Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Richard "Richie" [last name unknown] (Vermont vegetable/berry farmer)]: So one of them was paraquat. And that's for you to talk about is I forget about paraquat and I have no reason to use it. I grow over a 100 acres of vegetables and berries. And when I spray something, I would like it dead. I don't want to come back up again because I don't want to keep on repeating what I'm doing. But Paraquat does have a use for certain farmers, but they have oh, Paraquat also, I think you know that every three years, they have to besides the five years to renew the license, every three years, they have to take what I'm told a test. And they have to get a 100%. If not, that's bad. All these chemicals, know, Paraquat Roundup strategy, whatever, is considered a pesticide or herbicide or fungicide or herbicide, one of the four sides of the world, you need to have a license to buy it. And I asked Northeast Ag, which was Northeast Ag, now it's United Ag and Turf and Lindenville. They haven't sold it in two or three years. I think three years ago, they sold one canister. That was it. I know other places, Addison, they use it, but up here, we don't. What else? California, I looked into read about California. Well, first of all, paraquat is not a cancerous substance. It's not a carcinogen. And they have over 3,000,000 acres of fruit and veg I mean fruit and nut trees. Which they band spray around it or they call it buffering. They spray around the drip line of the tree, burn down the grass, and then it starts to grow back up again. When it grows up, that's when they harvest or whatever. Things fall on the grass. They can pick them up. Paracord has a very short residual. But I guess you guys know all that. What I'm concerned about is, how can I put this, when you were young and dating, you started holding hands? Okay. Fine. But sooner or you got married, had kids. I don't want this whole thing about chemicals getting to that stage. I'd rather see you, if possible, have Paraguay put a on their label, this substance might might cause different diseases like they do on medicines that you take. If you read the link if you read the package, the flyer that comes with your medicine, you might go, oh my gosh. I'm gonna go blind? I'm not gonna go this. What happened? It's really scary, but it's your choice to use it. It's your choice to use these these drugs. We take tests. We continuously take tests as first in the state of Vermont. Why can't we you make up our minds if we wanna use it? You're likely saying something. It's Yes. Used And and one of the things questions on the test. How often should you read the label? Once when you start using it? Once a year of every time you use it? The answer is every time you use it, that you should read it because maybe you made a mistake in the past. Oh god. I thought it was this. So you don't continue doing the wrong thing. After a while, I I read that label on certain things hundreds of times, But also maybe you changed the label, which oh, oh, they changed. So, like, I watched the news last night. I saw a reporter, Cynthia Thomas. She says Paraguat is an insecticide. No, it's not. It's a herbicide. It on my phone. It was a blog. And then some guy puts out the Roundup has paraquat in it.

[Unidentified committee member/staff]: No, it doesn't.

[Richard "Richie" [last name unknown] (Vermont vegetable/berry farmer)]: Matter of fact, Roundup is some warnings. Warning, caution, hazardous. Those are the three categories. Warning, you can buy it at a bad way. You can buy it at Tractor Supply. And if it's people are already starting to boil up about chemicals. If we I I'd love to stop using any kind of chemicals, but could you stop any kind of bug or disease or fungicide or fungus coming in to grow my crops? That would be great. But it's the way we combat stuff, new stuff coming in on whooping problem. So I guess that's about it. Any questions?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Richie, thank you. Richard Nelson, representative Nelson has a question.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. Hey, Richie. I think you misspoke when you said the only place you can buy Paracat. It used to be Northeast Agriculture. It's now Nutrien up there in Lindenville. Yeah, it's at Nutrien. I think you referred to it as United Ag and Turf. Anyway,

[Unidentified committee member/staff]: and

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: we do not, we have zero authority and you probably know this, but we have zero authority to change any label on any EPA registered pesticide. We can affect how the state of Vermont allows it to be used. So we could request that they apply for a special permit to use paraquat. We could say you can't use it on certain crops but we certainly don't have the authority to try to change the label. We'd end up in court and on the wrong end of that deal. So I just wanted to let you know about that and you know, I'm with you. We got to keep the tools in the toolbox as much as we can so we can effectively raise food for the whole world. And, know, and geez, if they let us make a nickel, we're doing good. Thank you.

[Richard "Richie" [last name unknown] (Vermont vegetable/berry farmer)]: Mr. Wyatt, FYI, full percentage of people in The United States who grows food for the rest of the 98 is 2% of the people. 2% of us grow food for the other 98. The average age is 68. And I'm 77. So I'll be walking out the door pretty soon. I won't be here no more. But I don't see too many people coming up behind it. Well, that's not true. I went to the Vermont Veggie and More Association. Thank god it was not all gray hairs there. There were young people there. You got one guy, Greg. I really admire that kid. I will show him and treat train him. I'll teach him anything I know.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: Are you talking about me? Oh.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: I'm starting

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: to get gray hairs though, Richard.

[Richard "Richie" [last name unknown] (Vermont vegetable/berry farmer)]: Like, I'm getting off the subject. But it just let's keep like you said, let's keep all the tools in the toolbox. Can we keep the information going out to the public correct? There is no paraquat in Roundup. Paraquat is an herbicide, not an insecticide. And the only good thing about all this publicity and before this is I spray my fields and I put Plaques out for people, you know, where the roads go in. And I notice that when we spray, putting Plaques out, we don't find people running in and out of the fields with crops. It's like, are doing? Well, I thought they were free. No. They're not free. So a lot of us have we have a hard time taking them down, especially when the corn is ripe. Maybe leave them up there two or three days later. And we keep the people up. So people are really scared about chemicals. So we keep the signs up when they don't go in. But anyways, I'm getting off the subject thinking.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: It's questions. Sometimes the the side conversations, the the diversions are just as interesting as the the original conversation. I I don't know. Does anybody else have a question for Richie? Richie, thank you very much for your persistence and your patience in joining us today. Know it was a challenge, a technical challenge, so thanks for bearing with it.

[Richard "Richie" [last name unknown] (Vermont vegetable/berry farmer)]: I mean, after this, the only thing we had was chunking into the trunk.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: All right. Yes, yes, in group.

[Richard "Richie" [last name unknown] (Vermont vegetable/berry farmer)]: All right, I'll sign off. Think I've been in about one left. It must be all that we need do from mechanicals to make me talk too much.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: All right, be well. Take care. Thanks, Richard.

[Richard "Richie" [last name unknown] (Vermont vegetable/berry farmer)]: Yep, bye. Right.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Patricia, thank you for that.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: That's first. It works. Well,

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: now we know that if we need to, we can, maybe we have the phone a little closer to the TV so that, to the screen. Yeah.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Well, I heard the whole thing. Perfect.

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

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: Yes. Well, I will say, in addition to his comments, he sells to, I believe it's mostly and from other conversations I have with Richard, it's an extremely stringent criteria that they have for what he can sell to them. And I've heard of, you can have entire loads rejected and you have to, if it goes to a warehouse down in Massachusetts and they reject it, you have to pay to get it out there. And it's not unheard of for how long it's to be rejected.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: What would be the grounds for what they would reject things?

