Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: Yes.

[Bill Suhr (Owner, Champlain Orchards, Shoreham)]: Since 1998, think I've come in person and potentially been remote like this.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: Yeah. Okay. Good. Well, you're are you in Toram?

[Bill Suhr (Owner, Champlain Orchards, Shoreham)]: Yes.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: Okay. Alright. Good. Well, welcome. And if yeah. If you would just like to, for the record, introduce yourselves and then, happy to hear what you've got to say, and we'll probably have some questions. We've got about half an hour.

[Bill Suhr (Owner, Champlain Orchards, Shoreham)]: Okay. Yes. My name is Bill Schorr. That's spelled s u h r. I'm the owner of Champine Orchards here in Shoreham. We grow somewhere around three eighty four acres of tree fruit. And most of that is distributed within the state food co ops and supermarkets. It's around 7,000,000 pounds of fruit. It's also a pick your own both here and at Douglas Orchards, which we operate.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: Where's Douglas Orchards? He lost his audio.

[Bill Suhr (Owner, Champlain Orchards, Shoreham)]: It's just just about can you hear me okay?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: Yeah. Yeah. We're fine.

[Bill Suhr (Owner, Champlain Orchards, Shoreham)]: Yeah. They're just two miles up the road here on Route 74. So when some traffic, half of our traffic comes from New York State and they come across on the ferry and they pass the main orchard here, Champlain first. Douglas Orchard has attracted a very different clientele for many years and we've tried to maintain the the difference the different clientele, but now there's some commingling and people are going back and forth depending on which crops are available on this. Both farms have active farm markets. The main farm is open year round and the Douglas one is seasonal starting with cherries and ending with apples.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: You do all sorts of cherries, sour cherries?

[Bill Suhr (Owner, Champlain Orchards, Shoreham)]: Both sweet and tart and we just did a pretty cool renovation of some trees that were eighty plus years old and took three rows of trees. We saved the budwood from the original trees and we have our own tree nursery and we propagated new trees and then there's now seven rows in place of three rows and they're all on a trellis system with concrete posts that we're making here at the farm, which is somewhat innovative. But the thought there is to have trickle irrigation is now available and the fruit will be much more accessible to children, the elderly, anyone that's coming to pick. No need for ladders.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: Yeah, good. Just out of curiosity before we get into your comments, did the drought last year have an effect on your visits?

[Bill Suhr (Owner, Champlain Orchards, Shoreham)]: Tremendous. Yep. There has not been any, there's been no support thus far. And that's fine, I guess. But we, our crop is down 30%, our harvest from last year. And we scavenged every single apple we could because half of the fruit that we produce annually is used for processing to make sweet cider or hard cider, supply our bakery with with sliced apples, and we make apple butter and such. So we went from 180,000 bushels the year prior down to 125,000 last year. And of that 125,000, the fruit size, some of what is in the bin is smaller and not going to make it up onto the packing line to even be graded as a fresh fruit possibility. So there's an economic, there's a shortfall in volume and there's a shortfall in, we'll see how that fruit stores too. We're getting into controlled atmosphere fruit now, that's long term storage and we'd like to go twelve months of the year with the last room opening when we're starting to pick our new crop to keep local customers like hunger mountain is the closest co op to you right now, supplied year round with local fruit. So we do know that the trees that are under stress, that fruit may not store quite as well as, and of course not only was it dry, it was very, very warm during that period. So the trees were under stress, multiple forms of stress. I will say that we've been fairly successful getting permits to build reservoirs. It hasn't always been easy working with the wetland office, but persistence has persevered and allowed us to, or we now can irrigate about 120 of our acres. So there's still, we're not even quite half irrigated at this point, but that is an area that we're putting a lot of energy and financial resources toward being better prepared for future droughts.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: Well, I understand that you had reached out and had asked to share your thoughts on a ban on paraquat in the state. Maybe you'd like to just tell us a little bit about that.

[Bill Suhr (Owner, Champlain Orchards, Shoreham)]: Sure. Yes, I received an email from the Vermont tree fruit growers, Terry Bradshaw, informing us that rodenticide that we use as well as paraquat, which we call the common name we use is grama zone, g r a m a z o n e. That is a product that we need to take special care of so the applicators are safe. I will say that we utilize the product on trees that are non bearing. So those young cherry trees we were talking about a moment ago, they are competing with grass to establish themselves. And with apple trees, if you allow grass to grow up around the base of the tree where the rootstock graft union is, you can lose the trees to something called dogwood borer, because that moist habitat where grass is up around the tree trunk is is a wonderful site for dogwood board to thrive. And they will chew and girdle around the base of that graft union. So your your investment of newly planted trees is often more vulnerable than say, an older style planting where there's a large diameter trunk. We're moving to these younger trees in an effort to cut our pesticide inputs in half. And I've experienced this firsthand. So I can I can explain that further? But I'll give you an idea of the acreage that we're covering. Try to plant 10 new by the way, paraquat or Gramoxone is optimal for a quick burn down of broadleaf or grass. Those are the two products that it handles. If we don't have access to Gramoxone, we or Paraquat, we would be in my understanding is we would be buying two different products that have less efficacy. So not only are we applying two products versus one, we would potentially be applying them more frequently. So yes, I want to transition these orchards from trees like our grandparents planted 30 feet by 30 feet. That's 30 trees an acre. Now we're planting 2,000 trees per acre. Those trees are vulnerable to the tall grass stunting their growth or that are creating dogwood dogwood borer habitat as we talked about. But the benefit of these high density orchards is significant in terms of pesticide reduction, because you have a very small canopy, you're not having to apply and push material 15 feet into a larger canopy and you're not needing to propel that spray material, whether you're organic or conventional, it doesn't matter. That same spray material has to reach a much taller tree and the nozzles on your sprayer are much larger to reach that higher canopy. So in these high density plantings, I just have three nozzles open and I'm wafting the material. But the flip side of that is we do need to control herbaceous growth underneath the trees. And after the trees are established, there's some natural shading that occurs, which allows us to reduce our herbicide usage as that orchard matures. But paraquat is specifically designed to burn down a product in non bearing trees while they get established, because you cannot use stronger herbicides on these young trees or it will kill them. So that's why the tool is so valuable to us right now. And I wanted to share maybe the acreage of significance. For every 10 acres of new orchard we plant each year, the cost is around $50,000 of investment. So $500,000 a year we're investing in replanting. Most of that fruit is staying here in Vermont. The herbicide strip is one third of that acreage. So we're talking about three acres of application for a corn grower or another grower of some sort. That acreage is fairly insignificant. But the labor savings is tremendous and obviously we're trying to keep these trees alive during their juvenile stage. We treat these young orchards for three years. So there's 30 total acres of new orchard, but only one third of that is requiring that the more gentle herbicide called paraqua. So that's three acres times three years worth of succession area plantings. That basically means nine acres is my request to be able to continue to use the product. We do use bark mulch to suppress grass regrowth. In fact, Hannaford's is working with a group called the Wolf's I'm not exactly sure of the name of the organization. I should check on it. But there's a small organisation trying through Hannaford's to try to cost share and help growers move towards some practices that are more sustainable. And so we have been applying bark mulch on a commercial level, but it's not a 100% fail safe solution. So I just we are certified eco growers through the IPM Institute. And and Peraquat and Gramoxone, the same one and the same, registered and permitted by the IPM Institute. So I just want to share with everyone that I am not a chemist. I am very thoughtful about the fruit we grow, and I'm thoughtful about how we care for our staff. There are some new requirements for how to ensure that any hazard of applying Paraquat is minimized to the employee and or the applicator, should say. And we are certainly compliant and very interested in following those procedures. Also knowing that where we're applying the product is not on any fruit that would be consumed by anyone in those first three years of establishment. And maybe that's a good place to pause and hear any questions about something I might have said that is in question.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: Okay, good. Yeah, I think you've given us a lot to get started with and I see representative Nelson does have a question.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, thank you, chairman. Bill, Richard Nelson, Gary Farmer up in the upper end of the state and also a licensed applicator. So you you follow labeled rates? Are you using like a pint per acre or pint and a half, two pints?

