Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Denise Smith (Executive Director, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: Thank you, Chair Durfee, for inviting us this morning. For the record, my name is Denise Smith, and I am the Executive Director at the Vermont Council on Rural Development. And I'm joined today by Jake Claro, who's the Farm to Plate Director for the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund. So we're both going to give you a little bit of our spiel. I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak this morning about the Working Lands Coalition. And as you say, it is different than the Working Lands Board or the Working Lands Enterprise Initiative and our request for increased funding to support our Working Lands Enterprise Initiative. So I'm going to talk a little bit about VCRD, for those of you who don't know us, and then I'll talk more about the Working Lands Coalition and how we came to be and what we are and what we do. But for those of you who don't know the Vermont Council on Rural Development, we're an independent nonprofit. We're actually your state Rural Development Council. We were created in the '90s in the farm bill. And we had funding from the federal government that went away. And states did different things, but the Vermont Council on Rural Development continued as a five zero one(three) organization. And our board structure is very unique because of the fact that we were created in the Farm Bill. We have federal agencies. So we actually have a seat designated for the director of USDA Rural Development for New Hampshire and Vermont. And we also have state agencies. So Secretary Tepets is on our board and other secretaries from the administration, as well as nonprofit and business leaders serve on our board. Our organization provides community led facilitation processes throughout Vermont. We've been around for about thirty years. We've done over 90 community visits in the state. We also have some leadership training for local leaders and technical assistance is kind of our big thing. We provide a lot of technical assistance to communities when they call and say, Hey, we want to do this thing. How would we do it? We help kind of facilitate that process. The other thing that we've done over the years are policy convenings. So there are statewide policy convenings on important topics that are impacting Vermonters. The creative economy. I'm actually here today with the creative economy or the creative network downstairs. That was one of the policy convenings we did.

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: Okay.

[Denise Smith (Executive Director, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: You have to go.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I'm excited.

[Denise Smith (Executive Director, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: Sorry. It's Okay. We can follow-up. That's okay. So one of the other policy convenings was around working lands, and this was over a decade ago. And the recognition that basically was a We interviewed a lot of Vermonters and a lot of people that value Vermont. One of the things, 97% of Vermonters valued working lands. And so this was thirteen, fourteen years ago. That's when that came out. And so the result of that was the Working Lands Partnership and the Working Lands Coalition, which initially lobbied basically this body to create the Working Lands Enterprise Initiative. And therefore the Working Lands Enterprise Board and the Working Lands Enterprise grants. So that's all under one thing, which is overseen by the agency of ag. So does that make sense? So the coalition includes organizations like Cabot, the Farm Bureau, Vermont Stable Jobs Fund, Northeast Organic Farming Association, the Vermont Woodlands Association. It's bunch of different organizations. BCRD, my organization, has been holding the backbone for that coalition for the last decade. So our job is really to organize that group, make sure that they come up with a platform, whatever it is that they want to lobby the legislature for, and make sure that we're working with this body to increase funding and continue to advocate for the working lands enterprises in our state.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: FPR is on?

[Denise Smith (Executive Director, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: What FPR? No, because they are a state agency. So it's only nonprofit organizations. And what?

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Yeah, because you said Anson was on your

[Denise Smith (Executive Director, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: No, the FBR is currently not on our board. They have been in the past. So we have, I think, five seats for state. We have Julie Moore right now. Anson might be three seats. I'm missing one. Who am I missing? There's somebody else on our board that I can't remember.

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: Oh, Tate

[Denise Smith (Executive Director, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: Tate groups. ACCD is on our board as well. Yeah. Right now. But at times, ANR, Fourth Depression and Recs

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: or ANR yeah. ANR Julie's on

[Denise Smith (Executive Director, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: our board secretary level. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. So yes, in a way they are represented. Yeah. Anyway, so we serve as the backbone for the Working Lands Coalition, and we've supported the formation and continued resourcing of the Working Lands Enterprise Initiative. And that initiative is overseen by Agency of Agriculture, Food and Market. So Elizabeth Sibel, I know she's been in your committee testifying and has brought some grantees with her to talk about how that fund has benefited farmers over the years. Grant, as you all know, the grant creates rural jobs. It keeps entrepreneurs in Vermont and leveraged additional investments. So I think it was like $31,900,000 of investments has been leveraged by that working lands fund. And it's really an important sector to Vermont. As you all know, the farm and forest industry is one of the backbone industries of Vermont. So this year, we've put together a platform. I'm happy to pass these around. I've also emailed it to all of you. We've put together a platform to increase the funding in the Enterprise Initiative to $5,000,000 this year. Our 2027 request is for And this would be great for the base to go up by 500,000. It's been at a million dollars for a while now, and I know we're grateful that the governor's put that back in the budget. But we would love to see another 500,000 in base just because of the amount, the gap in terms of how many grants are coming in and how much we're able to fund. And then we'd love to see another 3,500,000.0 in one time funding this year. And we just see this overprescribed year after year. And without increased funding, this is what I'm going to say, because this is what we're hearing. It's really important to fund larger projects. But when you only have a million dollars and there's so many grants coming in, it's harder to fund those larger forestry projects with the funding that's coming in because they can be 250,000. You've already given away a quarter of your funding for that application session. So just just hearing the importance of the adding would allow the department to be able to give bigger grants out.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: Representative Lipsky? Denise, thank you. The one time funding to 3.5, that's the governor waiving.