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: I don't know exactly, but I do know it's, you have every, like pretty much everything has to be perfect if it shows up there. So it's different. That's where you start to talk about having all the tools in the toolbox. That means a crop failure, and it's one thing that you could use the time to get that crop

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

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: I think we're hearing over and over the amount that imperfection that's required for wholesale producers everywhere in the country

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: have a product that is saleable.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: Yes, what the large grocery store chains are looking for in terms of qualities, the standard is so extremely high that it's hard not to use every tool that's out there to, because you think of an entire growing season process, that you start, and you can start some planning in the winter. Then you get the seeds in the ground and you hope for the right weather for all of that. And then you get into the middle of summer, and then there's one bug that's gonna be the make or break for that crop that's on an entire, if you've got 100 acres of crop, that's where the rubber starts to meet the road in those situations. And it's not just like crop failure, it's one little speck of blemish on the outside of the produce that's going to kill your ability to sell that thing. There's no crop insurance for those things. It's considered you as a grower are obligated to take care of that crop the right way in order to get it to market. If it's not weather related, it's on you.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Forgotten that he had come in about Salvation Farms in the past, it sounds like he's used to having to take products that the grocery stores won't take. There are a

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: lot of Divertising. Especially for wholesale farmers, there ends up being a lot of crop that doesn't meet the standard. So then it's perfectly good in every other respect. It just won't meet the standards that the large grocery store chains are looking for. The reason why I am sorry for me, I hope this is informative.

[Unidentified committee member/staff]: It's all part of the mix.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: The reason why I like to do direct as possible to consumer is because the more chains you go through to get to the consumer, through a distributor, going through a warehouse, going through a grocery store chain, if your stuff goes to a warehouse in Pennsylvania, and then it gets shipped to a store in New Jersey, right? The further the farmer is from the customer, the less trust there is between the customer and the farmer. And that looks like to me, and there's more ability for that produce to lose quality in a little We all know that if can go from out of the garden and onto the plate, the better. But the system is set up where that's not always straightforward. And so, and then on the customer, and when you're purchasing, if somebody sees a blemish on an apple hanging on a tree in my orchard, they know, oh, well that somehow happened out here in the orchard. It's a natural something that happened out here in the orchard, right? But if you take that same apple and you try to sell it in New York City, you say, well, how did that happen? Did it happen in storage? Did it happen in transport? You don't know that, oh, that's something that naturally occurs out in the orchard. So the more steps removed it is, that's why the produce has to be perfect when you wholesale, or else it's not gonna sell, or it's worth way less per pound. So that's where the rubber meets the road on these things. Growers are relying on every tool they have to ensure that they have a crop that they get the full amount of money for. And in most cases, either you get the full amount or it gets rejected. So you get all or nothing.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Thank God for cider, right?

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: But that's, you're looking at getting $4 a bushel for your fruit going to cider versus 60. That is the difference. You're just giving it away at $4 a year. So

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: yeah, just wanted to ask a question. I mean, can I ask a question to representative Burtt? So in talking about paraquat though, paraquat isn't about finishing getting pristine apples, it's about growing the trees, right? So paraquat isn't really a tool that would be utilized to develop perfect fruit to go to market, right? So you're just talking sort of in general about there's certain pesticides that are important. It's more of a general talking about

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: the tools that a

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

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: get though.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: So worry is there among farmers that when another chemical bill is on the

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: wall, what's the next? I'm

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: trying to address where that's coming from.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: Okay. Yeah. No, that's helpful to have the full picture. I just wanted to make sure I understood because I hadn't heard about it being used as a finished product. Richard,

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: and then we should get bringing Amber up, who's been waiting patiently.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: All right. No. Thank you. When I said earlier, if the farmer gets to make a nickel, it's a good year. And and, you know, I meant that. And, you know we use the tools in our toolbox to efficiently make a crop and it's and like Greg said the further you get away from the consumer the more they want everything to look the same. They expect every apple to be, know, like a delicious apple. They want that little four prong on the bottom and and go up a little bit rounded on top and and they want every one of those red delicious apples to look the same. They want every butternut squash to look the same and hell butternut squash they're they're all different sizes but they want everyone to look the same. And Salvation, the Salvation Farms, I think it's a great program. Those farmers don't make a nickel off Salvation Farms. They get their fields gleaned, it serves a purpose, it's great, I support it, I support it and the farmers that do this practice support it, but really, and it goes to a population that needs that food at a reduced rate, but the farmers would be better off if they plowed that crop into the ground because then it removes it from the market and makes their perfect fruit worth that much more. And that's just the short and sweet of it is, I mean, you know, companies we work with, they'll let us make a nickel, but they get upset if we make 50¢. And that's just, that's commercial agriculture and it's cutthroat and that's why I champion all farmers if they can make a living and the people doing it organically, if they can make a living and they got a market and the farmer's markets and everything else, that's great. But I'll I'll tell you, most of us farmers could get our health care on Medicaid because we sure don't make enough to to get in anywhere else. Alright. Over and out.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Thank you, Richard. Alright. We will continue that conversation later and have Amber come up to the table. Good morning, Amber.

[Amber Perry (Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Good morning. Amber Perry from Farm Bureau here to talk with the committee about H-four zero three, which is your ag labor bill. About a year ago, we decided to survey our members just to get an idea of where they are with paying their farm employees. So I'm going to share those responses with you today. We asked first, we asked them like, what size is your farm? So 50% of the members responded that they're currently operating a certified small farms. 20% responded that they were a medium farm, while 10% were just large farms. And 15% responded that they were under the threshold of a certified small farm and 5% operated a small equine farm.

[Unidentified committee member/staff]: So then

[Amber Perry (Vermont Farm Bureau)]: The responses we received back from our members are just as diverse as the farms here in Vermont. We had dairy farmers, crop farmers, beef farmers, vegetable farmers, maple farmers, equine farmers, apple farmers, custom ag and heifer boarding farmers, poultry farmers, egg production farmers, well as berry farmers. A 100% of our members that responded to the survey responded that they currently employ non family members. And of those employees, the highest number of employees in response was they employed 21 employees. And some were a combination of seasonal, full time, part time, and other were a combination of previous combinations, but also included some family members. So then we dug a little deeper and we asked our members how many of them were paying at least minimum wage, and 75% responded that they were indeed at least paying that minimum wage threshold. We also surveyed members on the overtime wages, and we learned that currently 20% were paying some form of overtime while other members were not because their employees didn't work over forty hours per week. Then Amber, how many respondents again? I don't remember because we did it over a year ago. Can What check-in

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: with percentage don't have overtime? Is it 80%? The full 80% that's left don't? Let me see. 75 responded that they were indeed paying them at least minimum wage. No, about the overtime.

[Amber Perry (Vermont Farm Bureau)]: 20% were paying some form of overtime. Then what was 80% would be the

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: So nobody was having people work overtime and not paying them overtime.