[Bill Suhr (Owner, Champlain Orchards, Shoreham)]: That pint per acre sounds accurate. I am actually not, I'm no longer the head of horticulture. I have a staff member who's also licensed and our applicators are licensed. And I would have to revisit that. But I have not been making these herbicide applications, nor have I been planning the actual mixtures. I am highly aware of what acreage we're applying it on because I'm primarily responsible for the establishment of the new nurse, the nursery stock and the new orchards.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: And do you make, I I I don't I don't handle paraquat. It's not in my realm. Yes. And I always wondered in 2,004, a 107 total gallons of paraquat were sold in the state of Vermont.

[Bill Suhr (Owner, Champlain Orchards, Shoreham)]: Okay.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Not not a lot. No. Consider I go through totes of my chemical on 2,700 acres of corn. So in your spot spraying, so you you plant what'd you say? You have 30 acres going, but you're spraying actually only nine?

[Bill Suhr (Owner, Champlain Orchards, Shoreham)]: Right. Of ground with single nozzles that are five inches from the ground. Single nozzles on either side of a tractor as we drive down the, the trellis row.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. And do you have to apply this more than once a year? Couple, three times perhaps?

[Bill Suhr (Owner, Champlain Orchards, Shoreham)]: Yes we do. We might be up to, we're a significant portion of that allocation. We might be 25% of the state's usage then. I have not checked our records, but I wouldn't be surprised.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. It's not highly used product in the state of Vermont. And I just couldn't wrap my head around where it was used and I couldn't find answers. Yep. And then I reached out to my committee made across the table and he said, well, I use it. So, you know, and so this is an education. It's great education for me as well. Yep.

[Bill Suhr (Owner, Champlain Orchards, Shoreham)]: The downside is you see immediate results. You see withering grass and withering broadleaves. The unfortunate side is that that those it's not a permanent kill and so you do have to reapply.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: It doesn't go to the roots.

[Bill Suhr (Owner, Champlain Orchards, Shoreham)]: Well, if it does, it does not, it does not kill. So we don't want that grass to be established long term. And so there's a lot of value in prevention, field preparation, and the bark mulch, etc, etc. But it's a tool that we have a three acre nursery and this product would be ideal in that nursery. We maybe laziness, we default often to using hand hose, and I'm embarrassed to say that in public, but it's a huge amount of labor. But we have differing tree heights in the nursery, but losing access to be able to use it in the future in the nursery when I try to move more to mechanical weed control, but have an option of using paraquat, it would very much be of interest to me to have that. We grow harvest around 16,000 nursery trees per year. Most of those are going right back into our own orchard.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: We've got several questions. Representative Bartholomew.

[Rep. John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: Had testimony that several countries, maybe many countries have banned it, including, I believe, the European Union and China. Just wondering, do you know what nurseries in those nations do as an alternative?

[Bill Suhr (Owner, Champlain Orchards, Shoreham)]: I do not. I have chosen not to lay our nurseries out on ground that is significant in length such that we could get over the top of them and field cultivate. I have invested in an over the row machine, but it's rather large. And so we we haven't adapted the nursery ground to be able to receive that from a mechanical. Some of these nursery trees are six feet tall. So they, it does require a unique machine to go up and over the rows over the trees. And I am not familiar, but I would imagine that there's significant usage of Gramoxone in nurseries here in The US that we buy our trees from to augment our own.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: Thank you. Representative Burtt. Hey Bill, how you doing?

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Yep. Good.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member; apple grower)]: You ended up getting that the ground harvesting machine that we talked about?

[Bill Suhr (Owner, Champlain Orchards, Shoreham)]: Yes.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: Did you? Alright. How do you like it?

[Bill Suhr (Owner, Champlain Orchards, Shoreham)]: We're very happy. We bought an FEUCHT, is the name. It came from Canada, obviously originating in Germany. Ground control of the orchard is rather critical for use of that machine. And that's a combination of in older trees, we have bump wheels that go off the trees, but we're moving away from those larger trees. And so it's rather important that we do have wheat suppression to be able to pick those crops mechanically in the trellis orchards. Yeah, a

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member; apple grower)]: lot of folks realize how the amount of investment that orchards make in this type of equipment, it's highly technical and specialized in efforts to maintain our profitability. So we're very conscious of being an apple grower myself, we're very conscious of precision orchard management and how that's necessary for profitability. And I wanted to speak to that in terms of, you know, the nature of applying herbicide around young trees is a very precise operation where, because we don't want to do any damage to our young trees. The idea is to encourage their growth and their health. Can you speak to that in terms of how carefully Paraquad is applied just by the nature of the task? We have to do it very precisely.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: Not a lot of,

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member; apple grower)]: cannot drift. We cannot allow it to drift. So it's very, yeah, maybe you could speak to that for us.

[Bill Suhr (Owner, Champlain Orchards, Shoreham)]: Yep. Yeah, these two nozzles that are applying one to each side are directed directly down to the target. They may spread about 12 inches in width, but heaven forbid any of that material could get airborne because it would burn the leaves and these herbicides that would be used on more mature trees have the ability to actually kill the tree through absorption in the bark. And that's something that paraquat and Gramoxone, they can touch the bark without killing that young tree. But yes, we need to be very careful that nothing comes in contact with the foliage of the tree because that would potentially kill the tree even with paraquat.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: And representative Bos-Lun?

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: Yeah. I guess I just wanna start with a comment that I I I hope you know that our our committee is really in a bit of a quandary, I think, on this issue. Because on the one side, as the committee that has jurisdiction over agriculture, we absolutely want to advocate for farmers. And then on the other hand, we also have a responsibility to look out for public health. And that includes the farm workers or whoever it is who's gonna be distributing these highly toxic products on your farm. So this is a hard situation for us, but we're trying to gather as much information as we can to make the best decision. So I guess my question would be, if you look at the world, some of the world, including the European Union, I think China and India have banned paraquat, and many of those are apple growing areas. So I guess my question would be when in The US or on your farm did you start using paraquat? And what did people do before that? I mean, like I live in Windham County where Dwight Miller orchards are, which are organic orchards, and they grow new apples without using any kind of toxins. So I'm wondering if you could just give us a little bit of a timeline, a little bit of a history about that.

[Bill Suhr (Owner, Champlain Orchards, Shoreham)]: Sure. Yeah, I want Vermont to be progressive and we certainly have a reputation, Champlain Orchards does, of being a progressive grower. Trying to follow the precedents that are set in Europe in particular, even if the product is still permitted in The US, we have abstained. I think the first thing to reiterate is that our use of Gramoxone, that's the common name for paraquat, is on non bearing fruit. So it's just those juvenile years where we're trying to establish the nursery. So I think there's very little danger of that product being consumed in future years through fruit. So the key then is the applicator themselves. And as Greg mentioned, these the nozzles themselves are less than 12 inches from the ground. This is not an airborne situation. And the applicator who is mixing them, we have a special device that is now advised when you're actually mixing the product so that the jug my understanding is the jug gets connected to the device right on top of the tank that's filling with it's mixed with water, of course, it's diluted in water, should say. It was mentioned earlier that it might be a pint per acre and the carrying solution is water. So 99% of the tank that we're using to apply is water. So I don't know if that is a helpful response, both talking about human consumption of the food, which doesn't exist on juvenile trees. We are our goal is to grow the tree, not to grow fruit in those establishment years. And two, talking about the actual applicator and safety measures that they're taking.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: Well, my question was more about the timing of it. So like, when did you like, is Paraquat something? Has this been like the primary way to grow trees for thirty years, ten years? And if not, what did we do before? Because if we if we rule this out, what options would you have?

