Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: There's also a hot link to the map where our offices are. So I just want to let you know, be aware of that.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Okay. Okay. So If you want to just for the record, we're live streaming, introduce yourself. Sure.

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: Happy to. Good afternoon. My name is Wendy Wilson. I am the state executive director for the Farm Service Agency. We're an agency within the Department of Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture, And a long standing presence in Vermont, as in every state. Used to be the old farmer's home. That was collapsed with another agency to make FSA back, I want to say, in the late 80s or something like that. So, farm service agency is what we've been known as since that time. Primarily, we do two things: we make loans to farmers and we provide programs to farmers. I did serve in this role in the first Trump administration, and now I'm back again under the second Trump administration in this role. It's a terrific agency to work for. We have presence all throughout the state. On the handout that I gave you, which is also online, because I've sent it to the committee assistant, there's also a hot link there, right here below on the first slide. If you go to that electronically, it'll bring you to a You can punch in your location and find your closest FSA office. We have nine locations throughout the state. In each location, there's county director and program staff. And in three of our locations, have loan staff, but they serve the entire state from those three locations.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Brian, can you?

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Just a structural question. What's the relationship between FSA and NRCS?

[Lisa Milad, Director of Animal Welfare (Vermont Department of Public Safety)]: We are partners.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Okay, you're partners.

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: They're a separate agency under USDA. And it's also, even within USDA, it's under what's called FBAC, Farm Production and Conservation. They're the conservation side. We're the production side. So in every one of these offices throughout the state, we are co located with NRCS. We work with them a lot. We have one program that we kind of share some responsibility for, CRP, which is water protection. So it's our program actually at FSA, but they do a lot of the technical assistance that then provides the nuts and bolts of how that producer is going to protect the waterway. The funding would flow through you. Pardon? Funding flows through you. Yes. Does. Yes. Yep. Hi, Derek. In in Vermont, we have 31 people out in the county offices, those nine offices throughout the state. And we have eight people that represent state office staff, but they are many of them are also out in the field. As I mentioned, we have nine service centers. I'm also looking for a temporary I have a temporary position open in the Newport office. So if any of you know anyone who lives up in that area and you know somebody looking for a job, we really need somebody in Newport. And you'll see why in a minute. The second page on the slides talks about farm loans. Again, two sides of the house, farm loan and farm program. In loans, currently, we have a portfolio of $112,000,000. We have direct loans, which we're making that loan directly to the farmer. We also have guaranteed loans. Much like SBA, we can partner with another lender, whether it's a commercial bank or it's VIDA or Farm Credit East or Ag Ventures or any other ag lender, and we can guarantee their loan. Just like SBA guarantees commercial loans for banks when there's a little bit of risk, you know, early stage kind of company, that kind of thing. So that's actually bigger dollars, because the direct loans have some limits. Dollars 400,000 for an operating loan, 500,000 for real estate. You So can imagine, especially with the price of farmland, you can get up into the millions pretty fast. So in that case in in deals like that, we often are are working with a guaranteed lender, you know, to do $2,000,000. Know, their limit is a little bit over 2,000,000. So again, we're kind of positioned as FSA to be the lender of first opportunity so that beginning farmers, you know, have a place to go. They might be too high risk for a bank. So we we serve that role. Once somebody's got to a point where they really can do a commercial lender or or find banking on their own, we graduate them, quote unquote, meaning they can then move

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: on. And

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: your portfolio in your direct load case, your direct loans, heavy dairy, a lot of veggie, orchards. Do you have a great mix of what you're doing with that?

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: I think the big dollars are dairy. It's an expensive business to be in. We have quite a lot of other diversified agriculture in those direct loans as well, but the dollars are going to be in dairy.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: And your interest rate, is it competitive? Is it sub par? Is it

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: It's competitive. Maybe a little bit less than what a commercial bank might charge, you know, and those are set nationally. Those aren't any different in Vermont than they are in Nebraska.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: So

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: those are set by national office.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: So, Rebecca, just two quick questions. So, Farm Credit East, is that government or is that independent? Like, VIDA is

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: A little bit of both. Okay. You're raising a really interesting question. Within USDA, there's also what's called the Farm Credit Administration. That is an oversight mechanism. They are actually regulatory over what's called the Farm Credit System, of which Farm Credit East is a division of CoBank. CoBank is one of those big ag lenders nationally that is then regulated by the Farm Credit Administration. Does that answer the question? Yeah. It's kind of wild, right? Within FSA and within USDA, there's a lot of very interesting hybrid situations. And I'll talk about that one, as far as FSA goes, in a minute.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Just the other quick question. Sort of vertical loans in the ag world. Can you loan to AgriMarc Cabot or is it really just farmers?

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: I would say no. It's producers. You have to be somebody who's producing food, fiber, or fuel. And agri market doesn't till any land, do they? No.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Okay. That's where it gets cut off.

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: Yeah, it has to be a producer. Our loan volume is down compared to what it was six or seven years ago, and that's primarily due to the consolidation in dairy. That larger farms have bought smaller farms that were our customers, for loans, and so we're we're down quite a bit. I think at one point, we were probably about 200,000,000. We're down to a 112. Another trend we're seeing I was actually just at Vida yesterday because we work with them a lot. And so the trend that we're kinda seeing in UVM Extension kinda backed this up. A lot of the younger farmers that are are going to diversified farms or vegetable farms, they're kinda risk averse. They really don't wanna borrow. But even then, their borrowing needs are a little bit smaller as well. So we're we're seeing that as a as a trend. We also have the ability to make emergency loans, and that's gonna get some use, I believe, because of the drought. There are some farmers that, are running out of feed right now, which is a real problem. So we are able to make as a result of the drought, we did get a secretarial designation on the 2025 drought, which triggers the emergency loan. So a farmer can come to us, get an emergency loan, buy some feed. We also have some programs that can be applied to disaster, including drought, that will help them either repay that loan or pay it off or give them a little bit more income.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: They could use the proceeds of the loan to purchase feed.

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: Yes. And then if they have program income, they could then pay the loan off. So hopefully we get them from point A to point B. Our delinquency rate at 2.2% based on dollars for our direct loans. Honestly, I really I did work in banking many, many years ago. Even in a commercial portfolio, a 2%, delinquency rate is, you know, pretty good, or at least it was then. So when you think about the risk of agriculture, you know, portfolio doesn't look too bad, and on the guaranteed loans, it's even less. Because there's really two entities sort of underwriting that loan and servicing that loan. It's FSA and it's the lender, whether it's VIDA, Farm Credit East, whoever it is.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Wendy, do you offer insurance or loans to buy insurance? Like, think, or DMC, you know, those sort of things.

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: Right. DMC is one of our programs. We'll talk about that in a second. There's also NAP, which is a crop insurance of a sort that a lot of vegetable producers use. And then there's also RMA, which is another agency under USD which offers a whole farm insurance program. So there's a lot there. Not all of it is ours. On the third page, now we're going to talk about programs. When I first came to FSA, I was like, I worked in banking. I know what loans are. I understand that world. What are programs? And so I had the program specialist come and say, can you tell me in fifteen minutes what are programs? And it's really all about financial support, whether it is price support, whether it's a form of insurance like NAP, or whether it's disaster assistance. So we've got all three of those. But what's been most important to Vermont producers, if you look on that page, as of today, because I looked at all these numbers on my dashboard yesterday, we're almost at $43,000,000 being paid out to producers just in the last couple of years for the '23, the twenty four flood. A little bit on the drought, but it's mostly the floods. And most important

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

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: Yeah.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Oh, I'm sorry. So

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: in the dairy farming world yesterday, money hit the checking accounts. Was that and I think the boys told me that was for LDP? ELRP, the very last one. ELRP?

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: Yep.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: And is that the 30,000,000 31,000,000 that the agency of agriculture has been waiting for, or is that a different, know, the 2324?

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: That is it's on the next page, actually. The American Relief Act of 2025, $30,000,000,000 nationally. It's part of that. And so far, we've done 32,000,000, and I have another county office that has yet to execute their payments and a few more, I think, from Newport. So I'm, I think we could be looking at 40,000,000 on that possibly.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: Okay. So that's not the 31,000,000 that is prior to the February and was it February that was going to seven states?

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: Oh, I'll talk about that in a minute. That's all part of the American In your next page. Gotcha. It's awful. Right?