[Amber Perry (Vermont Farm Bureau)]: And we also learned that some of our members were offering benefits that might compensate for overtime. We decided to dig into what our members were currently doing in form of raises. 85% currently offered raises in some form.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: Sorry, I just wanna ask about the overtime thing. I just find that astonishing because if I think about dairy farms, almost everybody's gonna be working more than forty hours. And I know people that have crop farms in the summer, the ones in my area all work over forty hours. So we surveyed our members on overtime wages.

[Amber Perry (Vermont Farm Bureau)]: We learned that 20 were paying some form of overtime while the other members were not because their employees did not work over the 40. So out of the responses, 20% were paying.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: And 80% said they never use overtime.

[Amber Perry (Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Some were not. Some weren't even making up

[Unidentified committee member/staff]: Some 40

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: haven't responded then because- Some might have left that box. That's just weird. Yeah. I find that surprise I mean, don't you guys find it surprising So that

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I think we so it sounds like the sample was included some large spots like dairy farms.

[Amber Perry (Vermont Farm Bureau)]: I think because of when you go back to who we surveyed, there was 50% were the certified small farms that probably aren't offering that forty hours a week. So they wouldn't, Right? And there was only 10% operate a large part. Greg? Yes, go ahead.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: I think what I'm hearing is 80% either don't pay overtime or don't have people who work enough hours to receive overtime.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: Is that what Yeah,

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: I didn't hear the first part. I mean, heard her say they don't have their people work overtime, but they're saying they don't pay it.

[Amber Perry (Vermont Farm Bureau)]: They're just They might not reach that overtime threshold of over forty hours.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: Right. So I feel like you guys are saying different things.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Why don't we Why don't we go on and we'll

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: Just mean, I of the issues in the bill is about paying overtime. I think from what

[Amber Perry (Vermont Farm Bureau)]: we- I have a whole another section of overtime

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: I'll get more notes later.

[Amber Perry (Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Let's see now, I didn't lost my train of thought. We're on raises, correct? 10% of our members are currently not offering any raises, 30% offer raise yearly, and the other 30% offer raises when the farm income allows. 20% offer raises based on performance, 5% offer yearly bonuses as deserved. And we also found that our members are also offering a variety of other benefits to their employees from housing, utilities, phone transportation, food, groceries, clothing, learning opportunities, sick time, vacation time, to even retirement. So the struggle to find reliable employees has also taken toll on the farmers. Most of our members shared that they have struggled to find help. 55% find a significant struggle to find good health. 25% said it was somewhat of a struggle. 10% said they've had no struggle at all. 5% said they struggled to find quality employees. And then 5% said that the struggle was so bad that they've switched to H2A workers. So that would probably not be your dairy farms. We also provided a comment section and some shared that paying overtime potentially would put me out of business or significantly change my business negatively. So I said, I know it's difficult to hire and maintain employees. We are small and we don't need too many people to help us out. For larger firms, this is really going to be an ongoing issue.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Just trying to find another one.

[Amber Perry (Vermont Farm Bureau)]: We pay full time employees $15 to $17 an hour plus housing and still struggle to find reliable labor. Most stay with us for about six months to a year and then move on. As farm owners, we get no days off and we don't draw a paycheck. We need to consider that capacity with our farm owners. If we can't afford to find labor, the job still needs to get done and it's just going to fall back to the farmer. We pay higher than minimum wage as it is expected, and we would not be able to have employees without compensation. That's market driven. So basically, because there's a lack of help, they have to pay higher than that minimum wage. Back in 2016, the state of California passed AB ten sixty six. The bill would decrease the current It did like a scaled system for overtime and everyone thought it was going to work out wonderfully. And according to our sister farm bureau in California, when they went back to check-in on farm workers, they learned that it worked negatively. The farmers then capped the employees at forty hours and farm workers were taking on two to three jobs just to compensate that missed income from working over forty hours. And I believe last year, California was looking at legislation to somehow fix what they had done in 2016 because of the impact it was taking on ag in California. In the last five years, Vermont has lost 32% of its farmers. Farmers are faced with high input costs and low commodity prices. To put it simple, farmers are not being paid enough for the food that they grow to feed our state. Moving forward with the requirement to pay overtime wages will only add another burden to our farmers. And then you also have within that bill, there's that survey. We So looked at that. It seems targeted at MFOs and LFOs, and if the committee was moving forward with that language, we would suggest that it's open to all farms that offer farm worker housing, not just MFOs and LFOs. And that's all I have. Thank you. Try to get it in.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: So flagging the overtime question, and I think maybe we can just come back to that later. It's okay to leave the door open if you want. Because I think Yep. Late. Any other questions for Amber? Representative Brick?

[Unidentified Representative (St. Albans area; former dairy farmer/selectboard member)]: You know, when you're talking about 80% didn't pay overtime. But, like, when I was milking cows, they had shifts. If we milked three times, you may need and so they they weren't getting to the point that it had to be paid over. And if somebody didn't show up or they had Christmas, we gave Christmas or holidays off. We did. Yeah. And the health got it off.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Representative Brian. What was your statistic on the amount of farmers in Vermont who stopped farming?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: It was thirty some percent.

[Amber Perry (Vermont Farm Bureau)]: We lost, I think, 32%. We pulled this together a year ago, so that could be even higher. Thirty two percent. And I think

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: I got that from just it. In general in Vermont. In what time period?

[Amber Perry (Vermont Farm Bureau)]: I pulled it from the ag agency. I would have to check, but I'm just saying in the last five years. So if this was last year.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: So if we have, say, 6,000 some farmers, 2,000 stopped farming?

[Amber Perry (Vermont Farm Bureau)]: It would be, but I don't think we have 6,000. Is it 6,000?

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

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: we've heard, I think, from no phone. Okay. Just said

[Unidentified committee member/staff]: 6,000.

[Amber Perry (Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Thank you, Caroline.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I'm just gonna mention here, and then we're taking more testimony this afternoon on this bill, but there's been some confusion about our current minimum wage laws, generally speaking, across all sectors, and whether they apply to students. And I think we heard testimony last time we brought this bill up that, no, students aren't treated any differently. But further investigation reveals that, in fact, there is statute that says, generally speaking, students are not considered, for the purposes of minimum wage are not considered required to get minimum wage. So we should just be aware of that when we're continuing the discussion. And I don't know in the case of farm workers, how many of them might be students. And of course, it's gonna be different for every farm and maybe different for the types of farming too. Richard, representative Yeah.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Thank thank you, chair. Reading that bulletin we got on students and minimum wage and then the requirements for students. Kids that work in agriculture, they do it and because ag is exempt, those kids can, well they can have a lot of fun because they run big equipment and they work a lot of hours that they want them. And if they have to, if agriculture has to follow the same rules, it's really going to change students working working on farms unless the kid happens to be a family member of the farmer. You read that statute and I looked at it and applied it to our farm and I'm like holy cow my high school kids aren't gonna have fun anymore. So anyway,

[Richard "Richie" [last name unknown] (Vermont vegetable/berry farmer)]: that's it.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: So, yeah, just again, I reemphasize that, and I think what we read, it's not the whole picture. In fact, the current law says high school students, and this is in any job, an employer does not have to pay the minimum wage. And what we know in the reality is that very few people are gonna work for less than minimum wage in the current economy. But we'll leave that for now because we've got a bunch of other folks who are gathered and looking forward to speaking to us on Small Farm Action Day. So welcome everybody. Caroline, your name's at the top of the list. Do you wanna come up and Thank you, Amber.