[Denise Smith (Executive Director, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: He's put a million in his budget for the for this year total. Yep. No one time. I'm looking back 2022, we had some we had one time funding. And 2024, it looks like we had some fun extra funding as well. And I have a Actually, somebody was asking about this the other day, but there's a really nice chart that I've received from the agency that how much grant requests have come in and how much money. And you have this in my testimony that I sent yesterday. Yeah, so you can see how much money has come in how much money has come in and requests and how much money we've been able to fund.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Another question, Representative Brian.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Yeah, can you say, just wonder if Nelson had the idea that maybe ANR should share some of the budget load here. And so has there been any discussion with the board or with your coalition partners about maybe that 500,000 could come from A and R expansion. Because as far as the grantees go, 40% are in the forest economy side.

[Denise Smith (Executive Director, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: Yeah, I do know that the forest economy and also water quality projects. I think it would be up to the state to decide where the money comes from. But we have not testified, though. And so that might be an opportunity for us to testify and share this information. Yeah, I don't know what happens after the money comes in, but you guys can all figure that out. Where it comes from, that's your job. I'm just here to ask for it.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I have a response to that, which I will save. Don't let me send you away without Yeah, delivering

[Denise Smith (Executive Director, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: so the gap has continued to increase. That's kind of my And you can see it in the chart. It's a really And I'll just add one more thing that's not in my testimony. This program was created when the state was really looking at accountability and you were really focused on RBAs, results based accountability. And so this program is so well designed. And I know the staff is doing even more, but you actually, there's really good evidence of how well this program has worked for Vermonters and Vermont businesses, because it has brought more money. They've been tracking everything for over twelve years now or ten or twelve years since this program started. And I was just down in Senate AG and listening to some of the people that have received some of this funding and how much of an impact it's made on their businesses is just really incredible. And these are lives of Vermonters. They're part of our communities and they contribute to our economy. And I'll just say my last thing. I think the only way out of any of this is to invest in Vermont and Vermonters and the businesses that we have here. I'm going to turn it over to Jake Claro, who's from the Vermont Single Jobs Fund. He knows way more about this stuff than I do. But I'm here for questions.

[Jake Claro (Farm to Plate Director, Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund)]: Any questions?

[Denise Smith (Executive Director, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: Sorry. Thank you, chair.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Thank you. You're good? Okay, great.

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: Do

[Jake Claro (Farm to Plate Director, Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund)]: you think it's the share?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Like, it's never had five gs recommended.

[Denise Smith (Executive Director, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: It has had hang on. You've in 2022, you had 5,000,594 million

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: $10,000,000 worth of request.

[Denise Smith (Executive Director, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: They had 60,000,000 one year.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: So

[Denise Smith (Executive Director, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: what you can see in 2014, they had $60,000,000 in request. They had 10,000,000 in '23. It has. I mean, the funds grown over the years. We've increased it, but it's been pretty level at a million.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: That was our money.

[Denise Smith (Executive Director, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: I think you throw us some money.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: These are funds requested by.

[Denise Smith (Executive Director, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: Yes, by the grantees.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: But as far as budgeting goes-

[Denise Smith (Executive Director, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: That's what we've had in the budget.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: 2022

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: was the- the highest one. And that might've been the ARCO money. Yeah.

[Denise Smith (Executive Director, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: You can ask around if you want.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I think we have.

[Jake Claro (Farm to Plate Director, Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund)]: So thank you for having me. It's good to be back. So for the record, Jake Claro, farm to plate director at the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund. And as Denise mentioned, VSJF is a member of the Working Lands Coalition. So I just wanted to start by emphasizing that the Working Lands Enterprise Initiative is the keystone program for economic development for our farmer food economy. And because of that, it's really essential to achieving our state food system goals that are articulated in the strategic plan. The Working Lands Enterprise Initiative has also served as national model. So Maine has consulted with Vermont to create their own version of Working Lands. So it's something that, as Denise said as well, it's something that works. It's really well designed. And so in the strategic plan, we have 34 priority strategies. And I don't think it's an accident that the first one that we express is the strategy to provide at least $1,500,000 in base funding for the Working Lands Enterprise Fund. So this has been identified, this 1,500,000 base, as the minimum, I think we'd like to think of it as, that the fund should have year over year. And this was identified in 2021. I should also note that the Governor's Commission on the Future of Agriculture, which was created by executive order in 2021 as well, they recommended a $3,000,000 base. So we're perhaps being conservative, even in this request, for $1,500,000 And it's really critical for, as Denise mentioned, predictability, ability for the agency to deploy these funds in strategic and impactful ways. And so just to start, I think there's been a lot of vetting around this figure. And so I think there's a lot of confidence we have that $1,500,000 is an appropriate base amount, given what we've seen in the program in demand year over

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: year. I hope that Nelson has a question.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, thank you. In New York state, we have a it was 20%. It's now 25% investment credit. So, I'll I'll go from my world because I know that fast. If I build a $1,000,000 Barn, New York State will give a 20 will pay for 25% of that.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Okay. So $250,000.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: The better example is, in a real example, is a farmer bought a John Deere harvester, for round numbers, he'll use a million.

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

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: And he did it last year. He should've waited one more year, but he got $200,000 for buying that harvester.

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

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: And then he traded in his old harvester. So what where where I'm coming from is if we did this with match dollars from the farmers and foresters, woodworker and logger, We would leverage more of our money, but people would have they would have equity in that capital purchase immediately. You know? And, you know, if we did it at 50% or, you know, like, if you apply if you wanna buy a piece of equipment that's $50,000, could you get a grant for 25,000? It paid for half of that. And then you could go to FSA and apply for a loan for the other 50% or whatnot. And you you would have equity equity in it immediately, and this would spread our limited funds around more. Yeah,

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: so I You wanna add to I

[Jake Claro (Farm to Plate Director, Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund)]: just wanna note that there are match requirements for working life experience. In the impact reporting, they've reported figures of how many additional dollars have been leveraged. So right now, the match is 50%. And I think there are some maybe variances that can be granted.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Actually, the agency, and I don't

[Jake Claro (Farm to Plate Director, Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund)]: mean to contradict, but I

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: should double check because I think the agency testified that that's not the case any longer. So originally, there was It's a man a changeover. And the requirements have evolved anyway, so I'm not certain, but it may not be the case that there's a fair amount.