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: You all you all you all speak in three and four letter words that just don't make sense.

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: Hey, that's any agency in federal government. Believe me. When I first started, I had this glossary of all of the acronyms and what they meant. But the key picture here is that there are a number of standing programs which start I think ECAP actually was an ad hoc, but some of these others are standing programs that when disasters strike, we can apply. The two on the bottom, the supplemental disaster programs, SDRP and ELRP, were part of a congressional act from 2025, and that's on the next page.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: The the numbers above that, those are all those aren't loan paid loan No. It's all This is Payments. Payments. Payments. Yep. Yep.

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: New FSA programs. Well, let's talk about the second one here first, which is the American Relief Act of 2025, which was a $30,000,000,000 total funding passed by Congress. And this was in response to out in the Southwest, there were terrible droughts and horrible stuff happening there. And then we had the floods in the Northeast and in other places. So there were three big components of that act. One is ELRP, emergency livestock, which I'm saying here, we may get to 40,000,000 in Vermont. So far, we've done 32 in payments. The next one, SDRP, actually has two phases. We've done 3,700,000.0 on that so far. But the third one is the small states block grants program. And Mr. Representative, I think that's what you're talking about. So Vermont has been very unique in regard to this. It was all the New England states, Alaska and Hawaii, that have the ability to use these block grants. Hats off to our agency of agriculture, because they reached out to FSA and said, Can we work together on this? Because some programs you do, if we don't do them, you're allowed to do them. And if we wanted to cover crop loss, then you couldn't do those programs. So we worked really closely with Anson and Tebbitt's team in working on their parameters for this block grant. I think they're pretty close to having this together. Now the approval resides in national office, not with me. But we have worked hand in hand with them. Other New England states, their agencies or departments of agriculture have said, Nope, we're going to do it all. You can't do your FSA program as a result. We'll take the crop loss because we think we can do it faster and better. Well, turns out that's not the case. We've already put out $3,700,000 in SDRP. We wouldn't be able to do SDRP if the state, under their block grant, had covered the crop loss, because USDA looks at this. We're not going to duplicate payments on the same loss. So think Vermont did it right, is what I'm trying to tell you.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: So when something like BGAP, was that then leveraging USDA dollars or was it like a reimbursement type thing through USDA?

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: That was before me, and I don't know a lot about BGAP, but I know it was a program that the state operated. Did they get a grant from the federal government to run it perhaps?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I think so, but I think there was still maybe some Reimbursement of some sort or Well, was gonna say some money or some some COVID

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: Yeah. Okay. That would make sense. Yeah. Yeah. Alright. That would have been the right time frame. So I don't know much about that. I gotta be honest. But I know it existed. I know our producers used it.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: What's the what's the dollar figure on that New England, Alaska, Hawaii?

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: That's 220,000,000 total.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: Yeah. And so our share share is supposed to be, like, 31,700,000.0.

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: I think that's what the

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: And month. When delegates were in here.

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

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: And, you know, and they said it would had gone to USDA, and then it got clawed back for appropriations to it's still intact. It just got pulled back to come back again. There's something I don't wanna speak for them.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: So something about there were some changes being made They to were still yeah. I think the whatever the whatever it was the update was, we we've been hearing about it for a year. It it was literally a year ago when they came in and were joyously announcing this money coming to the state.

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: Yeah. Effectively, the act was available a year ago. We're again, from our standpoint, we wanna support the state in that. And I feel like we did it the right way that we were able to do our program, and get some money out there. They're going to be able to do theirs when they get that final approval from USDA National Office, and that will also add to this assistance. And what's great about all of these things is we're hoping it puts our producers in a position before the crop year to have enough money to get a crop in the field, corn, soybeans, and the vegetable growers, whatever they need to get their season started. And the other thing is, I think we're all really trying to manifest in the universe. Let's make sure we don't have any disasters this year that affect our farmers. So I think Secretary Tebbitts has put that out, hasn't he? And I'm with him

[Rep. John O'Brien]: on that. Anyway. So I just don't remember hearing about the ELRP or SCRP dollars coming in into the state for, say, the two years of floods or

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: they were out. They would put it directly to farmers, right?

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: Right. But it comes to us, FSA. So the farmer has to make an application, and then they work through the process, gather the paperwork, gets approved by their county committee. And then once those payments are released, they get paid. And the program side is very different. With the loan side, our loan officers have a great deal of autonomy. They take that from the application all the way through the approval, the closing, and they continue to service that account. Once a year, they have to check-in with the farmer. How are you doing? If delinquencies start to occur, we accelerate that process. It's all kind of in house, right? And on the program side, there's another layer of approval. And this is another uniqueness of FSA. Throughout the country, that every county office that we have, our nine locations around the state, that have farmers elected to a board called the county committee that actually oversees the operation, including the county director and the program techs who work on the program side. So they don't approve loans, but only the program. So if those county committees are looking at the information from their farmer peers, and if they say, You know, this looks pretty good, but we need a little more information on what happened here, the loss here, how much was planted or whatever. And they can gather that information and then make the approval. If a producer is denied, they can also appeal. They can appeal to the state committee or they can appeal to the national office. So there's a very interesting governance structure. You don't need to know more than that, but it does make it interesting.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I think that would be just to your question, John, that I don't remember hearing about the ELRP and maybe the agency hadn't mentioned it, the ag agency, it But

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: it doesn't come through them. State.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: These are all federal programs. Right, but for example, with our farm relief fund, I just never remember these coming up. So if the Nelson Farm had 300 acres that were flooded in '24, would have you applied for S. D. I. P.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: So reserve corn corn payment this year? You know, the bushel. Yeah. Yeah. So they they have all these long standing programs. The bushel price of corn is $7 a bushel. There's no corn payment. But when the bushel price for corn gets down below the floor, there's a payment because the cost of fertilizer is this, the bushel price is here. People, you know, people all money from a corn issue. And and if and all that does is that money comes in to your accounts, and it goes a plow. And about the second the dust starts to settle, there's a sucking noise, and it's right back out of your account, and it's going to your bankers, it's going to your seed dealers, it's going to your fertilizer companies, it's going to the grain man, and it just kinda keeps the whole wheel turning. And if you are in my world and getting the updates I'm getting from all my trade magazines, American agriculture, commercial agriculture is in the biggest world has been in in decades. Yep. Don't disagree.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: So to your point and question, John, you have to like, you know, in 2023, I Right. We had car insurance, we worked with Larry. I remember you told us a lot. Actually, Wendy came out, Larry and a number of others, year at our war tree, and Matoran, donuts. And that wasn't NAP, that was you. That was, so NAP covered us, if I'm not mistaken, it would have been NAP, right, for the 2023 frost.

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: It could have been ECP also.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Yeah, I see more than 300. I think we've got about $20,000 for our lawsuits, which is of what we lost. It was pennies on dollar. But it helps. So it's similar to what we're trying to do at the state level with Farm Security Fund. The smaller the eight year zone, the less. Really, I've got to say, at least for what I saw, I a Champlain orchards, you have a lot bigger boxes, but you also, it's per acre basis that you get paid. So some of these small farms have a high value crop on small acreage. And I think FSA, I mean, I'm not an expert on it, but it seems like they have algorithms that reflect that. They're saying, Well, I think the market security funds usually too. Is it commodity based? Does it have to be corn or apples or something?

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: Well, some programs are. Like crop insurance, yes, you're insuring for certain crops. Yep. And maybe you don't insure all your crops, just ones that you really feel that you need coverage on. So that's producers'

[Lisa Milad, Director of Animal Welfare (Vermont Department of Public Safety)]: option.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: There are these federal programs that are super helpful, but there are definitely types of farms in our state that fall through cracks. Based on the dollars. Yes. I

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: think we were on turning to page five.