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

[Caroline Gordon (Legislative Director, Rural Vermont)]: Hi, everybody. Just for the record, Caroline Sherman Gordon, legislative director of Ruh of Vermont. Nice to meet you, representative. I want to keep it very brief. Thank you all so much for having us. I know we're at close to the 12:00 mark here in our first half of the legislative session. So making an hour to hear from a diverse group of people on a number of different issues is a big chunk of a very time. So thank you so much for making that time. Small Form Action Day is a format we organize every year in collaboration with both app committees, where Rule of Vermont brings in members to talk about whatever they want to talk about with you, really. We don't prescribe what they're bringing forward to you. They often choose to speak to the priority issues we're already collaborating on with the committees, but it's really up to them to express their own stories and what they find important telling you today. So, without further ado, I'm

[Caroline Gordon (Legislative Director, Rural Vermont)]: going to pass it on first to our board chair, Mario Miriam.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Mario, while you're getting seated, go ahead and thank you for joining us. We've got, we're starting a little late, so we'll have a full hour. And I think we've got six folks who want to speak, so.

[Caroline Gordon (Legislative Director, Rural Vermont)]: Yeah, think we have two on the screen, and

[Caroline Gordon (Legislative Director, Rural Vermont)]: then we have one, two, four, five. I think we have one extra.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Okay, so I'll keep an eye on the clock if you'd like, but you'll figure eight or nine minutes. Absolutely. Okay, and I may cut off the committee too if questions get too long.

[Maria Mariam (Chair, Rural Vermont Board)]: Thank you. My name is Maria Mariam. I live in Stratford. And as Caroline said, I'm the chair of the Royal Vermont Board. And I'm here to talk about an amendment proposal to section five of the miscellaneous tax bill. And this is language that came out of ways and means that Roe Vermont is sort of concerned about. And I'm sort of testifying from the perspective of from Roe Vermont, but also, I'm a farm worker who works on a dairy farm that relies on leased land. I'm a young farmer who's concerned about land access. And my housemate and I have 14 acres enrolled in current use for both pasture and hayfield. So recently, there were changes to section five of the 2026 miscellaneous tax bill that were introduced to clarify that any land used for grazing should qualify for current use. Well, Vermont supports this intent, but because of how the language is written, we're concerned that it's going to incentivize landowners to charge high lease fees for access to their land when these landowners already receive tax breaks for enrolling in current use. So we recommend amending section five to clarify that it's farmers who should earn the annual gross income of at least $2,000 for parcels under 25 acres, and that the farmer generated income should not be confused with lease fees. So this would keep the changes more in line with the original intent of current use, in which land that is used by farmers but not owned by them is considered used for agricultural purposes, if it's the farmer as if it's by a farmer, if it's part of the farmer's operation, and if the farmer has access to the land under a written lease fee for at least three years, or if the farmer is making income from their production on the land of at least $2,000 The changes in section five make the assumption that someone who's selling grazing rights on a per head basis and makes at least $2,000 on parcels of up to 25 acres, $75 on any additional acre, is considered equivalent to a farmer, rather despite the fact that they do not labor or steward the land. So this encourages landowners to charge a high lease fee instead of writing a three year lease. I both work on a dairy farm, and I have land that that same dairy farm uses to pasture dry cows, which I have in current use. It's very clear to me the difference between being a farmer and having land in current use. When I work at the dairy farm, I'm setting up fencing, moving animals, monitoring their health, assessing pasture quality, making sure everyone's well fed. And as someone managing land in current use, I don't do any of that. I make sure the land's available. I communicate with the farmer. I sign a lease. It's absolutely worth it to

[Seren Dias (Farmer/Educator; Rural Vermont Board Member)]: me because I get to

[Maria Mariam (Chair, Rural Vermont Board)]: see this land stewarded and improved through grazing, and I get and I'm increasing the pasture base available to a farm in my community. And the current use program makes holding on to that open 14 acres of pasture worth it, and it incentivizes it incentivizes me to keep it in agriculture. Current use helps protect land access for farmers by lowering their tax burden and incentivizing landowners to offer up unused land for farm management. The greatest challenge for young farmers and farm workers looking to get into farming is absolutely land access. I personally would be unable to farm for myself if it weren't for access to my parents' land, as the land I live on is too rocky for vegetable farming. And all the viable land near me is far beyond the economic reach of someone making 40,000 a year. So if we wanna keep young people in the state, if we wanna make it possible for them to farm, they need to be able to afford land access to pursue a high capital, low profit endeavor. Incentivizing landowners to ask for a $2,000 lease fee instead of a three year lease will only make land less affordable and less accessible. Current use doesn't exclude landowners from charging a lease fee, but we don't need to encourage it. I, along with Royal Vermont, strongly encourage and respectfully submit a change to subsection c to clarify that land is eligible for the current use tax reduction if, and this is the change language, it is used by a farmer who has produced an annual gross income from the sale of farm crops or grazing of at least $2,000. This preserves the intent of current use to recognize the labor of farmers as stewards of the land while avoiding encouraging landowners to charge them improbably high lease fees for access to land under current use. So thank you so much. Happy to answer any questions about this.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Thank you, Mark. The commit just for the committee's Yeah. Recollection, we had testimony from the tax department. Yes. And then I'm just reminding the committee again.

[Maria Mariam (Chair, Rural Vermont Board)]: Oh, yeah, sorry. I was like, I also watch that.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I think was public too. I forget sometimes with people who watch that stuff. We then had the agency come in and speak to this a little bit, and then we took a vote and we sent it off to the ways and means. We let the ways and means committee know that we had considered and voted. And then rural Vermont reached out to me, Caroline, flagging this and noting noting the concern that we've just heard and making a making a valid observation, I think, that there was a perhaps a misinterpretation happening here that we were overlooking. The intent, you you might remember, was to equate in some way grazing and haying. And the way it was presented to us was right now, you get a parent, the eligible parent to use if you let a farmer hay. And what's the difference between that and having a farmer bring animals on to graze? In fact, I think there is something else going on here. And I believe that you've reached out to the Ways and Means department. I spoke to the committee, rather. I spoke to them and shared your concern last week, and I think that they responded within the past twenty four hours to you. So hopefully, this is on their radar, and and we'll have we'll make sure that they know you came in and spoke to us again today. So I just wanted to throw that out there. I don't know that we need to have a long debate about it, but in the interests of

[Unidentified committee member/staff]: I just wanted to say goodbye.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Goodbye, thank you. The interest of making sure that we hear from everyone, I don't want to have too much time sucked up by this issue, which we have heard. Having said that, if anybody does have a question you want to get clarified on, we can do that or move on. Yeah, Greg?

