece with respect to tier 1A areas. So a municipality by bylaw cannot regulate farming practices that are subject to the required agricultural practices. So in your scenario, the farmer is subject to the required agricultural practices. Therefore, they cannot be regulated by municipal bylaw wherever that agricultural practice takes place, wherever that farming takes place.

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: Including leased land. Right.

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Including leased land. If you wanted to construct a farm structure, you could not do that in a tier 1A area unless there was a farm structure that already existed in that tier 1A area. And so that goes back to a very earlier earlier conversation, which is saying, okay, well, if I was farming, but didn't have a farm structure in a tier one area? Shouldn't I be able to build a farm structure? Well, that does require different language here if the committee wants to enable that kind of activity. While

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: we have Bradley, just any other clarifying question. But you wanted to just touch on cannabis, Bradley?

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I did. I did. And if now is a good time to do that, I can.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Actually, don't we hold off on that? Because I think that's less critical actually than getting the sense of the committee on whether we're going to try and incorporate this right to grow food into this bill or trying to handle that separately? Anybody feel strongly about it?

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: I like having it here. I mean, I feel like we're on the cusp of moving this forward and it makes sense. I think it makes sense to include it here. But I mean, I'm okay with doing it separately if people want to do it separately.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Leaving out the right to grow food pieces then, and I realize it's a little hard to sort of think now what do we have in front of us language wise that is and is not part of that. We've said our intent language is to go back to the way we were, except in one section of the state tier one A sections, would allow municipalities to regulate farm structures. And what else is any different? What else would we be doing if we did take out the right to grow food parts?

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Was that a question for me representative?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Sorry, yeah, Bradley, I guess that is a question for you.

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, so, okay. And so if we took out the right to grow food and I'm assuming we're also taking out raising, feeding and managing livestock, if we're taking out the right to grow food, you're essentially removing C and D and then we would also kind of remove the definitions that I added. So the agricultural commodity and then the food piece. So what this bill would do then is re establish the pre tax rate status quo, That farming activity subject to the required agricultural practices rule is exempt from municipal bylaw. Construction of the farm structures is also exempt from municipal bylaw with the exception of farm structures that are constructed within a tier one a area unless that farm structure existed previously. So that's what this bill would do.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Okay. Representative Nelson.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: I like having the right to grow food in this bill. The only thing I think we should look at is livestock as per representative Bartholomew said. I I think Heather, I don't think vegetable gardens are painless. I I think, you know, I think they're fine.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Okay. Well, good. I think let's leave it there, Bradley. Do you want to just I'm not sure whether we've given you any marching orders that are clear.

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I was gonna clarify that. Yeah. Does the committee wanna get back to me or or I've made notes. I can kinda go over some things. How do we wanna proceed?

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: Yep. Just for clarity. So pre Cap Street and pre act one eighty one farm structures, construction of repairs, expansion, etcetera, were not were exempt from municipal regulation. Yes. And because of act 181, that's why this is getting caught up now as only something you can replace that you you can't. So Tap

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Street, we're having this conversation just because of Tap Street in an effort to try and find a compromise that would be broadly acceptable politically, the construct of peers that act 181 created, yeah, is being used here as a way to reach a potentially reach a compromise. Does that make sense?

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: Right. So, I mean, it's it's Tapestry plus 181 really is what we're dealing with here. If I may.

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So this bill is not addressing things in Act 181. It adopts language from Act 181 as a way, what I think is as a way to recognize that constructing a farm structure in a densely populated area might be very difficult. And so to to kind of use language to identify where that difficult or where that place might be, this bill adopted tier 1A as a way of saying, okay, well in this pre identified area that we already have a statutory framework for identifying, you can't build a farm structure there. So the only thing that this bill is not in a response to Act 181, it just borrows a conceptual framework from Act 181 to say that building farm structures in this kind of place, a municipality can regulate that because it's so densely because it is so dense. So it's just borrowing language. It's not necessarily in response to that.

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: Okay. And it doesn't prohibit necessarily farm structures from being built. You just have to go through municipal zoning to be approved. Exactly. That's exactly right.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah. The municipalities, through their representatives organization, came into the committee, shared with us that they were generally fine with having restrictions, the kinds of restrictions that existed before the Capsuite decision, with the exception of tier one areas. And I think they are continuing to think about it. When I asked Bradley to draft this language, said, let's put in tier one a rather than tier one for discussion purposes, and let's limit this to the farm structures piece rather than everything else that could presumably be regulated, also for the purposes of having a discussion. And I think that I'm still waiting to hear now back from anyone, either farmers or the league, with any objections to this language. Haven't heard objections yet formally. I haven't been asked to testify, to assess the testimony. I know everyone's looking at it and thinking about it, but I'm not here to suggest that it would be broadly acceptable. When do tier one a go live, so to speak, in Vermont? It would be years. So do we

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: run into a problem with the effective date then?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah. Bradley, given the fact that there are no tier one a, does that mean anything if we, you know, currently, if we kept the effective date the way it is?

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No, no. It's just if the municipality zoned a tier 1A, then restrictions would kick in for that piece. And so if there are no tier 1As, and for whatever reason there weren't any zoned tier one a's, then the point would be moot. So there's no issue with respect to the effective date unless you wanted to push an effective date out farther, potentially you could. So if you wanted to give someone a heads up and say, hey, you

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: can

[Bradley Sheldon (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: be grandfathered up until 07/01/2027 or 2028 or something like that, right? You know, kind of giving someone more time, you could potentially do that.

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: So the effective date essentially is when towns go live with with act one a.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Right. But we want to we want to restrict zoning on agriculture. Right. So if you put the effective date out, does that allow municipalities to zone agriculture today? We don't want them zoning agriculture today.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: We talked about the funding data structure, not the effective date of the other funds.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Apparently, I think I'm not sure that we've asked you to do anything then. Yes. So we will I think it might be helpful for us to noodle on this some more, both individually and then have some committee discussion time. And then we may hear from other folks who'd like to comment.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Representative Lipsky? This is relevant to the point one a. What if this is anecdotal, but there are a number of communities, towns that have land qualified to be going one a, but they're burdens, so they're opting out of of becoming designated as a one a community. May not be very pervasive given the

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I think that is relevant and I think maybe we can invite the league in to speak to that first. Let's take Patricia, let's take five here. Just maybe even four because we've got some other testimony and wanna be sure that we allow enough time for it. But thank you very much.