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: Actually we're still on page four, which is at the top, it says new farm programs. Okay. So we talked about the American Relief Act. That's the ELRP, which we're so far, we've done $32,000,000 SDRP, so far we've done $3,700,000 and the small states block grants, which is the state working with our national office. But the first one on that page was announced in December, and that's the Farmer Bridge Assistance. And that was a recognition by the federal government that agriculture is really in dire straits right now. And so 11,000,000,000 is for row crops. Now, when this first came out, we were unsure if Vermont dairy farmers, because they grow corn for feed, right, soybeans for feed, were they going to be part of this? They weren't growing corn to sell it, you know, but they are. So we should be able to see some good payments on this, and as long as a producer gave us a crop report by 12/19/2025, they're eligible, and the rates for the payments per acre have already been determined. And what's interesting is there's no factor involved. Sometimes with some of our programs, there's a factor where, you know, it might be, you know, five dollars a bushel or something, but there's a factor that brings it down a little, doesn't pay at all like you're talking about, Greg. This one, the acreage or the price on acres is what it's going to be. Those applications are gonna be mailed because we have all their all the data for the producers that work with us, and they will be mailed an application, they'll sign it, bring it into their county office, and they should see a payment by the February. So we should see somebody planted a 100 acres of corn, they're gonna get $4,000 in change.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: That's dollars an acre?

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: Yeah, 44 or something. I got it right here.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: You grow 2,700 about 2,700 acres? It's

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: Yeah, that'll cover spraying.

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: Like I said, think this was really aimed at preparing a lot of farms for the growing season. Corn is $44.36 Sorghum, $48.11. Soybeans, $30.88. Wheat, we have some wheat growers in Vermont, $39.35. When this came out, I also alerted, extension, particularly to get ahold of the grain growers because there's a lot of grain covered under that. I didn't name them all. But, anyway, there's also in addition to the 11,000,000,000 for row crops, there's another billion for specialty crops. We don't know anything about this yet. That will be forthcoming. The push was, let's work on that 11,000,000,000 for row crops, for commodity being raised, then we'll work on the specialty crops. The attention here was those agricultural industries that were heavily impacted by the market. So that's what that's about. Next page. The bill that was passed last July, which the One Big Beautiful Bill, as it's sometimes called, was almost like a mini farm bill. There was a lot there hasn't been a farm bill since 2018, so, congress is really behind it. Know, they're behind the eight vol. It's supposed to be a new farm bill every eight every five years, and so we're really behind. And, hopefully we'll see one, you know, maybe this year being proposed. I think representative Glenn Thompson from Pennsylvania is working on that. But in the meantime, there were there were a lot of provisions in this bill that was passed in July. What really happened there was there were lots of enhancements to some key programs like ARCPLC, you mentioned that, the corn payment. For the 2025 crop year, there was $1,500,000 that went out for ARCPLC, but the changes that will be implemented this year is an increase in the reference prices that haven't been increased in a long time, and they added 30,000,000 base acres nationally, so more acres can be covered, and they also increased payment limits to a farm. It used to be a 125,000, now it's $1.55. That may not seem like a lot, but could be significant.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: Thank you, Chuck. Wendy, and so that's from the production side of agriculture, and and I guess it's probably not in your wheelhouse. It may be more in our CS's wheelhouse, and we should get Travis? Travis?

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: Travis Tom Thomason.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: We should have Travis Thomas Thompson. Got a

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: jam on a sticky note here. Yeah. And

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: the cat to the farm, you know, the program of $450,000, which was set in 2018, was deficient then. And after inflation and whatnot, it is surely deficient now.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Mhmm.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: And, you know, it needs to be doubled,

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: You know? I'm sure a lot of that probably needs it, but but you also know that that's congressional.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: I I I realize that, but I will tell it to anyone who listens. Oh, good.

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: I'm all listening.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: I mean, if you have a chance to have a beer with secretary Roland someplace sometime in Longstreet, well, invite me down, and I'll chat

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: with her about it. That'd be great. Yeah. I'd like to see her again. The other thing is that we have a standard payment limit, and a farm can't have more than $900,000 in their AGI. Again, our programs are geared to the mid size and smaller farms nationally, but some programs, depending on how many owners there are and how the ownership is sliced up, each owner can actually get some sort of limit. So there are those options for certain programs too. The other program that was impacted by the OBA and enhanced by OBA is DMC, which somebody mentioned here, dairy margin coverage. So there's a margin and a floor, and so if the milk price goes down, you're kind of betting on the market a little bit, whether it's gonna go up or go down.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Gonna pay this year.

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: One hopes. But at the at the same time, when it does pay, it doesn't mean everybody's made whole either. So it is it it some relief, but not all. Back in 2023, we put out almost $30,000,000 in DMC, but the last two years, I think 2025, is looking a lot like 2024. So we'll see what 2026 is going to be, but the milk price doesn't look great as a forecast. That's for sure. However, there were some changes. The tier one coverage, which is the smaller farm, the production coverage went from 5,000,000 to 6,000,000 pounds annually, and you could reestablish your production history. So this was an update to a lot of the farms, which was good because prior to now, their production history may have been established like seven years ago, eight years ago, and they've increased since then. So there were some important changes there. And the other changes that were really important in that bill, relate to farm succession planning, and that there were lots of tax code changes that occurred. Now that's not my world, but it's out there. You can actually pull up AI and ask it what were the tax changes in this bill as it relates to agriculture. And so there were a lot I think, the Farm Bureau nationally was asking for this for a long, long time and did get it done so that farm succession, can be less costly and certainly would help to get the next generation in the farm and continuing that farm operation. Lastly, the secretary has put out document, which there's a hot link in the actual PowerPoint that you guys have access to. And there were a couple of key things which I think are important and important for Vermont, and that she really wants to emphasize support for small farms and family farms. So it's important to note that 86% of all US farms are small farms or family farms. Now understand nationally, some of what's considered a small farm are the mid and large sized farms here in Vermont, but it still is really important for Vermont agriculture. The farm transition tax treatment, that got accomplished through the bill. There's a focus on new and beginning farmers. We actually have to, create an outreach plan for new and beginning farmers, which I roll out with my staff. Another agenda item of hers is to reform the h two a and h two b, and that would be so helpful if that could ever get done. Thank you. Yes. Well, you know, again, that's a congressional thing, but it's crazy. I've never understood personal opinion but I've never understood why this couldn't get fixed, you know? Especially since the folks who here are working on our farms, they're here year round, they're here for several years, they become part of our communities, why can't they be working with some comfort? Streamlining processes for programs and approvals, easier applications, online access. One of the goals of the administrator for FSA, Farm Service Agency, he is a row cropper from Pennsylvania, and his pet project is to implement a way for precision agriculture to do the crop report electronically, which would be terrific. Because if you've got a tractor where you're planting and you know how much you planted, how many acres you planted, and you know the geographical GIS dimensions of your fields, and it's all there in the data, if you could, from your office or even from your phone, file that crop report, would save so much time for the producer, so much time for us, and it probably would be more accurate.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: How much will John Deere try just to do it right from the tractor?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I don't know.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: That that's kind of a Right.

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: I know. You about

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: Deere's schemes, but, on your on your special focus on new and beginning farmers, I I think that's commendable and very important to a lot of the groups we've been having come to us here. So it as that rolls out, you know, let us send an update to us so we could let these groups know. There's a lot of issues, some of these groups that they don't know where to go. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And I've never thought to say, I you know, we work with your office. You know? I don't know. We're probably in there almost monthly, but they don't know. And, you know, and it's easy for us because you're right there in Newport, and we drive by it every day. You know, if you're you're in Orange County or Windsor County

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Cabot. Yeah.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: Yeah, but you're in tier three. You're in tier three, you don't have to worry about marathon or everything.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Everything O'Brien. Does FSA have anything to do with Snap, 3 Squares, Vermont? Just because as we've learned, USDA, you know, has it's part of the big umbrella there.

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: It doesn't come through us. Our customer group are the producers. Yeah. In terms of outreach, if I could respond to that, you know, we're charged with doing that, having an outreach plan. We work a lot with the other partners that are service providers to the industry. For example, UVM Extension is putting on five around the state, which really is it'll be NRCS and FSA. And our attempt here is to have new and beginning farmers come in and talk to us, and we're going to demystify the paperwork process for the two federal agencies, we hope. And so that's the goal there to say, hey, listen, we're not bad to deal with. Just understand there's some paperwork involved. So that kind of thing is what we do quite a lot. Next week, week after next, I'm going to the Dairy Producers Conference in South Burlington. Our folks are going to the no till. That's going to be big for NRCS, is the no till approach. There's a whole problem You got to get Travis in here to talk about that. It's a pilot project through NRCS, and it's a big emphasis from the department. So there's a lot of stuff going on with that. We attend. I spread it around my staff. I want everybody to get an opportunity to go to these outreach events, to talk to people, pass out our information and our cards and say, Hey, come see me. So we certainly wanna make it friendly and make the process easy for folks. But wait, that's another reason why I'm here with you today. That if you've got people you know in your area that are farming, thinking about farming, they need some help, please have them call our offices. That is the first step.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: We've got, I was thinking, 6,000 some farmers, I think, the state, by some measure anyway. How how many how many providers do you typically work within a year?