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: Well, this is more a question to you, Chair. What's going to be a process then going forward with ways and means, would that come back to our committee?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Possibly, yeah. Think so this isn't a miscellaneous bill that has got, I'm guessing dozens, if not closer to hundreds of little tiny things. And they may be perfectly comfortable having me say we're okay with this, speaking on behalf of the committee. We can also, if the committee would prefer, we can have the tax department come back in. I'm going to speak to the tax department too, just to see what their thoughts are now. May end up just withdrawing. At this point, I don't know what their preference would be.

[Unidentified committee member/staff]: I thought maybe the people in the room could testify first.

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

[Unidentified committee member/staff]: So if we just go around and Sally could go next.

[Seren Dias (Farmer/Educator; Rural Vermont Board Member)]: Good morning.

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

[Seren Dias (Farmer/Educator; Rural Vermont Board Member)]: It's a pleasure to be here and good to meet you all.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Have you been here before?

[Seren Dias (Farmer/Educator; Rural Vermont Board Member)]: I recently testified in Senate AG about three weeks ago, but I've not been in House AG, so I'm really happy to be here.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah, don't look familiar, but sometimes people feel familiar and it turns out, I was here last year.

[Seren Dias (Farmer/Educator; Rural Vermont Board Member)]: Yeah, and it's sometimes hard with the mask and stuff to really recognize folks.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Glad you could join us.

[Seren Dias (Farmer/Educator; Rural Vermont Board Member)]: Yeah, thank you so much. So for the record, my name is Seren Dias. I'm a rural Vermont board member, a farmer and an educator in Newfane, Vermont. So, as I said, I recently gave testimony in Senate Ag for food resilience at Three Squares Vermont day. And during that testimony, I was briefly asked about municipal exemption, and it seemed like full testimony on that particular subject was due. So to start, towns simply don't have the expertise or capacity to oversee agricultural operations. Furthermore, opening farms up to scrutiny based on unneighborly discord or disagreements, which is in part how we lost the farmer exemption in

[Maria Mariam (Chair, Rural Vermont Board)]: the first

[Seren Dias (Farmer/Educator; Rural Vermont Board Member)]: place, is a wild act of agricultural endangerment that will divert critical time and resources, both for towns, farms, and the relevant agencies that regulate us. When my firm, Giant Journey Farm, first started out, our neighbors were unhappy about the increased traffic on our private road and a bunch of other little picadillos, someone called the town with several specious claims to have an EPA rep come. When someone from the town arrived, he was clear that there was no issue with what we were doing. When I expressed surprise that Newfane had its own EPA rep, he told me that he was actually an accountant. He had absolutely no qualification whatsoever to assess our operation. We quickly decided to file a Schedule F and to register as an LLC with the state so that we could both be sure that we had access expertise about regulatory compliance and that we would be protected from future petty grievance. In those first years, we went from making under $600 a year to just over 2,000, but our income was extremely variable based on large but necessary capital investments, the capacity that we had considering we were both working full time off farm jobs, and our instability as we found our markets. Without access to the programs and protections through filing a schedule after almost ten years ago, it seems impossible that we would be the strong community resource that we are today. And that resource, I want to be clear, is one that still makes too little and sits on too few acres to qualify for most programs. A huge part of the work that we do is teaching folks how to grow their own food, from home growers to new farmers. We don't farm what most people would consider extremely arable land. It's very rocky. It's literally on a rock ledge. It's a steep hill. There's water that flows through the land in extremely inconvenient ways. It's only two acres, and most of it's forested. It's really not what people would consider farmland. The bonus of that is that it's the best way to show that everyone can grow food right where they are. It's critical that we start to remember our food ways and that folks feel capable to provide for themselves and their communities. A new study just confirmed that small scale farmers produce more of the rich world's food than previously thought. That isn't news to small farmers like me. In the fight against climate catastrophe and poly crisis, home growers and small farms are the future. Being blocked from access to funding, expertise, and protections, the resilient future that we're building is in peril. The right to grow food and distribute it is an issue that comes up year after year, and we have the chance to get it right and to close the issue once and for all. Last year, the legislator was legislature was asked to increase our ability to manage our community's food needs by strengthening the cottage food law. This year, I understand there's a bill up in this session right here in the house committee for the right to grow gardens because more and more tenants are finding landlords and HOAs are prohibiting small home gardens. We must codify the right to grow food, including the right to raise livestock and sell food products from small operations for everyone, and send the message that further enclosures of the land will not be allowed. Some of our northern neighbors have made great progress on food sovereignty. In November 2021, Maine became the first US state to constitutionalize the right to food. We can join them in protecting the deeply held heritage of our state, and indeed, we can actually do better. As a regenerative no till farmer, I need policymakers to understand that land stewardship is more complicated than agriculture for extraction alone. Not all practices that are critical to care for the land are lucrative. Moreover, agriculture at any scale without livestock is not healthy for the land. And food sovereignty without the ability to access or produce healthy, affordable proteins cannot be considered complete. I've heard that restoration of the farmer exemption is top of mind, and I want to thank all of you for your diligence on this critical issue. In addition to restoring those protections, thank you so much for considering the right to grow gardens. It's a really critical bill to be passed in this session. Additionally, I urge you to restore the current guidelines under the RAP's sorry. I urge you to restore the farm exemption and those protections. And I also urge you to ensure that the current guidelines under the RAPs remain intact. Farmers must be able to file a Schedule F as adequate proof of eligibility. Additionally, the right to grow food free from municipal exemption must be codified for everyone. Thank you. Very happy to take questions.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Thank you. Yeah. Questions? Representative Basil?

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: Yeah, I have a question. So I represent Brookline, which Hi, is I don't know your farm though, so maybe I should visit in the summer or something. We would love that. But I have a question. So you just said something, I think I wrote down the quote and I just would like to explain what this means because I haven't ever thought of it this way before. Agriculture without livestock is not healthy for the land. Tell me about that because that's a new concept for me.

[Seren Dias (Farmer/Educator; Rural Vermont Board Member)]: So, it's one of the central tenants of regenerative agriculture is that livestock are included. It's sort of part of closing the loop, closing the nutrient cycle loop. So, if we're farming at a large scale with tractors, we're having to put in a lot of fertilizers and a lot of those kinds of things, that's actually not good for the land. It's actually not a healthy way to manage the land. Other farmers will disagree with me, of course. A lot of farmers are large scale farmers that till the bejesus out of the soil and add a lot of fertilizers and they grow good food, that's great. But that's not what our farm does. We're a no till farm. And so we believe that closing the nutrient cycle and adding livestock is a critical component to land management. We use chickens and rabbits for that, and we have previously also had goats. It's an important way, it's a natural way for the land to regenerate. It's a natural way for the nutrient cycle to be closed. You use the waste from the chickens and rabbits to fertilize the soil? Yes. Okay. And they also graze areas and clear areas of the land that we're might wanna put into production or just need to sort of hold. Okay.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: And you didn't really say, what do you grow? So you have chickens and rabbits, what else do you do on your farm?

[Seren Dias (Farmer/Educator; Rural Vermont Board Member)]: Yeah, so we're a full diversified operation. We have two greenhouses, we grow year round, but we do the full slate of CSA style vegetables.