[Jake Claro (Farm to Plate Director, Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund)]: Yeah, it may vary, but there's different pools within working lands that people can apply to, so the match requirements may change with that. And with that point, let's just say there was a larger supply chain investment pool. Maybe the match requirements are different for that to leverage more private investment or other And I'll actually touch on this. Yeah. So I want to also emphasize that the about the $3,500,000 one time appropriation. So we conducted a forecasting analysis of infrastructure investment needs over a three year period. So this would be 2024, 2025, and 2026. And looking at all of the strategic plans recommendations, we estimated what would be required in investment to accomplish those recommendations and identified over $170,000,000 if you look at processing and then also storage and distribution. And I would argue the storage and distribution estimate there is actually highly conservative. But the other thing to note here is that when we say estimate 165,000,000 in investment need for processing across five industries in the state, so like dairy, grains, vegetables, meat. We are not assuming that that would come from the state. 80% of that is assumed to be private investment, and $35,000,000 would be what we estimate as being the state and or federal investment need. And so this is also speaking to the idea of state investment leverages private investment. And I'll touch upon this in the last slide a little more as to how working lands specifically serves in this role. So if we looked at looking at some of the data that Denise provided in terms of what Working Lands has awarded, if you also consider in fiscal year 'twenty four, we had the Ag Dev grant program, which was one time we can see that the awarded amounts are much less than the requests. So Working Lands, dollars 5,150,000.00 in awards over a three year period. The last three years, 27,500,000 requests. The Ag Dev grant program alone, which was produce maple and meat, was able to award 2,140,000.00. And they had almost 40 4 million in requests. So we also, from that data, it's validating also some of the scale and magnitude of need that we forecasted in the graph that you're seeing there. And so when you see that over a three year period, if you combine those programs and the Ag Dev program and its applicants would essentially be would have been eligible for working lands grants as well. So that's why I'm considering that in this analysis. And so you see that 7,300,000.0 was awarded over a three year period with 71,000,000 in demand. And so we really believe that the 3,500,000.0 is not only about addressing a backlog of gap in prior years, but it's more appropriately scaled to the types of supply chain impactful investments that are needed. As Niece mentioned, just to give an example, it's been identified that the state for grain processing needs a roller mill for all purpose flour processing. And this would open up a lot of possibilities for growers to access markets. That's roughly a $1 to $1,500,000 infrastructure investment. So in the current framework, even if you funded, say, state funded that at 10% of $1,000,000 $100,000 that's 10% of the current base funding amount. And that presents a real challenge for the agency to make a determination of, do we give that grantee 10 of the total available funds? That means we're not essentially funding 10 other projects. And so the $3,500,000 of one time funds really opens up a lot more possibilities to manage the portfolio of investments that are being made and address continuum of needs across small, medium, and large scale, and also making investments that, from a supply chain perspective, have ripple effects for multiple producers. And just one other example is in the meat processing sector, a value added equipment for processing could be 100,000 to $250,000 We have many processors who would like to have that type of value added processing. And again, dollars 100,000 to $250,000 request is going to be 10% to 25% of the total available funds. So it's really hard and very competitive. And in that way, the agency, I think, is faced with a lot of difficult challenges in making decisions right now.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, I didn't say I knew how where New York had your money tree. I'm just telling you, New York did.

[Jake Claro (Farm to Plate Director, Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund)]: Yeah, yeah. They got a little

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: village down there, the mouse. Well,

[Jake Claro (Farm to Plate Director, Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund)]: if it's anything like my neighbors, the money could fall onto our lawn,

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: maybe from New York, but I don't know.

[Jake Claro (Farm to Plate Director, Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund)]: So yeah, just to give a sense of the scale of need is there. The data shows that. And the 1,500,000 base gives predictability and meets the scale of need in a consistent manner. And then the $3,500,000 just enables, I think, to make some really powerful, impactful investments. And so that's where those two figures, I think, come together. And then lastly, just to yeah, this representative Nelson, just to speak a little more about where working lands fits into making more capital available and unlocking it. We think about this in terms of capital continuum. So there's different types of investments and investment vehicles. There's different levels of risk and reward associated with those. And in this continuum, a producer might pursue many different avenues to meet their capital needs. And so working lands, and especially in the farm and forest sectors, is really meeting this high risk, high reward need. So just to give an example, in agriculture, you've got a diversified beginning farm operation. It's really hard for them to demonstrate their consistent revenue over time, or they might not have collateral, which is required of certain lenders. So working lands really fills this gap of where traditional lenders see it as very risky. It can then give a business a springboard, a runway to later in their business cycle access than traditional investment from banks and ag lenders and others. So working lands is serving a really essential function in the capital continuum, and particularly in these sectors where traditional lenders perceive a lot more risk or it's harder for the applicant to demonstrate, to diminish that sense of risk just based on their financials and whatnot. So I think this is where increasing the base, putting more into one time, is not just that money. It's then unlocking other possibilities and investment. And we see that in the impact reporting. But I don't think in the impact reporting, we've seen long term, how do applicants receive further investment in time past their working lands initial grant and what they may have matched with other funding sources. So that would be really interesting, actually, to see that as well. The last thing I just wanted to say is that in this testimony, it's very easy to talk about the dollars and cents of it. And I think when we hear from testimony of grantees, you talk with them, you see them, There is a different type of impact that this has on producers, farmers, and forestry operators. It's about quality of life and well-being. I've seen this in being a grant reviewer for Working Lands. You see that people mention, this is going to save me hours of labor over time, which is more time I have to maybe spend with my kids or family. This is creating a safer work environment for my employees and making it more attractive for me to hire and retain. And also, it's giving potentially, those labor savings are giving that business owner more time to focus on other elements of the business. So these are things that have an economic impact, but they also have real well-being impact for people that are doing this work. And that comes through, I think, in what you hear from them and how it shows up and the relief, the sense of relief I think they have when they do, able to receive funds.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah. Don't really have nothing.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. Jake, in your green arrow up there, your first blue line down says traditional ag lenders. Yep. You need to remove Yankee front credit.