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: Not everybody wants to do business with the federal government. It's interesting. There are some farms that just don't want to because they don't want to give us a crop report, for example, or just don't feel like the programs maybe do enough for them or whatever. But I would think, on the whole, if I were to try to guess a percentage, I would say the vast majority do come and form a relationship with FSA. Whether it's on the loan side or the program side, for dairy, it's both. You know, oftentimes the vegetable farmers, as I said, some of them don't wanna carry much debt, so they're they might be program customers, but they're not loan customers.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: Well, your your interest rates are better than our commercially available Just

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: a little bit. Found it.

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: It's a lot?

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: Really? 2%?

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: I didn't know it was that much of a differential.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: Right now, two yeah. No. That's substantial.

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: Yeah, that is.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: So two things. Are you involved with the USDA Farm Survey Census?

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: No, a whole nother

[Lisa Milad, Director of Animal Welfare (Vermont Department of Public Safety)]: agency. Yeah,

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: USDA. We know who they are, but yeah.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: And the other one, any relationship with the conservation districts?

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: Yes. Through prep and CRP.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Okay.

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: In our work with NRCS. Another relationship between FSA and NRCS is eligibility. We have to determine that the farmer, they that original paperwork with us, who are you? Social Security number, all that kind of stuff. It's called eligibility, determining eligibility that you're a US citizen, you have a farm, you know, okay. That comes through us. So even if the person doesn't want to use FSA loans or programs, but they want to use NRCS, they still have to do eligibility paperwork that we actually review and sanction. Then it goes back, okay, NRCS, you're good to go. So there is, you know, that constant relationship with us, and I do attend all the state technical committees meetings, which happen four times a year, and also the Vermont Ag Water Quality Group. I'm involved in that because we have that program. We've got CRP and CREP. And it's of interest to farmers to make sure that I've not met a farmer that doesn't want to do the right thing with the environment, you know.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I'm sorry we didn't plan better and schedule more time for you. That's okay. On Friday afternoon, especially, but we should probably keep things rolling because we've got our next witnesses here. You very much for

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: You know where to find me if you have questions.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: Yeah. Thank you, Wendy. Is

[Rep. John O'Brien]: need a cider doughnut. Which

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: is good. Well, wasn't just cider. Bought maple syrup from Greg. So I've got it in my fridge. So I'm all good there.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: And they do work closely with the conservation districts that share a lot of office space Right. Heather. And and and the conservation districts are full well aware of the programs going on in the NRCS and help farmers apply for those for water quality. It's been really a good good partnership.

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: I think so.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: Yeah. Yeah. For sure.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Post doge, did you lose any Vermont based members?

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: We lost a couple of people, but this was really funny. One of the people that took the DRP, a really good employee, she was training up to be a county director, and she left with the Fulcan Road, the ERP. And so we said, let's give her a call, see what she's doing. And she hadn't found a job. She'd been looking for one, but hadn't found one. So we were like, hey, you want to come back and be a farm loan officer trainee? And she was like, I think I do. So we got her back before the end of the fiscal year. So we acted on that. How about that?

[Rep. John O'Brien]: That's good.

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: We weren't hurt that badly with it. But other states might have been different.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Thank you. You, my dear. Thank

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: you. All right. I think we have the director of animal welfare with us, possibly. Hi. Yes. Please come on up. And then did you bring a guest?

[Lisa Milad, Director of Animal Welfare (Vermont Department of Public Safety)]: I did. I brought Dan Batesy, who is the Deputy Commissioner for Public Safety.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Hey, welcome.

[Lisa Milad, Director of Animal Welfare (Vermont Department of Public Safety)]: He answers the questions I can't answer if they're DPS related or something like that, because I am still very new at

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: this. How long has it been? Relatively new anyway.

[Lisa Milad, Director of Animal Welfare (Vermont Department of Public Safety)]: Yeah, so I'm Lisa Milad. I'm the director of animal welfare for Vermont, and I moved up here in May and started work then. Prior to that time, I was the Annie and Zach Stanton distinguished professor of canine welfare law, because I'm the only one in the country who does canine welfare law, purely, but at the University of Georgia, and my students and I worked with jurisdictions around Georgia on animal welfare issues. It was mostly companion animals. Georgia isn't really at the point where they're focusing on cruelty and things like that with respect to livestock or other animals. And so it's been great moving here. It's been great getting to know people and figure out what's going on up here.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Well, thank you for making a little bit of time on Friday afternoon to come in. And we are I know we're running a little bit late. We can stay a little bit late. We also don't wanna keep you if you have another appointment. I appreciate whatever you can share with us. And thank you for joining us as well, deputy commissioner. I think we mostly just wanted to hear a little bit about what you've been doing so far in recognizing that animal welfare goes beyond the issues that we typically are thinking about here. And in fact, we were talking a little bit this morning about something that might relate to animal welfare. It comes up regularly. But there was a certain lot of interest when your position was created when, I guess, years ago now, 2000 It's been over the years, I've had concerns. So thank you for coming and happy to have you and anything you'd like to share would be helpful.

[Lisa Milad, Director of Animal Welfare (Vermont Department of Public Safety)]: Okay, I actually very much appreciate that you were running late because if I had walked in here at 01:30, I would have been carrying a wild turkey with me, and that was not really the way I wanted But to make my that has now been cleared up, and I am able to be here and focus on This is

[Rep. John O'Brien]: why the department said you need to consider because the only thing I know about wild turkeys is I them with stuffing in gravy. Keys are carrying it around in her car Yes. Your way to the State House.

[Lisa Milad, Director of Animal Welfare (Vermont Department of Public Safety)]: Okay. Warden has now taken possession of the turkey. I am no longer in possession of the turkey, so just to clarify that.

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

[Lisa Milad, Director of Animal Welfare (Vermont Department of Public Safety)]: Did try taking a Temeculaire vet, but they turned Anyway, like I said, I moved up here in May and my initial eight months was spent on developing a comprehensive plan to address animal welfare in Vermont, which meant spending a lot of time talking to folks in various sectors about the way things are now and why they are, because I think it's really important to nail that down before you worry about what they should be. And I spent, then I focused on writing a plan. I don't know whether or not you all have seen it, but that tries to make what we have right now more efficient. Given that this is not a great time to be expanding government, to be thinking about taxes and fees and things like that. Those things are not included in the report because I don't think that that should be the focus right now. Instead, it's more about what can we do? How can we do more with what we have by either becoming more specialized and having expertise that can weigh in at critical times, as well as how can we maybe make some of the financial programs we have a little bit more efficient? And so that was really my focus with the report I wrote. I was going to give you a little bit of an overview of the ag animal side of things that some of it's in the report, some of it was I didn't include in the report for various reasons, but I'm happy to share here. So the current status, from what I understand, is for the most part with the commercial farms, even the family farms, the ones who are actually engaging in food markets, I don't hear many issues with those. That's not where the focus really is. With the ag animals though, so the traditional livestock, the poultry and the horses that are on that side of things, the places where there seem to be some problems at times are with the horse industry, homesteads. So the small farms run by people that are not part of the food stream more generally. Then And the people who might have four cows or a flock of chickens. And a lot of the issues on the livestock and poultry side of that are with people who don't really seem to have any background in farm animals. And so they kind of have this I don't know if they come into it thinking that they're it's all very simple. If you have a pasture, you can have the animals and it doesn't take more than that or what it is, but it seems like there isn't a whole lot on the educational front for those folks, or at least not necessarily as being accessed by a lot of those folks. And they don't really know what appropriate shelter, for example, for a winter in Vermont for some goats are, and things along those lines. And so it's the there seems to be a lack of oversight for the agriculture animals that are not in the commercial food sphere. And there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of educational opportunities for new ag owners. Yeah.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: I just wondered if in what you described, would you also include rescues? Because those seem to be, they're often called rescues, but they're actually like, you know, border specialists.