[Richard "Richie" [last name unknown] (Vermont vegetable/berry farmer)]: Do you

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: sell at the farmer's market?

[Seren Dias (Farmer/Educator; Rural Vermont Board Member)]: We don't, so right now our business model, all of our food goes to food shelves, nonprofits, community organizations, so that we get paid a fair wage, and also so that people can't afford our food, can eat our food.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: So do you partner a few Vermonters Feeding Vermonters or what what So in the past,

[Seren Dias (Farmer/Educator; Rural Vermont Board Member)]: we have gotten Vermonter Feeding Vermonter funding through both the Townsend Community Food Shelf and also through Moonscape Farm, which runs like the retreat community food project in Brattleboro. They haven't gotten exactly Vermonters feeding Vermonters funding every year, but we have had that funding in the past. Great. Thanks. Yeah. Great.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Representative Bartholomew. You mentioned action that Maine had taken. Can you just tell me more about that?

[Seren Dias (Farmer/Educator; Rural Vermont Board Member)]: I'm sorry?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: You just mentioned action Maine had taken.

[Unidentified committee member/staff]: Can tell

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: me more about that? Yeah, it

[Seren Dias (Farmer/Educator; Rural Vermont Board Member)]: was really exciting. So you could obviously look up the exact language of the law, but they passed a law in 2021 saying that everyone had the right to It says the right to food, but essentially it's the right to grow food. So they're able to save seeds, grow their own food, manage all of their stuff. The reason that I was saying that we can kind of expand on their law and do better than what they're doing, it also I think also maybe has some cottage food law protections and stuff. So it's pretty comprehensive. It's it's really large scale and terrific. But the reason that I was saying that we could do better is because it's plant only, that law is plant only. So it's just for growing your tomatoes, your cucumbers, whatever, making pickles, making sauce. Yeah. It's for literally everyone in the state. So everyone, no matter where they are, no matter what they're doing, no matter what their intention is, they have an absolute right to have their garden or a small farm or any kind of production. And so it's totally achievable for us to include this language.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: And I think you said it's actually, they amended the constitution. So it's right there in their view.

[Seren Dias (Farmer/Educator; Rural Vermont Board Member)]: Yeah, and the great thing about that is then they are not gonna go back and re litigate and re litigate, which is part of my point is like, you poor folks are so pressed already. And then there you are every year, we're asking again for more clarity, for more legislation. The thing that's so terrible about what happened with the Supreme Court decision is that it put into litigation something that it was not necessary to have litigated. We had very clear understanding of the law for a really long time. And once that vacuum kind of opened up, now you've had all kinds of people lobbying for all kinds of different things, removing the $2,000 limit for farmers or getting rid of schedule f or doing this or doing that. And it's everybody has valid concerns, but it's like, you know, if we can just codify the right to grow food, if we can just reinstate farmer exemption, like, if we can just codify those things so that they're not relitigatable, then you guys don't have to keep doing this. Know?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: We are continuing to have conversations about that topic, and later today, we'll be working on it some more. So, yeah, stay tuned. Thank you.

[Seren Dias (Farmer/Educator; Rural Vermont Board Member)]: Thank you so much.

[Unidentified committee member/staff]: Hi,

[Unidentified Representative (St. Albans area; former dairy farmer/selectboard member)]: everyone.

[Unidentified committee member/staff]: Hi.

[Carson Tyler (Westford farmer)]: My name is Carson Tyler. I'm from Westford. This is my first time at the State House. So as I said in the Senate meeting, I'm very nervous. So I'm going read my little testimony, and please cut me off if you have any questions during it, or we can talk more fluidly at the end. I am going to talk about municipal exemption today, RIPs, the right to grow food and rabbits. So again, thank you so much for the opportunity to testify today and taking the time to listen to farmers and homesteaders on these issues. I'm here today to ask you to restore the longstanding municipal exemption for farms that was lost under the recent Supreme Court ruling and establish a right to grow food that includes reasonable allowances for livestock, plants and other forms of food production. So my family owns just one acre of land in Westford. We lease another 10 acres. So we grow a half acre of certified organic vegetables, and we raise pasture based rabbits on five acres of that leased land. Rocky Hill Farm is a small farm, but it is a big part of our livelihood. We are relatively new farmers. When we decided to start farming in 2020, we were living on rented land. And like many Vermonters, we wanted to buy a larger parcel, but the housing market being extremely expensive and limited caused us to stay renting for quite a number of years. We rented for several years before we were finally able to buy, but we could only afford one acre. And while renting, we wanted to raise livestock for meat, but we couldn't invest in permanent infrastructure like fencing or a barn because we didn't own that land. After extensive research, we found that meat rabbits could be possible for us renters with minimal startup. Rabbits are uniquely suited to small parcels of land. They are quiet and docile. They can be raised in small hutches or small movable pens on a very small amount of pasture or even a lawn. They don't create the same noise or odor concerns often associated with other livestock. And biologically, they are incredibly efficient. A decent number of rabbits can be raised responsibly on a super small footprint. And in my experience, one could easily raise 65 pastured rabbits on just an acre, which could feed a family of four for like a year. Three twenty three explicitly protects small backyard poultry flocks from municipal regulation. And I'm asking you to ensure that small livestock like rabbits are explicitly included in reasonable livestock protections as well. So we started with just two females and a male. We were off and running. Now we raise over 300 pastured rabbits a year for restaurants in our region. Rabbits were our entry point into farming because they are practical for small land bases and for folks who don't have secure permanent land. Since then, we've had to move our entire farm twice. So we rented a couple of properties before we purchased. Our little livestock made it possible for us to be movable and protections for agriculture made it possible for us to move our farm onto several properties. Like most new farms, we started very small. When we started, we made under $5,000 and we were growing vegetables and raising livestock on less than one acre. Farming businesses take time to build markets, infrastructure and production capacity, and small acreage and low revenue are not signs that something is not a farm, but in my experience, they are how farms begin. That's why the change to raise the required agricultural practices income threshold from 2,000 to 5,000 really concerns me. If farms under one acre or making less than 5,000 annually lose protection, you are not just redefining the eligibility of a farm, but you are also raising the drawbridge or the fence in front of the next generation of farmers, which included us when we first started. Moreover, restoring the municipal exemption for farms is essential. Without it, municipalities could regulate farm through zoning in ways that create uncertainty and instability. If regulatory authority shifts to municipalities, that means decisions about livestock will ultimately rest with local select boards. Select board membership can change every few years. And as the boards change, local ordinances or priorities also change. And a farmer could be allowed to raise small livestocks under one board in a downtown area and then face new restrictions under the next. That level of uncertainty makes it extremely difficult to plan, invest, or build a stable farm business. It also creates inconsistency across town lines. So you would see the same differences. You could farm in one town and then need to move to a different town, and maybe you couldn't necessarily farm there. Farming requires long term planning, but a catchwork system subject to frequent local change makes long term stability nearly impossible. So finally, will finish. Rabbits are a healthy, efficient source of protein. They can be raised humanely on a very small acreage. They contribute to diversified self sufficient farmsteads. They are familiar to many new American communities. They are part of a resilient local food system, and they should be explicitly included in protections for livestock under the right to grow food. I urge you to restore the municipal exemption for farms and to create a right to grow food that includes reasonable livestock protection so that small farms like mine can continue to contribute to Vermont's food system. And again, thank you very,

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: very much. Do you have any questions? Thank you, Christian. Comments, questions? Yeah,

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: questions. Now, should have mentioned, maybe it became clear that we have one member of the committee who's joining us on Zoom, and we don't see him at the moment, but I think he's still there.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Many questions? Representative O'Brien. We often hear how small ruminants are difficult to process given the slaughterhouse scene in Vermont. So with rabbits, I assume, do you do it yourself? How do you get one of your ready for restaurant rabbits to a restaurant where it's served as a meal?