[Bill Suhr (Owner, Champlain Orchards, Shoreham)]: Great. Thank you. That does segue back to something I mentioned earlier, which is I used to, in my efforts to be a progressive grower and move toward precision agriculture, we were moving from those 30 trees per acre to something more like three eighty trees per acre. And I was staking each tree and putting a second stake on the opposite side of the tree. And I was mowing each row twice with a bump wiggle bouncing off of these stakes that were protecting that young tree that was in a low density trellis situation. We've now gone to planting trees only two feet apart. So I was spending huge amounts of fuel and time, diesel fuel and time, and I was having mechanical issues where I would actually kill the tree through the blades, killing the tree. Obviously what we're mowing grass and that grass is competing with the tree. So it wasn't an optimal establishment. It was not necessarily viable.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: I

[Bill Suhr (Owner, Champlain Orchards, Shoreham)]: admire Miller Orchards, I do not know much about the economics of their livelihood in terms of whether the farm was transitioned to them through generations, or whether someone, like myself who is a farmer who had no assets in terms of land based starting out with, and how to make it work financially. One thing that I'm very excited about is that balance of the use of a pint per acre of Gramoxone versus cutting out 50% of all other fungicides that are being applied on these young trees as they mature into into productive orchards. So we are sometimes doubling the yield of fruit in these high density plantings that are two feet between trees and 11 feet in the row. But I can have the amount of fungicide and insecticides being applied on those trees that are bearing fruit as they as those orchards mature. So the sacrifice of using a product like Gramoxone for the first three years of establishment, getting the orchard to a productive state where I can then save 50% of material, which regardless of whether it's organic or conventional or in our case ecologically certified practices, a grower who is not in a high density mode is applying a huge amount of material. Some of the organic materials being applied to tree fruit are things like sulfur and copper, which become very toxic to a human applicator, and very toxic to the soil, long term soil health. So in the frequency of applications of those materials, after one inch of rain, there's no efficacy, there's no residual material on those organic trees that were applied with copper and sulfur to to prevent against fungal disease. So unfortunately, the issue with growing local food in Vermont versus transporting the fruit from the West Coast, what is it 3,000 miles, where six inches of rainfall occurs and you can actually grow organic fruit. That's the sacrifice you we all have to make a decision about. I think we want to see these high density orchards that are cutting out 50% of the inputs for the longevity of the orchard, which could be hundreds of years. And we're talking about three years of establishment of that young orchard and a tool that will help the farmer get to that stage of having actual much more significant savings.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: Thank you.

[Bill Suhr (Owner, Champlain Orchards, Shoreham)]: Did that help answer Yeah. The

[Joanna Lidback (Dairy farmer, Westmore; Orleans County NRCD Advisory Board Chair)]: Yeah. Thank you.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: We're around at this time, Phil. I appreciate your good, thorough background of what you're doing on the farm and giving us a sort of a general understanding of how it's applied and where. I think we've got one more question, and then we're gonna transition to our next set of testimony.

[Bill Suhr (Owner, Champlain Orchards, Shoreham)]: Yep.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Bill, I just wondered, since you're applying IPM to your orchard, what's in that toolbox as far as pesticides go? It sounds like you wouldn't use glyphosate the way you're using Paraquat because that would threaten the young trees. But do you use glyphosate in other situations or do you use neonicotinoids in other situations? If you could just speak to some of the other pesticides you use and how you use them depending on your IPM.

[Bill Suhr (Owner, Champlain Orchards, Shoreham)]: Sure. Yes. And any of the products that are available to us are listed on the IPM Institute website. So if you have any questions about decisions they have made about appropriateness for this certification, It's public information. Yes, there is a time in we don't apply any insecticides pre bloom, and we do suffer from some damage to European apple sawfly as a result primarily. But neonicotinoid is very helpful post bloom. The products that we would use right before harvest to combat apple maggot is a product called Asale. And we very much would like to be able to reserve that product for one or two applications in August when the fruit is quite mature and not have used up that material post bloom as a replacement for the neonicotinoid. And I don't know if that answered your question in full.

[Michael Fernandez (District Manager, Bennington County NRCD; regenerative farmer)]: Yes, that's helpful.

[Bill Suhr (Owner, Champlain Orchards, Shoreham)]: Oh, and yes, derivative. I'm not happy about the use of herbicide in general. I am happy that it is a tremendous amount of fruit on a small amount of acreage. We're yielding 40 to 60,000 pounds per acre. And when you're feeding the Vermont community, that goes a long way. So the the savings of other products that are actually applied to the foliage and to the fruit, that 50% savings, I think, is really the key component that allows me to sleep at night and realize that, you know, in this world of compromise, you choose your battles. And I think, you know, I feel good about that option. And I would love, even though they're derivatives a Roundup, I would like to see other options there. And we will continue to invest in bark mulch applied to three eighty acres, but only a third of that acreage, right? So my goal is to keep a bark mulch level significant enough to suppress competition long term. And that's not something you'll find in a normal commercial orchard. That's a huge investment time and material. But ethically, it feels like the right direction for us to invest so that we can have conversations like this and have successful food coops supporting local food and feel good about that versus importing organic fruit from the West Coast. We all have an option every day and sometimes life has compromises and, know, there's some programs that might be able to help incentivize a commercial grower like Greg or myself to be able to make these investments that are, you know, it's not like we're gonna be paid more for the fruit, but the costs of taking those extra efforts certainly are incurred by the grower and any support would be appreciated. Just like being able to have NRCS acknowledge that there are a few apple growers still left in Vermont. And that it's not just dairy, by the way, I'm grateful for the landscape that dairy is supporting, but I don't want to have all these equip programs not be there to help us with irrigating these orchards that are helping us reduce our pesticide inputs. I wanna be top of mind, even though it's just Greg, myself, and three other people growing growing apples still in Vermont.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: We're safe. Well, good. I think some of the folks in the in the room were their ears perked up there. No, we we're not taking testimony at the moment on on rodenticides. We may sometime in the next few weeks. So we may be and we'll reach out if that's the case. Thank you for noting that you're interested in talking about that too. Great. Thank you very much.

[Bill Suhr (Owner, Champlain Orchards, Shoreham)]: Thank you all for caring and reaching out to ask questions and make a wise decision. I appreciate the effort.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: Take care. Yeah, bye bye. Great.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Yeah, do you wanna join us?

[Michelle Monroe (Executive Director, Vermont Association of Conservation Districts)]: Happy to. Nice to see you all again.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: Nice to see you back.

[Michelle Monroe (Executive Director, Vermont Association of Conservation Districts)]: Thank you for having us.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: I know that I've got several people who wanna have a chance to speak and we've got about an hour. So if you wanna kick things off and if you wanna do introductions, however you wanna do it.

[Michelle Monroe (Executive Director, Vermont Association of Conservation Districts)]: But would it be helpful for me to introduce everyone at the beginning? Do you wanna start? You wanna start? Sarah, you could introduce yourself.

[Sarah Damsell (District Manager, Orleans County NRCD)]: I'm Sarah. I am the executive director of the Orleans County Conservation District. I'm Joanna Lipsky, a farmer from West Newark. I work with Sarah, the Chair for Advisory Committee.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: May I have to put up with me? Have pity on that.

[Michelle Monroe (Executive Director, Vermont Association of Conservation Districts)]: I'm John O'Brien, I'm

[Sarah Damsell (District Manager, Orleans County NRCD)]: a European professional grower in Worcester, Vermont, but I work for the Windham Herb National Research Conservation District.

[John Roberts (Board Member, Otter Creek Conservation District)]: Hi, I'm John Roberts, I'm a board member for the Otter Creek Conservation District. Back, John.

[Mollie Varner (District Manager, Grand Isle County NRCD)]: Hi, everyone. I'm Mollie Varner. I'm the district manager for the Grand Island County Conservation District.

[Michael Fernandez (District Manager, Bennington County NRCD; regenerative farmer)]: And I'm Mike Fernandez. I'm the district manager of the Bennington County Conservation District and a regenerative sheep and chestnut farmer.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: Chestnut. Chestnut. So wool. And then on Zoom.

[Michelle Monroe (Executive Director, Vermont Association of Conservation Districts)]: Oh, yes. And on Zoom, Jeanie, did you wanna

[Jeanie Alexander (Board Member, Bennington County NRCD; farmer)]: Sure. Hi. Good morning, Jeanie Alexander, and I am on the board for Bennington County Natural Resource Conservation District and BACD as well.