[Lisa Milad, Director of Animal Welfare (Vermont Department of Public Safety)]: Yeah, so I actually think I would put them in domestic animal industry. I mean, there's sanctuaries a lot of the time. You do have one sanctuary that is GFAS, so it's global food animal sanctuary rated. So that's a slightly different category. But you're right, there's no oversight of rescues, sanctuaries, and on the pet side of things, shelters. And so there's really the wild west in a lot of ways, and you're right, a lot of them not a lot, some of them end up tipping over into hoarding problems. And one of the concerns with these, there's the animal welfare concerns, right? The suffering of the animals. And even if they're in the food stream, the idea is that they have a good life until it's the end, right? That's the ideal is that their life itself is worth living while it's happening, then they're slaughtered and they become part of the food chain, and that's fine. So the suffering itself in these fears is something to be concerned about. But there are actually I had a number of people raise biosecurity type issues with these sorts of with sanctuaries that might not be following great protocols, with the homesteads, because avian flu can be transmitted to pigs. It's not happened wide scale yet, but there was a case of a non commercial farm in Oregon where avian flu jumped from the birds to the pigs. And pigs, of course, can catch human flu. And so there's a question about mixing those flu types and having something that then can spread to people. And so when you're talking about, once again, the commercial farms, I think the agency of agriculture does a great job of oversight from what I understand. And there's a lot of concern for biosecurity in that realm. But when we talk about the homesteaders and the sanctuaries and things like that, you don't have these sorts of controls. And so I think that there's a concern there. And then in addition to the idea of diseases being able to spread between animal types in these settings, rabies would be another concern in these settings. So nationally, at least cats, then cows, then dogs are the largest domestic animal, rabies vector cases. Cows apparently get them for bats in the fields overnight, which makes sense. And again, in a lot of settings, it's not that big of a deal. And frankly, Vermont, as far as I can tell, has not had a dog rabies case in an awfully long time. But each year it has a goat case, a rabbit case, a cow case, a couple cat cases over a period of a couple of years, not all these in one year. And homesteads once again are a place where all of those animals are present. And as someone who's had a post exposure treatment for rabies once already, I'm very cautious about and is now vaccinated for it because being aware of that. It's one of those things that just gives me a little bit of a concern when I think about reservoirs of animals that are potentially rabies vectors that might not be getting regular vet care. And that's one of the things I heard is that being a livestock vet in Vermont is a tough life because you're on the road a lot in order to have your clients. And so going to the larger farms and things like that makes sense because you can go spend a day and work there. And so you don't have a whole lot of driving time. But if you're thinking about trying to get vets out to homesteaders, that doesn't happen all that often. And a lot of times the homesteaders just can't get a vet to come out because there's a shortage of vets and then it's a really high bar for the vet to travel places. And so once again, this is another case where I think we just want to be a little bit cautious that there might be another biosecurity risk there with rabies in those settings. And we want to think about how can we increase vaccination of the relevant animals, the barn cats, right? It's great that farmers and folks take in the cats that end up on their properties by whatever means. And we want to make sure that those animals can get easily rabies vaccinated. And then also with the other animals, it's not so much the vaccination. I think there is a rabies vaccination for pigs, but I might be speaking out of line on that. But just kind of keeping an eye on the fact that we're having these issues and they're So the calls that law enforcement got in 2024, I did review all the calls for animal incidents in 2024 to see what types of animals are these, what sort of calls are they? And I looked at the Vermont State Police and the Department of Fish and Wildlife calls. And as you probably know, Fish and Wildlife has been taking the lead on faulty investigations for a couple of years now. The calls a lot of times come in through the Vermont State Police and they get referred to Fish and Wildlife. Sometimes they come directly to Fish and Wildlife. But in 2024, with respect to agricultural animals, there were 132 animal incident calls to Vermont State Police. So 132 times people called about some sort of livestock issue or poultry issue to the police. I have to say most of those are running at large. It's a herd of cows that are on a roadway, or it's a couple of horses that are loose. So out of those 132 calls about agricultural animals, 28 of them were potentially cruelty though. And those were horses, someone with two to four cows or homesteaders. And when I'm talking about homesteaders, they might have 20 or 30 animals. And that becomes a bit of a crisis because it's really hard to figure out what to do with 30 animals that all need some care. Either that or they just need to be immediately euthanized, which is not what anybody if somebody's showing up to help with a cruelty case, that's not what they want to do because these animals can't enter the food chain at that point. They're not in a condition to actually even become food. So 28 of them involved potential cruelty, and then there were 35 calls to Fish and Wildlife directly about the alleged cruelty to livestock. So in total in 2024, there were sixty three instances of potential cruelty that were reported with respect to it. And once again, it's these smaller owners or it's the horses. And like I said, to me, this matters not just because of the suffering, because I think the suffering during life does matter. There's the biosecurity risk. There's a really high cost to the private organizations and individuals who are cleaning up these matters, who go in and take the animals. So Merrimack Farm, which is the one sanctuary in Vermont that has this global rating, took 10 pigs, goats, and geese from a homesteader two weekends ago, that really bitter cold weekend. The animals were on the side of a mountain and had absolutely no shelter. And so there's another one with, I think it's eight or 10 pigs that are in a field and have absolutely no constructed shelter of any sort or even natural shelter of any sort. So they dug a hole that week where they could get in and the ones that were on the bottom were able to stay fairly warm, but a couple of them are on the top and just completely exposed to that. And that was the weekend that was up to negative 40 degrees with wind chill. And so I think a large part of it is lack of education. Don't think anyone is getting these animals and saying, let me just put them out there and you know, I'm going to invest in them and let them die. Instead, think it's that they don't know what they're doing. Awesome.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson]: Yeah, I just wanted to clarify. Mean, if I recall correctly, I mean, only work on domestic animals, not wild animals, or do you both?

[Lisa Milad, Director of Animal Welfare (Vermont Department of Public Safety)]: Only domestic animals unless I pick up a wild turkey.

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: Okay. All right. That's fine.

[Lisa Milad, Director of Animal Welfare (Vermont Department of Public Safety)]: And with respect to livestock, I've only really. The suggestions in H. Six twenty six, and right now it's all kind of in play because the only thing I was given authority to do in my first eight months was write that comprehensive plan. I have no authority to oversee investigations or anything like that. Hopefully this legislative session will figure out which of the things in my plan should move ahead and that I should actually start working on. But I think it's envisioned ag will still have all of the livestock regulations, all of that stuff. I would be looking at the domestic pet world of the businesses and stuff to some extent, and then overseeing a cruelty response on both of those fields.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Do you remember who took the horses in that celebrated Dorset days? Was that Larry Mack or somebody else?

[Lisa Milad, Director of Animal Welfare (Vermont Department of Public Safety)]: No, that's actually Dorset Equine Rescue.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Oh, okay.

[Lisa Milad, Director of Animal Welfare (Vermont Department of Public Safety)]: Yeah, they're great, but they are not a sanctuary and they're not farmed. A lot of times horses are not put in with livestock, which is why I refer to agricultural animals, because a lot of other people don't know what I'm talking about if I say livestock and I'm including horses. So you guys obviously would. But yeah, so the Dorset Equine Rescue. And so sanctuaries generally take animals in and they hold them for their natural lifespan And rescues generally rehome them. So that's the distinction. So Dorset, Equine Rescue took the lead on the Frisian horses. Some of them went to out of state places. So, and right now we're waiting a decision on whether the 35, I think, that were seized last June, whether title to those are forfeited so they can be adopted out or whether they get returned to the owner. So

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: Those are those black horses? Yeah. They're beautiful.

[Lisa Milad, Director of Animal Welfare (Vermont Department of Public Safety)]: Light draft horses. Yeah. They are.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: Yeah. They're beautiful.