[Carson Tyler (Westford farmer)]: Yeah, I'm really glad you asked that because I wanted to talk about this, but I didn't think that I would have time, so I skipped over it. So to sell to restaurants, legally, we are required to have our rabbits slaughtered at a USDA approved source. And right now, there is one in Vermont for rabbits. That is Phil Brown, Phil Brown's Meats. I think it's in Groton. I forget, it's an hour from me. Glover, yes, thank you. So that facility has been slaughtering and processing rabbits for a number of years. And the only one that I know

[Mary Linehan (Strafford Selectboard member and small farmer)]: of in Vermont, we've done

[Carson Tyler (Westford farmer)]: a lot of extensive research on this growing rabbits for six years now. He has said that he doesn't really want to do it anymore. And so he's sort of hinted that he's doing us a favor this year in slaughtering our rabbits. So next year, we will face challenges, I think, in this realm. So yes, having more options would be necessary for us to continue raising rabbits. Yeah.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Is the same true if you want to sell rabbit a or direct to consumers?

[Carson Tyler (Westford farmer)]: No, we can slaughter on farm if we want to sell direct to consumers, but raising over 300 rabbits a year is something that we don't want to do. They're very relatively easy to slaughter, but we just don't have the capacity with what we're doing on our farm. So we really appreciate the slaughterhouse and the nicely packaged rabbits that we receive and then can put in the freezer to sell over the course of the year.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Representative Boston.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: Well, I was just going to ask. So if if this one place that processes rabbits goes out of business, I mean, we passed a bill a few years ago that people that raise chickens could cut up their chickens and sell them in whatever configurations they want. Would you guys be interested in slaughtering and selling your own rabbits? Or it sounds like maybe that would be cumbersome for you. So is your hope that a new butcher will come forward or that you might be able to sell sell after butchering your own process?

[Carson Tyler (Westford farmer)]: A little bit of both. So we don't want to slaughter and butcher on farm. We would rather have that happen off farm. So we have talked to Maple Wind farm, for instance, to see if they would be interested in opening up a rabbit slaughter like mini facility. And we are reaching out to other like slaughter facilities to see if they would be interested in offering rabbits as well. The thing is rabbit farming is still pretty new in Vermont. There are a lot of very, very small scale operations, but not a lot of Actually, I think we're like one of the only commercial operations. I know that Phil Brown had a commercial operation and I think that's sort of slowing down right now, but I know that other people are interested in selling to restaurants, but they don't live anywhere near the slaughter facility and we just happen to. So we do want that to happen off farm. However, we would also be interested in opening up a small facility that could be approved on our farm and just hire in some folks to do like we do three or four slaughters a year, you know. So that would be very helpful to have something that would allow us to cut up rabbits. Right now, we're not allowed to cut up rabbits at all. We have to sell whole, and that's to retail or to wholesale restaurants or to direct to consumer. We have to sell whole. So yes, parting rabbits would be very interesting to us. We've had people actually ask if they can purchase legs or something like that.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: Right. It sounds exactly like what we have with the chicken issue, except we just weren't thinking about rabbits.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: We weren't thinking about rabbits. I believe the issue, this goes back a couple of years, and others in the room might be able to help us remember. But the issue there was just that Vermont law didn't go even as far as federal law. So federal law was fine with having, up to a certain point anyway, slaughter and parting of chickens on farms. But maybe it was unique to poultry and doesn't apply to rabbits.

[Carson Tyler (Westford farmer)]: It doesn't apply to rabbits. Yeah.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: And that's federal law too, presumably. So we might think it's a great idea, but we'd have to get our friends in Washington to go along with it, which isn't out of the question, I suppose. I see representative Nelson has a hand up.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Yep. Thank you, chair. Kristen, this is your first time in the state house and you're nervous. I can't wait to see when you get sure of yourself. You did a great job. Yeah, Phil Brown. He's about 65 years old or soon to be a paraplegic, got his back broke in a tragic car accident about 1983. He and he has done a wonderful job and risen above all challenges and met him head on with a great determination. And he is timing out unfortunately and this is a problem we have, Chris, in the whole state for any slaughter that we'd like to do in the state of Vermont, under license. And it's something that we need to look at more and maybe create more of a pasture slaughter, they call it over in New Hampshire. Mollie. And I understand that you may not want to do that, but other people may want to do that, which would take away, you know, open up some capacity for our Vermont slaughterhouses. Also, we need to look at how they're handling it. There's an issue with rendering and we need to look at that in our committees and maybe we should start looking at it this year. It's probably too late to get a bill across, but to allow for composting off-site of our small slaughterhouses for their rendering, because it is become a terrific issue in the state of Vermont. But thank you for bringing these concerns, I appreciate everything you had to say.

[Carson Tyler (Westford farmer)]: Thank you very much.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Alright. Thank you, Kristen. One more question here. A little bigger.

[Unidentified Representative (St. Albans area; former dairy farmer/selectboard member)]: Or a statement, maybe not so much a question. I'm from St. Albans. I used to live three miles from St. Albans. They're all around me now. My farm's concerned. I had a 50 unit development move in on the edge of me. And I might've been unfair because I was on the select board, but when those house lots were sold, every one of them in their deed told them they were buying next to a farm, and they didn't So they knew it when the farm was purchased, that there might be some smell, and they called it the burgundy claws, and it's still in there. So I haven't been bothered. Yeah.