[Jake Claro (Farm to Plate Director, Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund)]: Yeah. Yeah. So there are some of the I'm always I'm always apprehensive of, like, there's multiple versions of this that we've created over time. I'm like, I think this is probably an outdated because

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: I know we've changed

[Jake Claro (Farm to Plate Director, Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund)]: the example. So thank you.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. That's just gonna let you know I'm taking a

[Jake Claro (Farm to Plate Director, Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund)]: crack. Yeah. No. I like it. That's good. It's good.

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: For me.

[Jake Claro (Farm to Plate Director, Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund)]: Yeah. That's right. That that's my cast of are they are they looking?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah. You think we're not looking at every detail?

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: I saw that fifteen minutes ago by Thomas Rhap. I was flitching. I have to the camera's clicking. Was

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I in terms of the budgeting process, Jake, would the coalition have had an opportunity to go to the administration at some point in the budgeting cycle back in the fall? And thank you for coming back.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Yeah, I

[Jake Claro (Farm to Plate Director, Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund)]: was just gonna say this, actually.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah, and lobbied essentially for increased base funding. Could you speak to that?

[Denise Smith (Executive Director, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: I can, yeah. This year, actually,

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

[Denise Smith (Executive Director, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: you know, the coalition was really active when the Working Lands Enterprise Initiative was starting. For about a decade, we were really active. And then there was a little bit of transition in every organization kind of over COVID. But this past year, this fall, we did send a letter to Secretary Tebbetts making the same request. We got on top of things a little bit earlier this year, which was great. We did make that request. My understanding is that other secretaries from different agencies also supported that request, that there was other letters that have been sent.

[Jake Claro (Farm to Plate Director, Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund)]: I think the FBI was

[Denise Smith (Executive Director, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: FBI, ANR, and I think even ACCD might have supported this request of 5,000,000. And so I've heard that it was in the original budget from the agency of ag for this 5,000,000. And then I think the governor, again, upped the school issue and all of those things that are hitting the state all at the same time. I think the governor put it back in at the base of the million. So there was no extra funding. But we did lobby the agencies and I think there was interest in having a higher amount of funding.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I'm sure you're right.

[Denise Smith (Executive Director, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: Amy knows more.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yes, you may.

[Amy Schomburg (Working Lands Coalition representative)]: Amy Schomburg, for the record, representing the coalition. Also, I just want to note that the coalition also submitted comments through the governor's budget portal, and Commissioner Gresham featured some of those comments in the Executive Budget book. It was kind of mentioned, there's a page, and they talked about how many comments were related to food security, which were some of the working lands coalition comments. So there was definitely an effort to let both the agency and the governor know that this was over the place.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah, good, thank you. Representative O'Brien.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Maybe Denise too. Not that I wanna pit one successful grant program against another, but we don't hear much in this committee about, say, ACCD from the state. It'd just be interesting to look at multipliers and there may be grants out there that get a certain amount of base funding year after year, but don't have such a successful multiplier as this. And at appropriations time, it'd be interesting to say, look, they're a finite number in today's dollars, and in a lot of ways, moving half 1,000,000 to working lands makes more sense than keeping in this other brand.

[Jake Claro (Farm to Plate Director, Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund)]: I'm channeling Ellen Kaylor right now. Just her message around this, I think, would be that ACCD and their economic development programs are highly underfunded for need, as well. Like that, for the little that all of these programs have, they all have pretty significant impacts. And I'm overly familiar with what is available through ACCD to know the extent to which they have grant programs and what their results are based around that. But just thinking about, I think, what Ellen would say, would be the message. It would be like, I don't think it's worth comparing or pitting the two against one another because they're serving different purposes probably. But yeah, I understand the point.

[Denise Smith (Executive Director, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: Yeah, I would just offer, think, the colleagues at ECCD would be willing to talk to you all about their programs, because we work with them very closely. They're one of our closest partners in the state. I would say the exact same thing that James said. The economic development in general in the state of Vermont is very under resourced. And so I think this working Lanza is a shining example of something that Vermont has done well and has done really well over the years. And it's model that other states are looking at and learning from and wanting to develop for themselves. So kudos to this body for having the foresight of doing this work.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: When we had the folks, the staffs from the agency and I've got a follow-up, we actually spent a lot of time talking about the data and the evidence for the success of the program. And I think there were some questions that the staff left with, and they followed up with a list of information that they have, data that they have collected, and then asked us to it was information that they came with that they have available, and asked us to let them know if we'd like to see more of that data and to suggest if there were numbers that they weren't currently collecting from recipients, what we would like to see to help us collectively all make a better case, a stronger case. And honestly, nobody wants to pit one program against the other. But my understanding is that when push comes to shove next week, there's gonna be, across the entire $9,000,000 budget, we're talking this many millions of dollars. Billions. Yeah, million, yeah. So somebody has to do what nobody wants to do, which is decide how much is gonna go to this very worthy, presumably defensible outlay versus another one. And what I was gonna say, what I wanted to say before you all left was, so we've all been asked because it's a big task for anyone to handle and the appropriations committee, they're all working nonstop. And they've asked us to help them bring to each of each committee to bring to them more information than we've been able to in the past. So we're asking, and I think we've done a good job in this committee of asking part of your questions, more probing questions. We've asked the ag agency to come back. One of the committee members had suggested that it would be interesting to see some more historical data, not just on this program, talking about the entire agency budget. Because really, if we're in a situation where there's not a lot of available funding, then we have to dig deeper into what are the agencies doing that we are not necessarily knowing about day to day. So to the extent that I just want to put it back out there. It's been put on us. And I think ultimately, it's going to be up to everyone who's making a request to be as well informed as you can about as much as you can about the wider world that we live in. If we're not spending the money here, we're spending the money here, it's not being spent here. Unless And we're increasing revenue somehow and have some kind of a funding stream to do that, it has to come from somewhere else. Anyway, not to put a downer on this, I think we all agree that in this room, in many other rooms in the building, that this is a successful program and wanna do what we can to help support it.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: Representative Lipsky. Apologies for my name. What does ACCD stand for?