[Lisa Milad, Director of Animal Welfare (Vermont Department of Public Safety)]: They are. And I mean, this is one of those things even with all the wet weather that Vermont's been getting. A lot of the horse owners don't seem to realize their horses really need a dry place to go. Like, can be in mud a little bit of the time, but they need to dry out or their hooves. It sounds like anyway, that does not seem universally known among horse owners even because it hasn't been an issue before the last couple of years because there's always been dry spaces in their pastures. But with the amount of rain you all have gotten, that has changed. And so that's increasing. And the horses are expensive to rehabilitate. I think in 2024, Dorset at Equine Rescue paid out $29,000 just for the animals they had that year from that particular barn. And that's one of those where that was a big business. I mean, those horses are expensive horses. It was a 100 some acre farm, I believe. And there were over a 100 horses on it. Like the money could have been there and there could have been early warning, but it just didn't play out that way.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: At least you should note that some of the work on seizures is ongoing in the House Judiciary, or Senate House Judiciary bill that's now on the table.

[Lisa Milad, Director of Animal Welfare (Vermont Department of Public Safety)]: Okay. Right? Yeah, And we are trying Yes. So H-five 78, which is in house judiciary right now, is trying to streamline some of the processes for seizing and then disposing of seized animals so that we don't have a situation where 35 horses are seized in June 's February and we're still trying to figure out whether they go back to the owner or whether they can be disposed of. Because of course, the longer you hold these animals, the more expensive they become because you can't bring other ones in. You have to keep care taking for these ones that could otherwise be rehomed.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I expect we're going to have a drive through on that bill next week. Chair has mentioned it a couple of times and said, Take a look at it. And then the next president said, We're not quite ready yet. So it's almost at the point where we will see it and have a chance to weigh in on it.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Representative Nelson. Thank you.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: Lisa, who determines if an animal has been neglected, infused, or whatnot? I'm a dairy farmer, and I don't do we have a state vet now?

[Rep. John O'Brien]: You do. You have a state vet and

[Lisa Milad, Director of Animal Welfare (Vermont Department of Public Safety)]: an assistant state vet.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: Good. We're fully staffed. So do you work with them or you've worked with private veterinarians? I don't know what your degree is in or

[Lisa Milad, Director of Animal Welfare (Vermont Department of Public Safety)]: Yeah, I should have mentioned that. I'm a lawyer. So I was a tax lawyer, so when you're talking about tax stuff for farm in the last bill, I perked up actually. But I do work some with the state vet. The way it works with livestock is that if there's an allegation of neglect or cruelty, it's going to be law enforcement, either local police, VSP, or Fish and Wildlife who's going to do a response, but they're going to touch base the agency of agriculture. And typically what I've done if I've been involved is I reach out to the state vet and I say, Hey, here's the situation, here's some photos, here's a video, and this is what the other folks do. Is this normal husbandry or not? And if she says it's normal husbandry, that doesn't mean that the animals can't be seized. The law enforcement officers can still use their judgment. But I don't know of any cases where that happens. There's a great deal of deference, because if it's a normal animal husbandry practice, that's excluded from full teeth, excluded from the definition. And so the real question is, when are you outside of that? And I got calls the other weekend that really pulled weekend because it could be 15 beef cattle in a large pasture and they have no buckets of water and they have no constructed shelter. And so the questions are, well, is there a stream that's open where they need to access water? So is there water that's not iced over? Well, yeah, there is. Softwood trees. Is there a windbreak? Okay, so there's a tree line along one side of the fence. Is there any sort of food source or any sort of round thing of hay where that can serve as And yeah, the answer is it's like beef cattle actually can be below zero and be comfortable, right? You want to be a little bit careful with bulls, learned, because they might get frostbite on their testicles. And so you have to be a little bit more careful with them, but these sorts of questions, I'm helping field them to some extent, to the extent I can say, this seems soundly within what's fine, then that gives the ACO or the law enforcement officer a way to go back to the public. If it's a gray area, I'm reaching out to the state vet, I'm not making that call. And so that's the process that I believe others are using. I think I am getting more of the calls on the weekends than some other folks just because time is fungible. But with respect to whether or not your dairy cows are being treated properly, the question would get bounced to the agency of ag first to say, is this normal and appropriate?

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Go ahead, Gregory. You mentioned ACOs, and I was gonna ask you about that. So two positions I'd love for you to speak on one ACOs, animal control officers, because it's this kind of thankless position. I just don't have money for it. I know in Tonbridge, it's been a vacancy for years. But even though they're super important, we have a pound keeper, but not an ACO. The others was we changed the law, I don't know, eight years ago about humane officers so that there's a certain amount of training with them, you don't have just anybody going out and blowing whistle. But that's maybe created a bottleneck too because of that training.

[Lisa Milad, Director of Animal Welfare (Vermont Department of Public Safety)]: The law then actually changed again two years ago. So animal control officers have no particular background, they are hired by municipalities and they're generally, in a lot of places, they simply deal with the dog ordinance issues and with dog bites. And so they don't deal with cats, they don't deal with livestock, they don't deal with other animals, it just depends on what the contract with the town says. There are some others that deal with the whole range, or at least they'll take the call on the whole range and try and figure those things out. But there's no required background for them in Vermont, there's no required training. That's one of the things in my comprehensive plan I say is like, if you all want me to develop training for animal control officers so that they have to be certified and have some amount of training and Maine does this, that's one of the options on the table that the legislature can choose and say, we want you to do this. Humane officers, historically, it's a four day training that was set up so that somebody could become a humane officer and it included both animal control officers and people who worked or volunteered with animal shelters or rescues. They could get this training and they could do a lot of the initial investigation for animal cruelty. Two years ago, that was cut back because there were problems with Well, I wasn't here, so I will say that I've heard that there were problems with some overreach. And so it was cut back so the humane officers now, a sworn law enforcement officer can investigate animal cruelty complaints, or an animal control officer who works for a law enforcement agency. So there are a handful of animal control officers who actually work for police departments. And so if they are animal control officers who work for police departments and they do the training, they can do this sort of investigation. But otherwise, I think this middle level of humane officer is actually a really critical level. I don't think that the Vermont state police should actually be first responders to a lot of animal complaints. If you know it's cruelty, if it's a domestic violence situation and there's also animal cruelty going on, yes, I think they are the right first responders. But if the question is the standard of care for the animal and whether or not dairy cows or a dog or chickens are meeting the appropriate standard of care, I think humane officers are a professional middle ground that could with those, could have a lot of that training for that middle area. And so I'm hopeful that we can reinstate training because when it got cut back to only being that small category, the trainings really stopped as well, just because when you only have five positions in the state, it's not worth setting up thirty two hours of training, And so I'm hopeful that we could go back and sort of think through how can we expand this pool of humane officers, because I do think that they are a critical component in this between the sort of dog catcher level and the sworn law enforcement level.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: And VSP and other sort of municipal law enforcement, do they get special animal training?

[Lisa Milad, Director of Animal Welfare (Vermont Department of Public Safety)]: They get a little bit. So new police academy graduates get a four I thought it was three hours. So my report says three hours. It's a four hour course on animal cruelty investigations, but four hours is not much. And so it covers basics of cat and dog type things and what the cruelty statute says and how you seize animals, but it doesn't have time at this point to go into any livestock issues. And it doesn't go into For example, when I did training classes in Georgia, I would make sure there was a session on fourth amendment search and seizure in animal cases, because there are some particularities because the dog might be in the backyard and things that a lot of times officers aren't as well versed on what their options are. And so those things don't really get covered. I've started talking with a couple of the folks. So Era McDonald from Mary Mac Farm Sanctuary, who does a lot of livestock stuff, Jen Stroud from Dorset Equine Rescue, Joanne Benson, who used to be with Humane World, offering really standards of care, nuts and bolts training for fish and wildlife and any other sworn officers who would want to take it, where they can just get the nitty gritty about just body condition scores, what that term means, how you would even start to assess it in an animal, basically you have to touch them, not drive by. Have to have your body because you don't really know with a lot of animals because they've got too much hair, right? And just giving them one page cheat sheets by type of animal. And so it could be beef cattle in the winter, right? And so they know I can just pull this up on my phone or I have this sheet where I can just say, these are the things they need. If they have those things, then I'm not gonna worry. If they don't have those things, I'm not sure about those things, I'm gonna call ag. So a decision tree type sheet. And so we've started working on those sorts of things. And then they're kind of particular because beef cattle are going to be different than dairy cattle, right? And winter is gonna be different than summer. And so it's gotta be somewhat particularized, but I think that we can come up with advanced training for the folks who are interested in this to give them checklists and things like that so they can better quickly assess the situation. Because I know that there are a couple of situations that law enforcement is getting a lot of calls about for whatever reason. I don't know if it's the particular people who notice the situation or if it's the location where a lot of people can drive by and see it and question it, but there seem to be hotspots of this particular pasture is getting a lot of calls. And it's really helpful to be able to say, for the law enforcement to be able to go back to the person who's complaining and say, Look, these are the criteria and they have each of these things. And so even though you think I'm gonna use beef cattle again, because that did just come up. Even though you think that beef cattle look like they would be cold in this weather, this is appropriate for them.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson]: Yeah, I have a question. So in terms of animal welfare, I'm aware of a situation. My son actually adopted his dog from Georgia. And the way that he got it is that the owner of the dog was arrested, and the dog that he adopted and two other dogs were locked inside the man's house for a month until finally the neighbors saw it and called it and then somebody broke in to, like, get them out. So I guess I'm wondering, like, that can't be the only time that that that's happened. I'm wondering, is there any kind of routine protocol where the police will go and check someone's house or when they ask people that are going to be arrested, how could we prevent this? Because it's so horrible. One of the dogs died. It was a very bad situation, but I'm quite sure there must be others like it. I mean, I think right now, I don't know that there is a standard protocol for something like that. I can't say there isn't, I don't know of one.