[Michelle Monroe (Executive Director, Vermont Association of Conservation Districts)]: And she's also a farmer.

[Jeanie Alexander (Board Member, Bennington County NRCD; farmer)]: And a farmer.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: You said you had a flat tire, otherwise you'd be here?

[Jeanie Alexander (Board Member, Bennington County NRCD; farmer)]: I did have a flat tire. It was brutal. But, yeah, otherwise I would be there in person.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: Well.

[Michelle Monroe (Executive Director, Vermont Association of Conservation Districts)]: Hi. We'll get started. I just for the record, I'm Michelle Monroe. I'm the executive director of the Vermont Association of Conservation Districts. Thank you for having us. I I do wanna say, that Bill gave me a great segue when he was talking about irrigation systems. Because when I was here before, I testified a few months ago about how the districts are helping to offset the losses at NRCS. And one of the things we've done is that we hired an engineer who's designing irrigation systems for fruit and vegetable farmers. So we're helping to address that gap at NRCS. So just wanted to let you know. That's why we all perked up a little bit. So you're all familiar with conservation districts. We're 14 of us in the state. We're county level units of government created in 1939 by the state. And we provide non regulatory assistance to farms and help farms ensure they are in compliance with the required agricultural practices. We literally write the book on how farmers can get assistance and spend a lot of time helping farmers access that assistance. We did help with grant applications, applications to FSA, the whole gamut. And districts are quite frequently the point person providing the contact between multiple service providers who might be assisting a farm. So the district person will be the one coordinating UVM Extension Service, a for profit technical service provider, others who might also be working with the farm. And we do a whole bunch of other stuff too, know, restoring floodplains and upgrading culverts and lots of other things in the natural resources and conservation realm. So in 2025, fiscal that fiscal year, we assisted four fifty two farms and provided training at two twenty two outreach and education events. One of our charges is that we do workshops for farmers to help them stay up to date on what it is they need to do and to provide information about new and upcoming practices that they may want to adopt on their farms. We planted over 12,000 stems on farms as part of buffers for the reduction of nonpoint source pollution. We purchased those buffers also serve a flood mitigation purpose as well. And then I wanna talk a little bit. You've heard me talk about NRCS losses, so I'll skip over that piece. But another part of our relationship with the Natural Resources Conservation Service is we go out and solicit input from the public on what the conservation priorities are for the district, what they see as the highest needs in the district. And then we take that data and we translate it into work for NRCS. We share that information with NRCS. It's actually in federal statute that districts do this. And if we can't do it, NRCS has to do it themselves to to inform NRCS's work both at the state level and nationally. But in Vermont is one of just six states where we can actually take those priorities and turn them into what are called local fund pools. So NRCS will direct money into districts for landowners and farmers to implement projects that meet those priorities that have been identified locally. And so this current year, we have 4,400,000.0 in those local fund pools, and they they vary completely throughout the state to reflect what the highest needs are in each district. And that is money that we that is work that we are primarily funding with the money that we get from the state of Vermont. Even though the federal government says, districts, this is something that we really want you to do. They don't provide us any funding to do it. So we use this this is one of the things that districts use their state funding to help cover. And so now I'm gonna hit you with our ask. 948200 is what we're asking for this year. We're very grateful to the Agency of Ag for not cutting our budget from last year. They kept us at 612. And last year, we also had an additional $2.50 that came through in one time funds. So we would like to see that $2.50 added to our base. And then we were asking for a little bit extra to cover increase in costs, particularly health care. And we want to be able to take care of our staffs. So generally, for every dollar that we receive in those base funds from the state, we leverage $9 in additional funding to do our work. We use those that base funds in a wide range of ways, and I'm gonna let Michael and Sarah talk about that, about how they've used that in their districts to meet different purposes. But it provides some secure, flexible funding, particularly as funding from other sources is is becoming a little harder to get, and we're having to to work a little little more. And it's know, we're we're unsure about what's gonna happen with some of our other funding streams, as is everyone else. So I'm gonna conclude my testimony so you can hear from the farmers and the district staff in the room. You don't need to talk to me. But, yes.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: Before you go, we wanna see if there's any questions.

[Joanna Lidback (Dairy farmer, Westmore; Orleans County NRCD Advisory Board Chair)]: The district? Yeah.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: Budget or other like representative Berg.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: What is your base funding?

[Michelle Monroe (Executive Director, Vermont Association of Conservation Districts)]: Our base funding this year is we got the $6.12, and then we got $2.50 in one time funds. So that's $8.72.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member; apple grower)]: You're requesting an additional 900?

[Michelle Monroe (Executive Director, Vermont Association of Conservation Districts)]: Yeah, we're requesting that we're requesting not an additional. We're requesting that that $8.72 go up to $9.48. So the total ask is $9.48 too. And and we would really love it if the committee would put that in its budget memo. It's something that you support, obviously. But

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: Representative Johnson? Can you get

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: a one to nine return?

[Michelle Monroe (Executive Director, Vermont Association of Conservation Districts)]: Yes. Yep. For every dollar that we've historically, for every dollar we've gotten from the state, that has allowed us to draw down an additional $9 in funding. So

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: And that goes right out into the dirt, or how much of that do you retain for operations?

[Michelle Monroe (Executive Director, Vermont Association of Conservation Districts)]: It's oftentimes if you're doing something so we get a couple of different funding streams. We get some money for technical assistance that we use both from the state, and we get some some NRCS money for technical assistance that comes through various buckets to us. And that money we use to provide technical assistance to farms, and then we get money that we use for specific projects. So a lot of that is where our clean water funding is coming from. So

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: So your technical assistance, like, you'll have a program and that technical assistant will be my favorite hippie tag. Yes. Coming up with culvert designs and things that it's it's assistance, but it's in lieu of the farmer having to pay that technical assistance. It's money in water quality for soil quality. Thank you

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: for that.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: That's incredibly efficient. That's about a

[Michelle Monroe (Executive Director, Vermont Association of Conservation Districts)]: Yeah. Yeah. And it's nice that it helps farmers access services that they might not be able to if they had to pay for someone to do it. But they can come up and do it.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: I don't wanna steal too much time from the farmers themselves, but we to get these budget requests as carefully And as this year is going be particularly tough. Representative O'Brien.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Michelle, we heard from Wendy Wilson from FSA that the conservation districts are often used as the technical providers or do audits on a lot of the federal projects. So what's your federal dollar budget that comes to you? Have you ever

[Michelle Monroe (Executive Director, Vermont Association of Conservation Districts)]: It really varies by district. It depends on the work of the district and how they focus. So Michael, for instance, has some NRCS money coming through the National Association of Conservation District. So NRCS gives them money and they give it to us. So he has some of those NACD funds. The White River District has some of those NACD funds, but Grand Isle isn't, but Windham is. So it sort of depends on what the kind of the priorities and the needs and how many farms you have and how you focus, how that work is getting focused. So we haven't done an analysis right now. We have a grant that is just shy of 900,000 from NACD for the year, and that is supporting work in five districts and VACD staff that works with NRCS.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Is there a multiplier for those federal dollars?

[Michelle Monroe (Executive Director, Vermont Association of Conservation Districts)]: I'm sorry?

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Is there a multiplier for

[Sarah Damsell (District Manager, Orleans County NRCD)]: those Is there a federal

[Michelle Monroe (Executive Director, Vermont Association of Conservation Districts)]: multiplier? No, because we're not using those federal dollars to to bring down more funding. Well, there probably is, but the money isn't coming to us. The money's going to the farmers. So Michael Michael can talk to that.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: Yeah. So last year through sorry.

[Michelle Monroe (Executive Director, Vermont Association of Conservation Districts)]: We can wait till you testify. I'll wait till you testify. You can open And that in

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: I think maybe we should hear from Michael and everybody else, but I did want to ask at some point, and it probably should be fairly soon, if you could give us any information you have on how federal funding makes its way ultimately to farmers or to the districts and then on to farmers and how that changed? Sure. Because I suspect that there would be part of the argument for increased funding would be to demonstrate the loss of federal funding. Yes. So I'll just say that.