[Denise Smith (Executive Director, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: The Agency of Commerce and Community Development. Sorry, thank you for asking. That's Thank a good you. You did say something, just wanna say something, I could say something, Chittenden. I think the point about increasing revenues is really important for the state. And I do think, I'll go back to my statement, investing in businesses that wanna be in Vermont, that can't leave Vermont because they work on the land, is a really valuable investment for the state. And ultimately will increase revenues for the state. So if you think about the work that needs to be done is that investment in economic opportunity for Vermonters and Vermont businesses is really, should be the focus of this body, because that is gonna be what saves our state in my mind, in my opinion.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Hear, hear. Well, okay, Representative O'Brien?

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Talking about revenue, has the board thought of, I'm thinking of Jake's comment of, what, 97% of Vermonters support working lands? So it seems like there's will there to support this program in a very broad based way. And so I don't know if you've ever thought of, is there some capacity at this level to find support, whether it's some sort of tax revenue or I

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: don't think

[Denise Smith (Executive Director, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: you've done that. That's a great question. I think that would be on the agency to do great, like how we did with clean water. You know what I mean? Do you property transfer check. Don't know that that's actually ever because right now, it's general funded and then one time funding once in a while, but it does not have a very specific program or revenue source or fee that funds it. That's a great question. Yes.

[Jake Claro (Farm to Plate Director, Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund)]: Yeah. Well, I'll just add to that. So, we haven't, I think, discussed discussed it as a coalition of creating a strategy around that. But the Governor's Commission on the Future of Ag did propose exploring a dedicated revenue stream to scale the investments for the program. That is out Are looking for it? Yeah, that idea is out there. And I think it deserves more investigation. And there are probably examples of other states that have gone that route or direction yet.

[Denise Smith (Executive Director, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: That's a great question.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: All right. Thank you for

[Pamela Wilson (Teaching Artist, Vermont Arts Council roster)]: Thanks for your time.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: And meeting with us. Yeah, we appreciate it. Absolutely.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Thank you. We

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: are supposed to hear next from a witness who might be joining us online. Don't know

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: if Patricia is She's actually coming first. Okay.

[Denise Smith (Executive Director, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: Nice to see you too.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Just while I'm gonna pause this while we're.

[Jake Claro (Farm to Plate Director, Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund)]: And were you here?

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: Okay, so

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: thank you for that little transition there. So today we're, I think across the State House, is it Creative Sector Day? So we're fortunate, and I don't know if we've ever had somebody come into the committee before on Creative Sector Day. So nice to have all of you join us. And Pamela Wilson is going to share a little bit about the meets. So welcome.