[Lisa Milad, Director of Animal Welfare (Vermont Department of Public Safety)]: And the same thing happens with hospitalizations and with institutionalizations. And so in each of those circumstances, the owner is not away from their animal voluntarily, but they are away from them and they might not be in a position to communicate about that animal. And so I think that that's another one where it can be protocols. If somebody is getting arrested, I know in Athens, Georgia where I was, police would just call animal control, they would call the online hotline for animal control and an officer would meet them, for example, if they were doing a traffic stop and they were arresting someone for a DUI and there's a dog at the car, but the routine checks, especially in the rural areas, in the more populated areas, a lot of times people will hear them more quickly, but especially in the rural areas, I think that's a really good point, making sure that that's part of the standard protocol of when somebody is in one of those situations, the question gets asked because a lot of times that's all it takes, is asking the question. And you're right, it's not the only time. I worked on frailty cases in Athens Clarke County where I was, which has about 130,000 people. So it's a small city for Georgia, but it's got a fairly decent population, and we had those things coming up in Athens. Evictions are another time that there's animals left behind that aren't necessarily immediately discovered. Landlords don't necessarily go in on day one to find out what's going on there. And there's ambiguity right now. If there are animals left behind, what can a landlord do? You could guess that the animals are abandoned if they were left behind when the person left the property. The problem was property title is sticky, and so you want to make sure that you clear title in an appropriate way. I was a property professor. And just assuming an animal is abandoned is not enough to make sure that that next adopter of the animal is actually getting good title. It's just like if you find a car by the side of the road, you're not just going presume it's abandoned because you have to clear title, but animals have that same title. And so I think there's a lot of situations like this. And one thing I've spoken with some folks about is I'd be interested in having a hotline even for landlords when they know an eviction's coming up of a tenant that has animals, that they can give a heads up that, Hey, this tenant has animals. I don't know what's going to happen here. And so we can start thinking, Okay, is there a space for those animals to go if they do get left behind? Should we reach out to the tenant and say, Do you need support? Do you need short term housing for your animals? Do you have ideas of places to rent that's gonna allow the animals and figure out how we can bridge the gaps? Because it just seems like in a lot of cases, it's a little thing. It's knowing that those animals are there, they need to be taken out early or helping someone for a week take care of an animal while they're transitioning between housing. That can be the difference between cruelty and not.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Do you have a Rolodex of places for animals to go? Because I was just thinking like in my district there was a drug raid, there were nine people arrested, they had three rocket propelled grenade launchers and 17 pugs. So where did the pugs go

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: in that case? I would take the RPGs.

[Lisa Milad, Director of Animal Welfare (Vermont Department of Public Safety)]: The answer turns on whether those pugs get surrendered by the owner, where the owner says, Fine, I'll sign them over, or whether they're seized, and the H578 is trying to deal with the case where animals are seized, because right now there are not good places. Vermont does not have municipal shelters, there's no state run facility that is obligated to take animals. So if animals need a place to go, it means reaching out to private organizations and saying, Can you help? And the private organizations can say no. And for about the last ten years, for the most part, if you're talking about a seizure of more than three or four dogs or cats, the answer has been no, because there has not been a very streamlined process for getting title. And so those animals, if they say yes to seized animals, they might have to hold them for six months, eight months, a year and a half. And you can imagine all of the problems that come up, not just financial, but just physically holding animals in kennels that long create a lot of problems. And so that's what H578 is trying to deal with, is a more streamlined process for that. So if the animals are seized, if the owners won't give up ownership, I don't know. I don't have a good answer for that. And right now, animals are being left in homes where we know they are being mistreated because there is nowhere for them to go and the owners will not surrender them. And that's not a good situation. If they're surrendered, the rescues and shelters here are amazingly generous at reaching out to each other and coordinating and figuring out where the animals can go. And so if they're surrendered for the most part, there's places for them to go. If they're seized, they're just aren't.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Couple things to wrap up with maybe. We were having budget conversations with various folks, and you had mentioned that the act two years ago created your position, but only authorized you to do whatever you've been able to do. Is there, I guess first question, funding for your position in the governor's recommend for next year, and is there funding beyond that, or is it still just your position?

[Lisa Milad, Director of Animal Welfare (Vermont Department of Public Safety)]: So right now, the funding from my position comes from a $2 surcharge on dog licenses. And it is about $30,000 a year less than what is required for my position between salary, benefits, and the mileage, whatever the miscellaneous things are. So DPS, that's just coming out of their general budget. There's no line item for me in the governor's budget. So the question is, how can we figure out ways that don't involve a general fund appropriation, don't involve another dollar fee because that adds up, doesn't involve taxes. How can we fund my position as well as find bits to fund the other work that needs to be done. So right now, three quarters of me is funded.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: That surcharge is not sunsetting, that's in the statute.

[Lisa Milad, Director of Animal Welfare (Vermont Department of Public Safety)]: It is, and I just want to flag for you all, since you're the House Ag Committee, in my plan, I identified a couple of existing funding streams that are being paid by dog owners for the most part and questioning whether or not they should be repurposed for the division of animal welfare. I also identified three existing taxes or fees where we know collections are low that relate to dogs and cats because if we can be more efficient. So for example, we know that income tax and sales tax collections from informal sellers, they just don't have. So puppy sellers, for example, puppies and kittens can't be sold in pet stores. They're still being sold in Vermont and you can find a lot of puppies being sold for between 2,000 and $5,000 each online. So that's a litter that might be bringing in $25,000 and you can be pretty sure that there's no income or sales tax being paid on that, because it's informal markets and it's not

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: Out of pocket section.

[Lisa Milad, Director of Animal Welfare (Vermont Department of Public Safety)]: And so suggesting ways to maybe increase our efficiency in collecting those amounts and maybe that could go towards funding my department. Same with dog licenses even. So dog licenses, there are about 64,000 dog licenses sold in Vermont a year, And we know based on ownership levels, just estimates from veterinarians and looking nationally, there's probably at least 100,000 dogs in the state. So that means that we've got 36,000.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: What's that word as Jeeps for models. Right?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yes. Yeah. For everything else.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: Didn't we have a bill or we heard about a bill last year that would tie when you get your dog's rabies vaccinated, the veterinarian sends record right to the town clerk so the town clerk's notified Yeah. That there's That's my bill. That No. I I and and in in my household, it got mixed reviews. It didn't get told no. It just said, well She was basically like No. It streamlined it, so it's easy. He's managing

[Rep. John O'Brien]: a livestock vet. Okay.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: Well, she's not a small animal vet. She's 62. Not gonna wrestle cows anymore, but

[Lisa Milad, Director of Animal Welfare (Vermont Department of Public Safety)]: She wanna come work on my division?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: But that's an argument for

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: Well, that that's an argument for tracking

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Yeah.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: This thing.

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

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt]: Because you do not go to my wife's practice unless your dog's up to date on its shots.