[Michelle Monroe (Executive Director, Vermont Association of Conservation Districts)]: I'm happy to come in and testify another time or give you a five minute answer, whichever you

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: Yeah, perfect. And maybe just even in something that you emailed to us would

[Michelle Monroe (Executive Director, Vermont Association of Conservation Districts)]: be happy. Yeah, we can absolutely email you an answer to that question and

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: One more. Thank you, Jed. You referred to you provide services to farmers and landowners, but everything we've heard is focused on farmers. Could you just articulate what landowners Sure. Outside of

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: So we the bag.

[Michelle Monroe (Executive Director, Vermont Association of Conservation Districts)]: Yeah. So we for farm for landowners that aren't in active agriculture, so if you're a landowner who has an erosion problem, say, on your land, you can contact your local district, and they can provide some assistance to you. They may be able to help you access funding. They may be for some tree plantings. They can help you figure out what the best solution is. So we do a lot of that kind

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: of work.

[Michelle Monroe (Executive Director, Vermont Association of Conservation Districts)]: Do Sarah's going to talk about the work that her district is doing around I don't know if you were going to talk about it in this committee, but they have one of their uses that they've had for their base funding has been doing assessments and providing maintenance assistance for septic systems for residents of the Lake Parker Watershed. So we do it's really broad in terms of the work that we do, but we've got a lot of landowners. For example, in Otter Creek right now, we're doing a a Potash Bay project where we're working with local landowners to develop projects to reduce the runoff from their properties, even though they're not farmers. But they live in the Potash Bay Watershed, and we wanna reduce runoff from their properties as well. We do a lot with Lake Wise and Stream Wise, which the Grand Isle District does quite a bit of working with landowners to reduce their impacts. Even though they aren't farmers, they still have an impact on the watershed. And so we want to reduce that.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Thank you.

[Michelle Monroe (Executive Director, Vermont Association of Conservation Districts)]: Sure. And I will hand it over to Joanna.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: I don't know if you want to join, Sarah, but we've got two chairs.

[Joanna Lidback (Dairy farmer, Westmore; Orleans County NRCD Advisory Board Chair)]: Bear with me, I had printer issues all this week and it's an HP printer that only wants HP ink and reject that from us. Anyway, I just want to mention two things before I forget them. Michelle just mentioned sometimes hard to, smaller farmers or other farmers otherwise maybe couldn't afford service, but also there's an availability issue as well in terms of the people out there doing this work. And then the other thing I just also wanted to mention in terms of reaching out beyond farmers is the opportunity to NRCD and working with different groups of folks and other partners and that sort of thing. One of the programs that we did or projects we did on our farm was Sarah worked with not only us, but the town of Westmore to help with a culvert issue. And it was all sort of part of one big project and it's kind of neat how it all came together. That's probably not fair to say kind of neat. It's really cool. Really cool. Yeah, it's really cool. All right. So I'm Joanna Lidback. My husband and I have a dairy farm in Westmore. We manage over 700 acres of land in grazing pasture, tillable acres and forest as well. As a certified small dairy owner operator, my husband and I are extremely grateful for, to the Orleans County Natural Resources and Cultivation District and Sarah herself. When I used to tell the story, used to tear up and I think Sarah really liked that. And so she asked me to do it more often, but I've got to the point where I don't cry anymore about this because it was a very emotional time. They assisted us in navigating through the new regulations, as you know, the required ag practices. At the same time, my 80 year old father-in-law was living with us and it was just the two little boys, my husband and I, no employees, me with enough farm job. It was a pretty taxing time for us. We started questioning whether it was even worth carrying out a family legacy of farming in the Northeast Kingdom, given the pressures that were just kept team to piling on. But again, the district stepped in and helped us with our nutrient management plan. And from there, we've built a relationship of trust and respect and have done several other conservation projects above and beyond what's required of us now. It's really awesome to be able to see the fruits of your labor with these things. So it was a no brainer for me when Sarah asked me if I would join the board of advisors for the county. What year is that? 2017. 2018. She saw how my knowledge of farm economics, specifically dairy farm economics could help the district grow in its work with farmers. In addition to running the farm with my husband, we have three very active children. They're currently 14, 12 and eight. And I also have a job off the farm where I offer business consulting to mostly dairy farmers. So there's not much spare time in my world, but when it came time to consider taking on the chair position, I chose yes, so that I could continue to help spread the good work that our relatively small group does for our community. In my work, I've encouraged others throughout the state of Vermont to seek out, and New York for that matter, to seek out their local and New Hampshire and Maine local conservation districts and ask for the same types of services and help that my farm gets. Because I know that if efforts are locally led, the districts are obliged to consider them,

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: which is a good thing.

[Joanna Lidback (Dairy farmer, Westmore; Orleans County NRCD Advisory Board Chair)]: I'm here today before you to advocate for support of the continued important work that the NRCPs do in Vermont to support them so that they can in turn support earners like me and many others as we continue to weather not only what mother nature brings us, but how to best adapt to an ever changing climate, economy, and world. I'm proud to be a part of this group where I can proactively not only help others, but also show what we are doing as dairy farmers and in our working lands in general to continue to strive to be better stewards of the land and our environment for our communities. The piece about it is being proactive. I've done a lot of advocating in the past for farmers and dairy farmers, and it always feels like we're on the defensive. In this role, I really appreciate being able to be proactive as well as finding new and better ways to do things, right? As Maya Angelou, I always say, as she says, when we know better, we do better. So, that's me. Okay, thanks.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: Many board members are there?

[Joanna Lidback (Dairy farmer, Westmore; Orleans County NRCD Advisory Board Chair)]: We've got a full contingency.

[Sarah Damsell (District Manager, Orleans County NRCD)]: Yeah, so per statute, each district has five voting board members. In our district, we usually have eight. We just lost one, some districts have associate board members that are non voting, but per statute, have five board members. So we have five voting and two associate. Right.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: Yes. And have you had historically trouble getting even five people to serve or

[Michelle Monroe (Executive Director, Vermont Association of Conservation Districts)]: We've gone through

[Sarah Damsell (District Manager, Orleans County NRCD)]: the walls. I think one thing that as the districts grow our services, we were able to hire on a communications staff person, and that's what she does. And when we had that role, we were able to get board members. So it was really a little bit of like a chicken and the egg. So the last time we went through a phase of meeting board members, we had a lot of interest. And that was just because we had a staff person who could do the press release and do the thing to get the word out. And there are a lot of really interested folks. So yeah.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Alright. You too. You quit being withdrawn over there and tell about how you have a pulse on every program state and federal out there and how you help your farmers, all of them, and your landowners and property owners find funding sources to do some of these projects. And some of the great projects been done like buffer strips and aggressive cover cropping and whatnot.

[Sarah Damsell (District Manager, Orleans County NRCD)]: Yes. So a couple of things that Joanna brought up that I wanted to touch on that, thank you Richard, is bringing in here as well as one of the programs that we do is we call farm teams And the role of the farm team coordinator is to do just what Richard said and and what I've done a lot for Joanna and a lot of other farms where, like, for Joanna's farm, for example, I think we sourced seven different funding sources. And I think it totaled up to nearly $3,000 to do a variety of things based on what the farm needed based on the assessment that we did. And the work that You said 3. You 100,000. Thank you. Sorry. Was 3,000

[Michelle Monroe (Executive Director, Vermont Association of Conservation Districts)]: pennies.

[Sarah Damsell (District Manager, Orleans County NRCD)]: No. Yeah. Sorry. 300,000. And that, you know, is an interesting thing too. It's like that obviously didn't happen overnight. And so oftentimes it's a long term relationship. There's a lot to go through in terms of the bureaucracy of jumping through the hoops. And a lot of times, obviously, that's where farmers fall off. And those programs are changing all the time. And so it's a big part of my job to understand those, bring those resources to the farm, help coordinate those, and then also help implement some of those. So we do some of those projects, we source some of those funds, whatever their source are. But if it isn't something that's like in our lane, we don't wanna, you know, we don't wanna get in other people's lanes, but we do help folks access a variety of other funding sources. Like when the government was shut down, farmers were calling me to figure out FSA, like what's going on and all kinds, VHCb, all the things. So similar story on Richard's farm as to Joanna's where we have sourced eight different program sources on the Nelson. How

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: much money it is.