[Pamela Wilson (Teaching Artist, Vermont Arts Council roster)]: Thank you, guys. So my role with Arts Council is I'm a teaching artist roster, which means that I'm a studio artist who is also trained in running arts based projects in traditional academic and nontraditional community settings. So one of the projects that I'm going to highlight today, because I see that the word food security is in your title and in your mission here, I'm going to talk about the Empty Bowls dinner in Barrie City Middle and Elementary School, which is a artist which was funded by our artists in the schools grant project. And I've brought a couple of pieces that have come out of the visiting artist residencies that I've been doing over the last few years. So let's see. This is a project that was done at Berry City Middle School with sixth and eighth graders. And my classroom teacher, my collaborator for this project was art teacher Irene Matadonez. A little bit about me, I am a craft based artist, which means that I am trained in traditional craft methods. I work in clay. I work in fiber. I've been making pots since I was about 11 or 12. So I've been working in clay for about thirty years. Right now, the bulk of my practice is working in porcelain and in wood fired pots. So if you see these pieces were in the Kent Museum, and this is the kiln firing them. This is a wood fired kiln in Elmore. I thank you, forest management and loggers, because without your work, we would not have, be able to use the byproducts of the lumber industry to be able to wood fire our pots. So this, and then this is me popping out of a wood fire kiln in Southern New Hampshire. So what is an empty bowls dinner? Was asked Ms. Mollie S. Approached me about two years two and a half years ago to imagine an empty bowls project for Berry City. Empty bowls dinners are events that happen across the country. They developed organically. They were started by two potters who thought we were making vessels for food. What happens when we all come together and eat? That's one of the best parts about being a functional potter. And what if we use pieces that we're making to fund anti hunger initiatives in our areas? So typically, these kind of events, and we have several of them across the state of Vermont. You've probably seen them at community studios somewhere near you. We have a great one over in Middlesex. We have a great one in Watesfield. Empty Bowls dinners are typically done with professional or adult potters. It's rare that we bring younger students in to do this work because there's all kinds of nuance around how do you build something that is functional. How do you build something that is food safe? How do we all might remember building little tiny things in clay class. But to give students the challenge, we're gonna make something that is functional. We're gonna make something that people in your community walk into the room and say, oh, I like that one. I'm actually gonna eat dinner out of that piece. So this was an awesome challenge. Being in Barrie City, we've had a rough couple of years. And as you know, security and working in doing anything around the the nuance of supporting working families, whether it's educational, whether it's social services, whether it's food related. We are we are doing this work in the presence of our neighbors and our friends and our family members who are navigating food insecurity. So that was one of the things that we needed to weave into this project. Not just that we know food security insecurity exists, but we want to hold an event where we are raising money for our own community, understanding that many of the students in the classroom were going to be, and their families were navigating these challenges at home as well. So when I teach, my goal is generally under promise, over deliver. So I thought what we would be able to do with this group of about 60 ish sixth and eighth graders, I said, probably we can get everybody to make one bowl. Probably we can gather together in the cafeteria. The PTO can make a meal and the students can come and enjoy it. And their families, if their families want to come, their families can enjoy it. So we started small. And then that small task, often there's another question that we explore together. So the question that Ms. Mevedonia has brought to students is, what do our communities need to thrive? And so that question became the exploration that really permeated the students' curriculum for the whole semester that they were working on this. And as we began talking about making bowls that would hold food, we started talking about memories related to food. And we started talking about what it means to feel like you have enough in all of the different ways that the word enough comes up. Enough shelter, enough food, enough warmth, enough connection in community, enough support from those around you. And so those complex issues began to be what was in the room while we were all making pieces together. So as the students began to explore this, we also arranged for students to for speakers to come in from the Vermont Food Bank to start talking about what the landscape of food insecurity looked like and what the resources were, what the practical resources in Vermont and in Berry City are for families. So the students knew that they were gonna be raising money for anti hunger initiatives. But having these speakers come in who all have lived experiences of hunger in their childhoods and food insecurity over their own growing up experiences meant that it brought home this extra layer of embodied experience for everybody in the classroom. It destigmatized for those students who are going home sometimes at the end of the day with a bag of produce or are going home with pockets full of some extra stuff from the share table. That, like, this is a part of many of our lives. What the students navigated then was if you're gonna raise money, who are gonna raise money for? And as they looked at the and sort of mapped out the resources, they decided that they were gonna raise money for Capstone Community Action, which is our neighborhood food bank. It's the closest to most of our student residents who are in the classroom. And also for Meals on Wheels, which I thought was a brilliant insight on their parts because they were thinking about elders and they were thinking about access and they were thinking about who can get out of the house and can't. And so that was their decision. They landed on those two spaces or those two resources. And as a lower income district, one of the things that's challenged us to do as staff people and as educators was to think about accessibility. And then we started looking at what does it mean to have something at the school. We have a school that is three miles outside of our downtown. And and not easy walking distance for our students and their families who are in subsidized housing or students who are in the harder hit areas like the flood from North End. And so we started exploring how do we bring it how do we bring this event so that more more families can attend? And we moved the event to the Old Labor Hall, which if you can see in this map, the Old Labor Hall, which I hope you're all familiar with, industrial landmarks, is