[Lisa Milad, Director of Animal Welfare (Vermont Department of Public Safety)]: Yeah, so there's ways to get better compliance without knocking on every door, and so things like there are some jurisdictions that require vets to send in the information when dog is rabies vaccinated. There's also online registrations. Here you do everything by going to your town clerk and there are companies that set up a portal and they're gonna charge like $2 per license for it. But somebody who would rather sit at home and just register online, typically they're pretty happy to cover that fee instead of having to go to their town clerk. There's also program, there's some jurisdictions that have basically, if you pay for your dog license, you get back a key fob swipe card that gives you discounts at a variety of stores, and stores like it because they get frequent buyers out of it, and the dog owners like it because they get more back than they're paying on the dog licensing. And so there's ways to make this more efficient. Another option Yeah, and talking to shelters and rescues that are doing adoptions about instead of just doing the adoption and sending the person on their way, well, they could always email the town clerk in the place where that person lives and say, Hey, adopted out this dog, here's the rabies certificate, here's the sterilization status, and then the town clerk can more efficiently go address getting the license. And so there are ways to make all of that more efficient without high intensity enforcement.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Is that, did you say all in your report or it's touched on in your report?

[Lisa Milad, Director of Animal Welfare (Vermont Department of Public Safety)]: Yeah, all of us touched on. I do wanna flag that there's two streams that I identify that affect the agency of agriculture that I just say you might wanna think about whether any of this should be repurposed. One of them is that there is a dollar, and I'm just flagging this since you're the ag committee and I don't want there to be any questions about I actually am 100% confident that ag is doing good things with the money currently, and so I'm not in any way suggesting they're not doing that. But there's a $1 surcharge on every dog license that is split between ag, Department of Health and Fish and Wildlife for rabies control programs. Rabies control programs are great, but owners of rabies vaccinated dogs are the ones paying for the rabies control programs. And rabies vaccinated dogs have about a zero incidence rate of getting rabies. And so the question is whether or not the funding stream matches the people paying it to what it's being used on or whether that could be adjusted. I understand that moving money streams is really hard. The other one is that there is a $105 pet food registration fee for every cat and dog food product that is being sold in Vermont. There's also livestock and other types of pets, I'm not talking about those, but on the cat and dog food product registration fee, that brings about 1,300,000.0 a year in. And I do know that that money is being spent to test that food. I don't know how much of the testing is federally mandated. I don't know how much of it is discretionary. I don't know the details of all of that. And so it might be that there's no wiggle room there. It might be that you all have better information though, where maybe there is a little bit of wiggle room. So there could be a veterinarian associated with the Division of Animal Welfare or Humane Officer to take on overseeing a lot of these investigations and the education that I think I think education on the livestock side is a chunk of what's needed with homesteaders and things like that. I think we could head off a lot of the cruelty in that realm if we just are able to better reach those people before we get to that point.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: The other thing I wanted to mention was it's not enforcement related at all, but there's an entity that was set up some time ago called the Livestock Care Standards Advisory Council, and it's been dormant and not on our radar at all. I didn't really become aware of it until I'd been sitting in this seat for three years. And it was set up to help advise the legislature on new legislation. And there just hasn't been any that anybody thought was worth sending over to them. So the agency is suggesting that maybe we sunset that council. If you hear anything about it, that's what it is. We're gonna take some testimony at some point, I think, before that happens, but we haven't had that conversation. And there's one bill on the wall that might arguably be something that they'd be interested in, the laying hens. Anyway, just wanted to, in case you had not heard about it, something we haven't, or if it comes up, you'll know now.

[Lisa Milad, Director of Animal Welfare (Vermont Department of Public Safety)]: That sounds good. Yeah, I know, my understanding is the agency of agriculture has traditionally done a really good job with, like their inspectors are just very solid. I did have flagged for me by one livestock vet that there used to be someone in the agency of agriculture, some inspector who They didn't know if he was particularly assigned to this role or if he took it on, but he was really good at working with the homesteaders in terms of going on the property, letting them know what needed to change, and really helping them understand whether or not they were cut out for home study. Either getting them into compliance or directing them to maybe this isn't how you should be spending your time. And when he left the agency, was told that there isn't really a go to person because vets would even reach out to him directly and say, Hey, I have this person who's coming to me as a client. It's a problem. And it's not that they're malicious, it's that they just don't seem to get it. And that this particular person was able to help in a lot of those cases. And so I'm hoping, I don't know, I'm hoping that cross pollination can help figure out who these people are, because I think there are probably still people who can do those roles well. And it's a matter of figuring out who those people are so that they can step in and maybe head off some of the harm before it occurs.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: We've heard in other contexts about people retiring and then what happened? Is it Personality driven or Right. It's still said. Well, this has been really helpful. Thanks for that update. I had thought we probably weren't going to be thinking much more about that particular bill related to the debts and the licenses. But if we do take any testimony, I might ask you to just come back again and talk specifically to that.

[Lisa Milad, Director of Animal Welfare (Vermont Department of Public Safety)]: Sure, and if for some reason you're thinking about a different bill in a later year, I'm always happy to just give you an idea of best practices sort of what I can pull from other places that might help here.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Yeah, always encourage and I always encourage people working on a bill, get as much input from everybody as possible. I just wondered, in your report right now, do you sort of see a phase two that would include a certain How would you grow this department? Because it's certainly There's need for it to be bigger than one really capable person.

[Lisa Milad, Director of Animal Welfare (Vermont Department of Public Safety)]: So phase two, what I would see in my division itself, I don't imagine a large division where everything gets done in the division of animal welfare. I could see having a veterinarian who can help both in terms of assessing conditions on the ground, then also help with preventative programs and sort of make sure that we are heading off as much cruelty in every realm as we can. I could see a humane officer, one of those supercharged animal control officers who is not a sworn officer. And I could see contracting with existing sworn officers who might be interested in helping on these cases and be willing to do on an overtime basis or splitting a position. I don't think that the division itself right now needs to be any larger than that. And then I envision developing animal crimes response units, regional ones, where people are working on their everyday life, but when there is a case in Caledonia County, that animal crimes response unit would step in and that would have a couple of sworn law enforcement officers interested in this area and well trained, it would have a humane officer, a veterinarian, human support staff, because a lot of times, a lot of the issues with animals are about human vulnerabilities almost more than the animals themselves. So we need to have the mental health support, we need to have the educational support, and then a rescue or shelter contact that can help with if animals are being surrendered or need to be seized, that person can do a good job of parceling them out and figuring out where they can go. And so that's my vision is to get to this point where we've got these response units out there that are working on their everyday life until we have to call them into action. And I would love to have a working group over the next six months or so to figure out how we get there. Like what sort of financial arrangements make sense, who's interested in participating, how we can set these up. So that's really my vision for a lot of this with lots of preventative programs on the side. I had a series of pop up vet care clinics in neighborhoods in my, in Athens, Georgia where I was, where we had the highest intake of socially and physically neglected dogs at the local shelter. So we would go in on weekends. My law students and I would talk to the owners about laws and best practices for caring for animals where while I had a vet team and vet students from the vet school there who would actually do provide free vet care to the owners, or we would transition then to a model where we would tell them what this cost us and say, look, the supplies your dog is getting cost us $45 So we're asking if you could, if you can pay that much or, you know, as much of it as you can, that will help make this sustainable. And we ended up getting about 98% of our product cost back with that conversation. We tried a lot of conversations, so we settled on that one. But I could see doing things like that here in the areas where it's identified that, hey, we've got a population, it's really a veterinary desert. There's no vet clinics near here, so people can't even drive their animals realistically to a vet. And we just need to take supplies in, spend a weekend and provide this basic care. Because once again, if you get the vaccinations in them, if you get the dewormings in them, you can head off a lot of the issues over the next year. At some point they're going to deteriorate with age, but with a normal healthy animal, if you just do that basic prevention, you're going to be fine going forward. And so it can be the same thing with homesteaders, with having teams that can go on to farms and help with, okay, your chicken has a problem with weak legs, that's a mineral deficiency. Cause a lot of times people don't even know on that level what they're doing with their poultry and livestock and be able to spot the issues before they're real ones and give people the knowledge they need to sort of prevent these going forward. So those are the sorts of things I'd love to be doing over the next

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Thank you very much.

[Lisa Milad, Director of Animal Welfare (Vermont Department of Public Safety)]: Thank you for having me in.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Thank you.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: All right, before we leave, we're all set. Thank you. We'll be back

[Wendy Wilson, State Executive Director, USDA Farm Service Agency (Vermont)]: on