[Sarah Damsell (District Manager, Orleans County NRCD)]: It's a lot. But I do have a really nice handout specific to Joanna's farm. You are interested in seeing that, can share that. But the other thing I wanted to touch on that Joanna mentioned is this bit about locally led and also what Michelle talked about, about locally led. And so, a couple updates for us about the feedback that we hear through this locally led process directs our programming and then also directs the funding sources that Michelle mentioned. And so, of course, in the locally led, a lot of the feedback that we're hearing from farmers and landowners is that they're concerned about climate instability. This is a hard bit to try to address through a conservation district, but it's like, what can we strategically do to rise to the occasion to tailor our programs to meet that on some level? So we have been working with the Center for Ag Economy and with NOFA around this climate adaptation cohort where farmers enter into the cohort. They go through planning process with a business planner and a conservation planner. And then at the outset of that, ideally, go through identifying their their highest risk, short term and long term. And then they enter into a farm teams where we help them implement their plan, whether it be change the way the rows are on the landscape because water is going to rush down that slope at 5% or whatever that might be. So that has been a really great change even since we were here last year. The other thing that Joanna also touched on is that we're really good about telling the story of conservation. I think a lot of people don't know a lot of the work that farmers are doing in this realm. And so we've created a program that we're calling conservation marketing. No. Marketing conservation. Sorry. Where we are hiring a marketing consultant to work with farms to put space on their web page and in their social media and printed materials about the conservation practices that they're doing. And then we're facilitating them having access to public venues to share that story, sort of the whole like peer to peer influence, trying to create a different culture around what it means to do conservation work and just sharing with the general public, the work that they are doing. The other thing that we're starting is through this locally led process, folks are super concerned about food security. You all know that. We have an existing Trees for Streams program. And so we're tailoring our trees for streams program to be a multifunctional productive buffer. It serves the natural resources objectives of the trees for streams, then also potentially could serve as a food for a source of food for the local community and potential income for the farm. And then just quickly, what I've been using the legislative funds for over the last year is I actually set aside about $17,000 of what was provided to each district to actually do leveraging of our programming. So that money supports our operations, but then I've also allocated some funds to the park receptor program that Michelle, referred to. So DEC, Orleans County has the most amount of lakes of any other county in Vermont. And so we have a lake specific person and DEC water samples, all of them. Lake Parker and Lake Salem have the highest of the lakes in our county with detected levels of caffeine, which means septic because we all drink caffeine and then it goes. So anyway, we used some of the legislative dollars to match some existing money that we had through a fundraiser and the landowners are kicking some money in to do inspections and maintenance on the septic system just to raise the awareness around like septic systems in this particular community. And then we also were able to use some of the legislative dollars to purchase a rock rake. So the Conservation District, we have conservation equipment rental programs. And so the rock rake helps transition corn to hay, helps it's a huge barrier when your conservationists are like, oh, it would be great if you could rotate your crops and a farmer would just laugh you right out of the room because it's like, well, yeah, that sounds great, but have you ever picked rocks? So we got a rock rake to help with that transition and then also address, you know, the food security. We're happy to rent it out to folks for just in the name of production as well. And then we helped a farm that we've been working with for years through a funding source that comes through the USDA that I manage at my district. We did a project there. I water sampled there. She had an eroding ditch next to the project that we did. And so we used some of the legislative dollars to put in some check dams to help slow the flow because that ditch was starting to unravel. And then this year at our annual plant sale, you all hopefully know that conservation districts do annual plant sales and it's sort of our biggest community event. At our district, it's at the Orleans County Fairgrounds. And so we have a conservation fair at our plant sale. And so this year, we're giving away free willows and I'm allocating some of the legislative dollars to give away those free willows to raise folks awareness around like getting vegetation on stream banks and just giving them to willows to go do that on their own site. Yeah, so I know, all of the money that we use for this locally led process gets supported through our legislative allocation. So it's been really huge for everything I just explained, but then also in Orleans County we were able to secure $600,000 from NRCS for local priorities to go through the local fund pool. And the conservation district does have some of those federal dollars that Michelle mentioned where we're doing the conservation planning on those locally led buckets of money for NRCS. So lots happening.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: Happening. Wanna keep things on schedule here, but a couple of quick questions. Yeah.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Did mention how you've worked with the mega waterside Yes. And you're big partners for these different lake associations. So, you know, and all in for water quality. Thank you for that.

[Sarah Damsell (District Manager, Orleans County NRCD)]: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Definitely.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: Representative O'Brien, any question?

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: I do have one, but someone was gonna add a me.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: Go ahead. I

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: just wondered if you've ever thought of accessing We talk a lot about the clean water funding here because it seems like a big chunk of money, we're trying to figure out how to pull some of those dollars into the ag world because so much water quality work is done in agriculture. So any chance that in our DEC would be Oh,

[Sarah Damsell (District Manager, Orleans County NRCD)]: We use both. So in our world, there's what we call Ag Quip, which is the clean water money that goes through the agency of agriculture. And then there's the clean water service providers. We utilize that to the best of our ability. I mean, we have a lot of our funding come through AgQuip. And then a lot of the clean water projects that we do comes through the clean water service provider. So we're matching things all the time to make things go. Sometimes those clean water dollars from the clean water service provider are going on farms. Sometimes they're going on lake shores depending on what it is. Yes.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Mostly reimbursement type of money. Like you have to do work and then they're like, okay.

[Sarah Damsell (District Manager, Orleans County NRCD)]: Yeah. Yeah. The the money that comes from the agency of agriculture is not because that is more like capacity and operational and program related. So often just funds our staff. Don't give us, like, money for hard projects, whereas the clean water service provider, it's like shovels in the ground. And so that is reimbursement. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the clean water service provider is challenging because you're just getting funding for a project and that thing could fall through. So we are lucky in the Memphremagog where we have Great Lakes Fishery Commission funds that provides core funding to the staff to be able to leverage these dollars because you can't hire somebody up like projects. We're lucky that we have some base funding through the Great Lakes Fisheries Commission to do that.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: You've access to water engineers then, like in house or do you have to

[Sarah Damsell (District Manager, Orleans County NRCD)]: We are in the process of potentially hiring an engineer, which is exciting for us because we would be able to do everything in our own shop that would close the loop for us. But we often work with the men from Mega Water Association who has a really good kind of engineering person on their staff. So we subcontract to them or we subcontract to, like, Stone Environmental, Watershed Consulting, Fitzgerald, all of the usual players. So we secure those funds, get a subcontract. Sometimes getting that subcontract through the clean water service provider can be quite the issue. It's like the paperwork of the clean water service provider and the minutiae that the state oversees and through that program is a mad thing. But yes.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: All right, I think we better hold other questions. And you'll all be around during lunch and afternoon if we need to. Next on the agenda is Emilie.