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: here's

[Pamela Wilson (Teaching Artist, Vermont Arts Council roster)]: the Old Labor Hall, and here's the Capstone Community Action Food Pantry. So we were able, when students and their families came, not only were they able to get there more easily, we were able to physically point out the door, that's where the food pantry is. It's right there. And we had staff from the Vermont Food Bank in attendance who were able to talk to people about getting connected to anti hunger initiatives and utilizing the food pantry services right there on the spot. So making. Why do you bring an artist to in to do all of these things? The making of functional ceramics involves a lot of chemistry. It's a lot of design. It's a lot of math. It's understanding new tools, and it's thinking about functionality. It's also in addition to thinking about yummy things, like, what do I wanna eat out of this? What color do I want it to be? We need to get them thinking about practical making skills and those practical hand skills. For many of our students, art class and design class are some of the only times that they're utilizing a tool that is not a pencil or a laptop. So these kinds of activities that we do bring students who benefit from more gross motor engagement, who have the experience of really wanting to work with their hands, get exposed to new tools and building methods. This is one of the spaces that we can engage them. We can also bring them into talking about science in a different way. We used a kind of mold for the vessel shape. So everyone started shape making one sort of half dome shape. And then from there, they began exploring surface design. And this meant that we also got to look at ceramics and food cultures over the whole history of whole history of human experiences on the Earth. So they got to really think about what do ceramics look like across histories. And you can see that we've got a really big range of designs that students started exploring. The event preparation that we brought students into, as pieces came out of the kiln, they started to get more excited, but then they actually realized there was all this connective tissue that they needed to be thinking about. Essentially, they were learning how to run a small business. How are we going to price these things? How are we going to think about the materials versus the cost? How are we going to handle money? How are we going to invite people to an event? Event planning life skills for the students. So we realized, wanting another accessibility piece. We have a lot of working families. Not every family or student was going to be able to attend an event that happened once on one weekday evening. And so what we did is we made a little pop up at Studio Place Arts downtown so that families who did not have the opportunity to attend the dinner could come and see their students' work. And also artists and other community members could get a sneak peek of what was out there. One of the best moments for me as a teacher was that when people came through the gallery, they would say, oh, I've seen these before. I've heard of these. These are made by high school students. Right? And I got to say, no, they're made by sixth and eighth grade students. Because they really took in these principles of building principles of functionality. So that was fantastic. So the dinner itself, the students realizing that there's a wide range of dietary needs and preferences, We're able to Oh, do you see some of your state representatives there? Representative Burtt and Representative Wozzek are in attendance, as is our city manager, Nicholas Dorella Castro. What we decided to do was hold a taco bar so that our gluten free and our vegetarian friends and our friends who just don't like vegetables, whoever was there, that people could put together their own meals. Every student wound up with a role. We had our student musicians who came and played at the beginning of the evening for attendees. We had our entrepreneurial students manning the sales booth. The one of those moments for me, the best part of the dinner is after everything was set up, and I was looking around and nobody was there yet, and I started to think, what am I this is a lot of taco meat to bring home if nobody shows up. Like, what am I gonna do with all this stuff? And all of a sudden, you know, first, the teachers and their kids arrive and some of the people who were showing up to volunteer. And then all of a sudden, this wave of sixth and eighth grade students showed up on foot. And that was a wonderful moment. And one student who I never would have expected to be a nervous or an anxious student came up to me, and this is kind of a little bit of a tough kid, and he said, I was so worried when I started walking. I don't know how to get here. And I started walking downtown, and I saw everyone else walking. And I joined them, and I realized that I was in the right place. And they walked in the door, and they got their jobs, and they all spread out to run the event. And students who in the classroom are not necessarily engaged or finding academic success. When there was a meaningful role for them, they stepped into it, and it was fantastic. We had two students at the door with a clicker, and I had to go from worrying that we weren't going to have enough people in attendance to suddenly looking to see what the maximum occupancy was for the Labor Hall and telling the students at the door, if we get close to this number, you need to find me immediately so we can make a safety plan. And they came within two clicks on their clicker of meeting the maximum occupancy for the old Labor Hall. So this event was a fantastic success. We had our local elected officials. We had our school board. We had our parents. We had families. We had folks who I never expected to see walking in the door, and it was great to see everybody sharing a meal together. There's an anthropologist named Ellen Dessanyaki who talks about art and culture building. She says the reason that we do this is we are making special, and we're making special together. So this work of learning these basic hand skills of making a pot or sewing a quilt or dyeing fabric or weaving cloth. These are really old skills, but they've been with us because of what they do for our souls, what they do for our communities. And they're a model of how we work together and make special together. We've had to do that in Barrie City under difficult circumstances. We saw that after the floods that we could come together and do hard things. But we also heard after the floods, it would be really nice if we could get together and do hard things not in a crisis. And so this is one of those examples of bringing community together not in a crisis to make something special together. So this is one of my favorite pictures. Let's see. Did we go forward? There it is. You know when you're at a really good party and you don't take a lot of pictures because you're just so busy? I had pictures of setup, and I had pictures at the very end of the event. This is my favorite picture because, like magic, as these students kind of realized how to do complex things together in the classroom, how to work this event together and imagine it together, they also realized we need to clean up together. And so this moment at the beginning, there was a lot of stage directing from me and the teacher, but, what we found near the end was that everybody kind of had a sense of how do you do this, how do you clean up together, and how do you kind of bring an event to closure. So our final stats, a 176 pieces of pottery were made by about 60 students. 251 attendees came to the empty bowls dinner. We raised $1,540 for Capstone's food pantry and for Meals on Wheels, and not a single piece of pottery was broken. So hooray! I will say that that was quite a success. Some of the other community based projects that I'm doing right now are these sorts of community embedded longer residencies. It's not for popping day. I'm doing a long term artist in residence gig at Aldrich Library Teen Lounge. We do not have a traditional teen center in Barrie City, and so one day a week I go in as the artist in residence from twelve until six, and I'm available there for any student who walks in the door to continue these kinds of engagements and teaching, or sometimes they just want to sit next to me while I'm doing my work, and I always bring some small handwork to do there so that they can watch what it looks like to be in meaningful work. And I talk to them about how I plan my own projects out. You'll see there's a thank you card in the corner there. Having consistent and reliable people show up for our youth, especially in school districts where students have had a lot of ruptures, ruptures of staff coming and going. These teenagers are our COVID crew. They've had educational ruptures. We've had flood ruptures. They had general ruptures because of family challenges or housing instability. The more we can create an infrastructure for youth to be seen, youth to have meaningful work, and for teachers and artists and reliable adults to come in and see them and provide for their basic needs, we're stronger as a community. So this says, thank you for making bowls with us, but also thank you for giving me popcorn at the library because they know that our engagement was while the school portion of our work was done, they can still come and find me at the library once a week. So any questions? This is our full room with the Empty Bowls project.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: When was it held?

[Pamela Wilson (Teaching Artist, Vermont Arts Council roster)]: This was May 22.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Are you reviewing it again this May?

[Pamela Wilson (Teaching Artist, Vermont Arts Council roster)]: The plan was for this to be a second semester activity. This semester, I am not at the school. We learned how to do it last year. This year, they're the sixth graders, now our seventh graders. And so their challenge is to see what it's like to do it without me this year. So the plan is for this to be an annual event and integrated into the curriculum, of course, across the subjects.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: A very uplifting story. Thank you for sharing it. I wonder whether we should get everyone who's joining us a chance to just introduce themselves and say who you are and what you do in the creative sector, or any other sector, like us.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Non creative sector? Yeah.

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: Can start. My name is Deirdre. I work at the Vermont Arts Council. And we are here today for a creative sector day, so we're also tabling downstairs. We'd love for you guys to stop by and Bianca's daughter at Boulevard is doing the devotional this afternoon.

[Deirdre (Vermont Arts Council staff)]: We'll reception have in the Cedar Creek Room, if you want to meet Bianca afterwards, she'll be at that reception. Hi, I'm Michelle Bailey, also work at the Vermont Arts Council. I'm a program manager and I oversee our public art programs, our Buffalo Facilities grant program, some arts projects funding, we funded the teen center. So I was just here just listening to the artists and their stories. It's really uplifting, I agree.

[Catherine Crawley (Communications Director, Vermont Arts Council)]: Hi everybody, I'm Catherine Crawley, I'm

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: the communications director at the Vermont Arts Council. Thank you all for your support and for listening.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Thank you for coming in. You creatively found a way to come into the agriculture committee and the food and forestry committee also, to be sure. But have you had other folks in all the other rooms in the buildings?

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: This year's a little quieter, so we testified in transportation, house transportation this morning, and then we had a couple people sick, so we had to reschedule testimony.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Any questions from the committee or other thoughts?

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: Not a question, chairman, but for the record, Catherine Paul is a constituent, and I really appreciate all her contributions. Pamela, this was really uplifting as the chairman said. And in your journey as an artist in residence, sort of where where will you be moving on to?

[Pamela Wilson (Teaching Artist, Vermont Arts Council roster)]: So my my my next calendar year as a teaching artist, you don't know where you're gonna be. I try to stay about an hour from home as much as I can while I'm raising my family. Over the next year, I will be at the Aldrich Library for Artist in Residence time in the Teen Room on Thursdays. One day a week, I'm moving towards a developing further developing the fiber programs at the White River Craft Center in Randolph. And then I'll be leading an artist cohort through Green Mountain Linen, learning indigo dyeing and working with linen as a fabric as my other colleagues at Green Mountain Linen work on growing and developing the infrastructure for flax, linen, and flax and co products through their growing projects down in the East Royalton East Barnard and South Royalton. So you can see the indigo dyed quilt that I have here. This is a project from Brook Street School where I've done two years of time in residence with their students. We did one year of paper marbling. We did a second year of indigo dyeing. That was another under promise, over deliver. I said, we're going to make some fabric blue. That's our project. If you're not familiar with Brook Street School, it is an alternative high school program for pregnant and parenting youth where their children or their babies attend early head start in the building and they complete their high school diplomas. So this project of what is indigo and how does it work, I make things with plants and dirt. So we started with this is a plant, and we talked about the global history of indigo. We talked about the chemistry and the science of it. Every student in the classroom fell in love with working with the Indigo Vat. Everybody in the classroom learned how to use a sewing machine. We didn't just turn some fabric blue. Every student completed a quilt, and then we brought those quilts to the Teen Lounge, which is their home library. And we held a reception for Teen Lounge of the library showing off their quilts. Working with Indigo, I'll be doing that with adults through an artist application process with Green Mountain Linen. The call for that will go out in the spring, and we'll do that over the summer. Where is Brook Street, please? Brook Street School is on Brook Street in Berry City. It is a project of Capstone Community Action. And it's in the building with our Head Start, one of our Head Start programs. And it is a wonderful gem of a high school in in Downtown Berry. I love being there. It is a beautiful wraparound, beautiful wraparound program. We just had a graduation for a student two weeks ago, and she invited family, friends, and her artist in residence. So I was really, really touched to get to be a part of that with them.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: But, you know, one follow-up, Blue's important to me. Don't Blue Ale Loud Company was a Blue Ale Loud truck for years, but I've also been in spice bazaars in Turkey and in Cairo. And explain to us who don't know, what is this source? Is indigo from plant or from mineral?

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: Oh, yeah. What's the

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: real source of because there would be sacks and barrels of all these indigo.

[Pamela Wilson (Teaching Artist, Vermont Arts Council roster)]: I can talk about this all afternoon. I know you don't have that amount of time. We can follow-up later. So indigo is a plant based dye. There's not one indigo plant, but there is a whole range of indigotin bearing plants. There is a precursor for indigo dye in the indigo plant. And so the plant in Europe, it would be a plant called Weld. There are Japanese indigo plants. There's plants that thrive in India. There's South American plants that have indigo within them. So across global textile history, indigo is seen around the globe because there were plants with this molecule in them that when not a grinding, it's not a heat extractive process, it is kind of like a fermenting process. Essentially, you're going to cause a chemical reaction that allows the indigo to go from solid to soluble. And when it's soluble, when we do that, that's how it can adhere to the dye. Or that's how the dye becomes available for the fat.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I find an excuse to have you come back. Spend an hour learning goggles, bro. It's fascinating.

[Pamela Wilson (Teaching Artist, Vermont Arts Council roster)]: Yeah. We need cold weather indigos here. So we can grow Japanese indigo. So it can

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: grow in Vermont?

[Pamela Wilson (Teaching Artist, Vermont Arts Council roster)]: It can. We can grow Welds or excuse me, Wode, rather. Apologies. Weld is yellow. We can grow that really well. Woad is blue. Both of them tend to spread very, very well. So in some areas, they're considered invasive.

[Denise Smith (Executive Director, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: Spell it W O A D. Yeah.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Like, were they Indigo?

[Pamela Wilson (Teaching Artist, Vermont Arts Council roster)]: BlueJeans used to be Indigo. Yeah. And there are some really interesting companies that are figuring out how to revive a domestic indigo economy here in The US. There's a company called Stoney Creek Colors, which is doing great work around reviving indigo as the primary dye product. Most of our genes now are done with synthetic dyes. But where the name is indigo, that's the name of the color, but the dye is not derived from the plant. So there are some small scale examples of working with indigo based dyes. This is one of the reasons that I enjoy connecting with projects like Green Mountain Linen because I get to talk about what does this look like as we go from small dyer's gardens or artist's gardens to something that actually can sustain farmers or something that can sustain a watershed friendly textiles industry.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Well, thank you very much for your testimony and all that good information. Thanks to rest of you for all the work that you do. We are going to break, and we'll be back

[Jake Claro (Farm to Plate Director, Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund)]: here