[Michelle Monroe (Executive Director, Vermont Association of Conservation Districts)]: Emilie, she has a sick child. Oh, So it's Okay. Michael and

[Michael Fernandez (District Manager, Bennington County NRCD; regenerative farmer)]: Good morning, everyone. For the record, Michael Fernandez with the Bennington County Conservation District. Jeannie, you're yep. She's still on. I wanted to let Jeannie kick it off since she's my boss.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: Okay,

[Jeanie Alexander (Board Member, Bennington County NRCD; farmer)]: I could do that. Thanks so much. Again, Jeannie Alexander, thank you so much for having us here. And while I'm on the board for our Conservation District and BACD, I want to talk with you today. She's a farmer. There's no just before farmer, but someone who before 2023 had never heard of a Natural Resource Conservation District ever. I moved here with my to Vermont with my wife in 2023. We moved to Pownal and the dream was to begin an interfaith abbey and working farm. And so we began like designing and planning. And I heard about like a local resiliency form that was happening. And so I attended. And when I did that, I met Michael Fernandez. And I became familiar with and started getting to know some local farmers who were committed to locally led conservation and agriculture. And like I said, it was my first experience of that. And what that translated to for us was that we had this vision of a silvopasture system, a regenerative system where we would rotate our sheep and our chickens and implement something not just for our benefit, but for the benefit of our entire community. We're very much committed to the ethic of local food systems. I think that's incredibly important and incredibly important in Vermont, especially these days. And so while we had some of that knowledge, there was so much that we didn't understand and didn't know. We certainly didn't understand how to access potential local funds and government funds and state funds. And so we began to work closely with Michael. And one of the things that I know that you've heard about and you'll continue to hear about is the value of on the ground technical assistance. And I cannot stress that enough. It's been completely game changing for us. It's been amazing to be able to work one on one with Michael, with other experts and professionals, and helping us truly realize something that was a vision that we had, and then being able to implement that. And I was so inspired by that, that when Michael asked me to join the board, I immediately jumped at it. I had background work in policy and actually in drafting legislation Tennessee, which is where I moved from. He thought that could be a benefit to our local board along with being a new farmer here in Palno. And so that led to my engaging with farmers here in Bennington County. Michael has a story about how when he first became the district manager, one of the things that he was told is that there really aren't any farmers in Bennington County. That's not something we do here. Well, in fact, there are. And there are there are farmers here in Palomar. My neighbors have been farming for generations, so many of them had never engaged with our local conservation district. And so many of them had not tried to access funding and didn't realize that there was technical support available to help them implement their plans. And so that's something that I've been really excited about is like being able to work more with our local farmers, seeing local farmers become organic and regenerative, and work in a way that helps build our land that helps expand the conservation efforts. And so I think that's something that I don't know how often you hear about that or have conversations with farmers about, but just the difficulty they have in accessing funding and programs. People feel overwhelmed by what they think of as the alphabet soup of agencies and organizations. Someone like Michael makes that understandable and accessible. And so now what we're seeing is growth, agricultural growth here in Bennington County and specifically in my small town, and that has a benefit to everyone. There are so many different programs and I'm like really cognizant of very limited time. So like one of the things I can share is that through our district, over the past year, we've been able to distribute thousands of chestnut trees. And it was pretty exciting because our farm was sort of like ground zero for that. And so I met so many of our neighbors and so many of farmers who are also trying to expand and begin planting trees as part of their farming, planting nut trees and fruit trees. And people were so excited about it. They're getting excited about local sustainable food systems. The other thing that we've been able to do here in Bennington, and I know that Michael's going to want to address this more, is our veteran farm program. The veterans home here in Bennington serves a lot of vets, has a lot of residents, but there are also vets that are connected to it from the outside. They were sitting on a good bit of land, and we were able to look at that as a district and see a farm, envision something else that could engage veterans, that could give them a way to connect to the community. If they were excited about or drawn to the notion of farming, they could learn. That's something else that we have our ongoing workshops throughout the year. And again, those workshops are things that people are in and things that they've voiced to our conservation district that they want. And we noticed that veterans wanted to be more engaged. And so through a ton of hard work, which Michael was certainly responsible for almost 100% of, We've engaged with that veterans home and we've been able to create a veterans farm and that is becoming reality. We are growing trees there and there'll be nurseries and vegetables and chickens. And it's just really exciting to see folks sometimes who I think are forgotten about, quite frankly, in the veterans home being engaged with the broader community and being able to work and fulfill their own dreams as well. So it's that sort of community resiliency which spreads. That I think is so important for us right now. I know that we all know that Vermont's just been denied FEMA money for 2025 flooding. I mean, we've all just read that. Not to sound overly dramatic, but we don't know what's coming in the future. Like, I don't think anyone's coming to save us. And so if we want drought mitigation, if we want flooding mitigation, if we want clean water, if we want support for farms, if we want support for our food systems, then we're going to have to find ways to do that, I think predominantly on our own. And that's why I am so excited about being part of our conservation districts, because I think our districts are incredibly effective and efficient at delivering that support. We've got 14 different districts and we have different needs and we're able to meet those needs because we know who the farmers are in our area, we know who the conservationists are in our areas, and we're able to work with people and make the entire state more resilient. So I appreciate you letting me speak and I appreciate my time here. And I'm happy to answer any questions I might be able to.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: Great, thank you for that, Jeanie, and thank you for serving in the role. Any questions? Michael, do you want to pick up?

[Michael Fernandez (District Manager, Bennington County NRCD; regenerative farmer)]: Yeah, I think I can pick up where she left off there. So to answer the question you all had earlier about the ratio of federal dollars drawn down compared to our NACD support grants, last year for our local fund pool, and this is off the top of my head, so don't hold me to exact numbers, But I believe we spent in payroll a mileage something in the area of $45,000 and we pulled down just over $615,000 in pre authorizations. Not all of those went to a final contract. We had one that withdrew at the signing meeting that was a roughly $70,000 contract, but still right in that nine to one to 11 to one TA to FA ratio. And we've consistently been able to maintain that just on the federal side. And I want to talk about going moving beyond that. Jeannie mentioned one of the projects that that we've been able to use these state dollars for, and that's the veteran incubator farm. And what happened there was we found that there was a languishing program that Peter Welch had received some congressionally directed spending for that had been sitting in account for about two years and no one had really touched or done anything with yet. And we got together with the folks at the vets homes and local veteran farmers, the town of Bennington Community Development Office, and really drilled down to develop this idea for an incubator farm for beginning veteran farmers, so that they could get the technical have a one stop shop for regenerative agricultural education, technical service provision and funding source navigation. So that when they're done with their three years at the incubator farm, they will have the business acumen and the physical receipts that are necessary for them to be able to go to Farm Credit East and the FSA, take out a farm purchase loan and go over to Don Campbell at the Vermont Land Trust and purchase a farm that's in a generational transition. So trying to create a pipeline for veteran farmers to be able to land in Bennington County, learn the skills that they need, and then be transitioned on to a long term operation, and be a member of a cooperative that aggregates their products for sale to local institutions like the Veterans Home. And a project like this, and other projects that we've worked on that haven't necessarily gone quite as far, that take an incredible amount of payroll time. We've been working on that veterans farming initiative for two years now. I've probably spent close to five hundred hours developing that program both on the clock and off. And if we hadn't had these legislative funds, this never would have happened because I every other funding source I have access to is tied to someone else's set of goals, whether it's the state of Vermont at large, or the USDA or the EPA, somebody else is telling me what their goals are, and I'm trying to fit local needs to that program rather than us being able to develop programs based on what we're hearing in the community. And another really good example of this is, as I know, you know, dude, we have a very significant PFOA issue down in Bennington County. And another thing that I was able to use those grant funds from the legislature for was developing a proposal to Environmental Protection Agency for a $2,200,000 PFOA remediation program. We didn't get that grant, but it took me roughly eighty hours of coordination, writing, budgeting, all of those things to even have the chance of that. So having that flexibility to be able to take those gambles, and possibly gain really large returns, isn't something that really is reflected in that nine to one TA to FA ratio, because when they hit, they hit huge. And we've we've put in multiple multimillion dollar grant applications using these funds to federal agencies trying to pull down dollars specifically to meet the concerns of our community. And I already said the 615,000, but one of the things that I really want to highlight is specifically panel, which we've done a lot of work there. We really try and go to the forgotten places in our county that receive a lot less technical assistance availability just because of their distance to where the other technical service providers are. If I want to pull someone from the agency of agriculture from NRCS, or NOFA Vermont, or the American Farmland Trust, it takes them three hours to four hours just to get there. By the time they get there, I have to have everything ready for them. So it's worth their time. They won't come for one meeting, I have to set up three. And that's a lot of legwork that we do for the agency of agriculture, in particular, for the farm agronomic practices program, pasture and surface water fencing, Vermont farmer ecosystem stewardship program, that if we were not there, you would have zero participation in those programs from Bennington County, because no one knew about them before we told them. And there is no one going down there to promote those programs. So it it took multiple years of us going out in the community knocking on doors, doing GIS analysis to identify where farms might be because no one, like Jeannie said, when I came in, everyone told me there are no farms in Bennington County. We don't do that kind of work here. We've identified and are now working with over 60 farms, and we know there are at least 200 based on USDA Ag Census. So we're still in the process of finding all of those people, But there was no one looking and no one offering them assistance. So when we're able to come into a town like Pownall that has a lot of legacy farms, their fifth, sixth, seventh generation operations that oftentimes have never even heard of the Natural Resource Conservation Service of the Environmental Quality Incentives Program of any of the state programs. So that link has been missing for what seems to us like decades. And now that we've been able to re approach the community in a flexible way, we're really starting to gain traction on those local goals.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Don't you have the Meadoway Valley?

[Michael Fernandez (District Manager, Bennington County NRCD; regenerative farmer)]: So I have a tiny little sliver of the Meadoway. Bennington County the Bennington District is one of the oddballs that's entirely based on political boundaries. That was if and I'm stretching my memory a little bit here, but I believe that was 1948, so two years after the district was established. We became politically bound. But I have Hudson River Watershed, Champlain Watershed, Otter Creek, and Connecticut River, all within my district.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Connecticut River.

[Michael Fernandez (District Manager, Bennington County NRCD; regenerative farmer)]: Windham. Windham, Jamaica.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Right on the other side of the It's

[Michael Fernandez (District Manager, Bennington County NRCD; regenerative farmer)]: just over. Yeah, it's the political boundary. And it's been interesting. It's both a detriment and a benefit because we've been able to pull a lot of the American Farmland Trust micro grants from their RCPP program into the county, which has been incredibly helpful. We've written a lot of those grants. Another thing that we've been able to use those legislative funds for. But yeah, we were spread out over a lot of different water heds. We have to monitor all of those tactical basin plans, all of those funding streams, it's a lot.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: Meadowview Valley, like Rupert and Pollard are in the county, but the conservation district is the Rutland Meadowweed. Old Old New Meadowweed. Old Meadowweed.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Old So You wouldn't have Rich

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Hewlett. You wouldn't have Rich Hewlett in front of

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: her staff. Misaccepts last name. Representative. Thank you, chairman. You know, in past years, we've heard testimony about not just shared services, but shared equipment in the Meadowood, Lutland region that was I don't know if it was newer injectors or some no till device. But Joanne brought up the rock rake up in Orleans County, you know, like, Lamoille District is not represented here today, but there are a lot of rocks, equipment relationships with, for instance, the neighboring Lamoille County.

[Sarah Damsell (District Manager, Orleans County NRCD)]: Sure, we'll have to check the bridge first, no. Yes, definitely. And it does happen, so we have no till drill. We have portable skidder bridge. We have a variety of things. We have a bulk material for that we're working on getting now. Mostly it's shared within three counties within the Northeast Kingdom, which we do a lot of shared programming with those three counties just geographically represents. So short answer is yes. Thank you. Yeah.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: And the last thing, are you it's to you all sitting in here, we heard testimony about the diminishing apple orchards. I recall in my youth, there was a major apple producer just north of Powell and all.

[Michael Fernandez (District Manager, Bennington County NRCD; regenerative farmer)]: Yep. Southern Vermont orchards. They're still there. Still there. Yep. They're still there. We've been they're very well capitalized and are making good money. So they're they haven't been a someone that we've engaged with a whole lot. But we are, however, engaging with a number of beginning orchardists that are just getting started and using our local fund pool to try and direct funding for the Silvopasture and forest farming practices. I'm an agroecologist. That's my my professional background before I got into this, and that's part of why the district hired me. They wanted to bring that agroecology background into the county and try and help redevelop the Bennington County ag economy since it really collapsed in the 80s and took a really bad dip after COVID when everybody sold their cows and switched to cutting hay for horse farmers in Saratoga Springs. So we're trying to using our local fund pool. Like Sarah mentioned, our main concerns that came out of at this point four years of local work group surveys, food security and sovereignty is the word that people tend to use down in Bennington County, flood resilience and climate adaptability, and working lands viability. So our local fund pool is an agroforestry focused fund pool that's trying and succeeding at targeting hay operations that can diversify into chestnut hay alley cropping, and silvopastoral operations that can diversify into chestnut silvopasture and fodder based silvopastures. So we're planting, in some cases, up to 400 to 500 stems per acre on contour, creating really abundant fodder systems. And while all of this is going on in the background, we've also partnered with a group on the other side of the state line in New York, and we're signed on to a $3,500,000 grant from the agricultural marketing services to build a wholesale chestnut processing facility, so that all of these chestnuts that we're putting in the ground have a middle supply chain point, which is often something that's overlooked in emerging agricultural enterprises. So we saw that as a real critical point to be able to support that, provide technical support for that. And they ultimately received that grant and they broke ground on construction last year and will be finished with the final construction in a year and a half. So once that occurs, we'll be able to process roughly three and a half million pounds of chestnuts per year out of that facility.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: Representative Bartholomew.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: So I don't know if this is appropriate or not, so tell me, is possible to ask Michael, he's an agro ecologist, a question about pear plot?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: Sure, yes.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: Do you know about pesticides? I'm

[Michael Fernandez (District Manager, Bennington County NRCD; regenerative farmer)]: familiar, yes. I was an IBM manager for a large cannabis farm back in Oregon for about four years. Okay,

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: So, just heard testimony from a person from Champlain Orchard who talked about how important paraquat is in his process. And I'm wondering what other processes do you know about that might be utilized by apple orchard farmers? Because we don't want to cause problems for our farmers, but we also are considering banning pear quad as an option.

[Michael Fernandez (District Manager, Bennington County NRCD; regenerative farmer)]: Yeah, and it's it is a pretty nasty one as far as things go. I tend to on the side of allowing more tools in the toolkit when I'm making recommendations to producers. So having something like Paraquat as a mechanism of last resort when other IPM methodologies fail is an important thing for folks to be able to do. So I don't want to speak too far ahead of my skis. I'm not super up to date on the issue in Vermont, but that is part of the reason why we use we've embraced these integrated systems in Bennington County. So grazing sheep, geese, ducks in those kinds of systems, very common in Europe, where a lot of these regulations kind of stem from as European shifts. Interplanting with aromatic pest confusers and antifungal components such as daffodils, anything in the allium family in the subcanopy of those apple trees. So I'd say he is correct. Growing organic fruit in New England with our climate is next to impossible without having access to those sometimes really nasty tools. But I I agreed with the gentleman that the trade off between spraying copper and spraying paraquat, especially since they're spraying paraquat during establishment and not throughout the production cycle, That seems to me just on initial spec, a pretty appropriate use for a pretty nasty tool since it can be phased out after establishment's completed.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: Thank you.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: When you started to say talk about ducks, I was almost going to cut you off. Well, it is past twelve. I know we got started a little bit late, but I thank you, everybody, joining us. And, Jeanie, I I wanted I don't know if maybe it was you, Michael, who mentioned filling up panel being obscure and off the everybody's radar. I saw that they just got a large congressionally directed funding amount for a new firehouse. So good for us.

[Michael Fernandez (District Manager, Bennington County NRCD; regenerative farmer)]: Becca really came through. Mike Lassen.

[Jeanie Alexander (Board Member, Bennington County NRCD; farmer)]: Becca did. Great. Yeah.

[Michelle Monroe (Executive Director, Vermont Association of Conservation Districts)]: We have a stream table down in the office

[Sarah Damsell (District Manager, Orleans County NRCD)]: too if you wanna come

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry)]: in with that. Governor's Yeah. Good. Thank you very much. Wife. Jeannie, have a good afternoon. Thank you.

[Jeanie Alexander (Board Member, Bennington County NRCD; farmer)]: Thanks. Thanks so much. Take care.