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

[Unidentified committee member/staff]: Thanks. We'll to Mary. Morning

[Mary Linehan (Strafford Selectboard member and small farmer)]: everyone, I'm Mary Linehan. I'm from Stratford. I'm a small land farmer. We have a very large garden and either lambs or beef, depending on what we feel like growing that year. I'm also a member of the Select Board. Thank you for your service. But I'm not representing the Select Board. I don't have that authority. I would like to, however, give you some of my current experience on the Select Board and how I think this issue will come across for us. First of all, if you don't know Stratford, we're two villages, two small villages broken up by about a three mile wavy road that goes through several farms. I live on an old farm right next to the center of South Stratford Village, and I would be very sad to see that I can't grow my cows anymore, which keep my land open, which we use then for skiing and other kinds of activities. So I mean, I think that even if you're not growing to sell, keeping land open in Vermont, especially in Stratford is very important. There's just not that much of it. I, as a member of the select board, have watched over the last seven years, seven special small scale agricultural activities start. They're almost always young people on very limited pieces of land. Many of them would fall within what has been mapped as the one A. Yes, which I have to say I was on the slack board when that map was drawn up with True Rivers. It was done by our planning commission. They worked really hard on it. I don't think they had any idea that it would be used to determine whether or not farming could take place. And had they, they may have looked at it differently. I look at that map now and I think bad choices. They were choices. They were choices by informed members of the community, looking at the issues that they were talking about, which was housing at the time. Whether or not farming came up, I can't be sure I wasn't in on all those meetings, but I can tell you that when it came to the select word, we had absolutely no sense that this would impact on farming opportunities. We love farms. We want them to stay open. We want small farmers to come in. This is a livelihood issue for us. This is a self preservation issue for us. As a member of the select board during COVID, we were very, very pleased to be able to say that we had creamery. We had two CSAs. We had plenty of meat in the freezer, and we had vegetables being grown everywhere. This was really important and valuable to us because we all thought, and especially in the early days, that we would be unable to go to town. We are fifteen, seventeen miles from the closest grocery store. We have to live within our means when there's a pandemic. And I can tell you there will be another. I'm a public health professional. So we were uniquely well positioned. And I think that our town came away thinking we would like to make sure that that continues. So I would like to also argue for an exemption for municipalities because again, towns with select board members who are well meaning, but not always agricultural specialists and definitely not always farmers. They are doing the best they can. They are using the legislation that becomes available to them through their quick calls to VLCT and perhaps an effort to read what's online. We're not lawyers for the most part. And we are we are we are balancing the the expectations of our community and what we believe to be our understanding a proper understanding of the law, and we don't always get it right. And I would also like to to reiterate what what Kristen said, select boards turnover. We have five members. This year, four dropped off. I can tell you that for the next year, they will be the next the new four members will be learning how to be select board members. If these issues come up, it's very hard for them to analyze them thoroughly and not just give a knee jerk response to whatever the state wants. And and we don't want to go against the state, but sometimes the decisions that are made are not in our best interest. So I would just like to, again, say that select board members are really well meaning. They can't always understand these issues. We really depend on the Department of Agriculture, and we would continue to like them to be making these decisions, not us. I think that's all I have.

[Amber Perry (Vermont Farm Bureau)]: So if you have any questions.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Thanks, Any questions? Representative Berg.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: Tier 1A,

[Unidentified committee member/staff]: is that part?

[Mary Linehan (Strafford Selectboard member and small farmer)]: Tier 1B, sorry.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: Tier 1B. Okay, so you're mapping Tier 1B.

[Mary Linehan (Strafford Selectboard member and small farmer)]: Right through the center of the town where I can tell you I can count three small scale producers that would be affected. Now I know that select boards can decide not to do that, but again, the churn, the incentives that select boards have are sometimes in opposition and they may not well understand the impact of what they're doing. So I would say that's really not a great role for select boards despite their responsibility for zoning.

[Unidentified committee member/staff]: Thank you.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: We've heard the testimony we've had from the Land Use Review Board has reminded us that nothing has been approved yet, that there have been proposed maps in some counties or some districts, but nothing has been finalized yet for whatever that's worth. But it's interesting. So we're also hearing that in these areas where towns might have said, we want an exemption because we really want to promote housing there. Then we're hearing, oh, but that might be good ag lane. So there's obviously a conflict there. In your experience in your community, Can you give us any insight into why would that good ag land have been included in an area that we want housing here?

[Mary Linehan (Strafford Selectboard member and small farmer)]: Because we have so little cleared land, primarily. The land that's cleared is either an existing farm that has been maintaining its hay fields or has cattle grazing, or it is the midsection of the town that surrounds the road going through, and it is where there are houses, there are also farms. And so, you know, the rest is all woods. We we don't have a lot of clear land.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: Thank you. Representative Lipsky. Thank you, mayor. Do either of the Stratford villages have a small sewer?

[Mary Linehan (Strafford Selectboard member and small farmer)]: No. Everyone has their own septic. Yeah.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: Okay. So and that's one of the key criteria for tier one a or b.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: I see. Yeah. Yeah. So

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: I underscore, and we have not just type one eighty one that's challenging for but this half street distinction as for everyone in this room at the table as well as on the side. It's presented serious threats to I love how you encaptured Stratford's sustainability or resilience during that pandemic experience. It's a community sport. It was pointed.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Are those is that good ag land that is possibly gonna be ending up in a tier 1B? Is that currently being farmed?

[Mary Linehan (Strafford Selectboard member and small farmer)]: Yes. And it may not be commercial farms, but everybody in town grows their own food in their front yard. That is within 1B flat. I mean, yeah, I mean, the fact is that if an uninformed or newly elected select board team comes on board and says, oh yeah, let's adopt this. It's great. It's you know, we can have more housing. You're gonna boot out a lot of people people's ability to grow their own food right next to the school. I mean, these are these are, like, really small plots, but the excess food goes to the food shelf. It is shared with helping hands. It is given to neighbors. It is given to elderly people who can no longer grow their own field. This is the way the town takes care of itself. We do not want in any way to restrict anybody's ability to grow food. But, frankly, I don't want anybody to tell me I can't have two cows or 10 chickens. I like the fact that my neighbor down the road on on the road grows chickens, and I get to buy her eggs. I I don't wanna see any of that go away, and I don't think anyone would purposefully do it. But I think there are inadvertent unintended consequences when select boards are asked to make decisions that they don't fully understand the implications of.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Chairman, President Nelson has had his hand up for a bit, so let's let him jump in here.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Thank you, chair. No, you're exactly right. And just as administrations change in Washington, things will change. Things will change in our small towns in Vermont and you're right, select boards can change. We have a large dairy farm which is probably now going to be in tier 1B and I don't, we shouldn't have to fall under the whims of changing school boards and we need to really get this right to the municipal regulation and get tier and and make sure that agriculture stays out of act two fifty wherever it is. So thank you for for your comments. I really appreciate them.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Representative Lipsky.

[Unidentified Representative (St. Albans area; former dairy farmer/selectboard member)]: I just

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: know that I'm stressed that many of the folks on this committee may not know that it's probably the only

[Mary Linehan (Strafford Selectboard member and small farmer)]: My parents were across the road. Yep. We're up in there.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: Equestrians. Talking about it. That's

[Mary Linehan (Strafford Selectboard member and small farmer)]: The gold winning team in 1976. Four of the members came from Stratford.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: But just because knowledge matters.

[Unidentified committee member/staff]: They don't want to go up there.

[Mary Linehan (Strafford Selectboard member and small farmer)]: We don't want our farm to go away. Yeah.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: We can always count on representative Lipsky to make sure we're well informed on Olympic. A rare sport, not summer dinner. Representative O'Brien.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: That was what I was gonna say. I mean, a town that still feels agricultural, it's really the equine has been doing it because when I went to school there with you, how many dairy farms were there, and now there's just got four organic green

[Mary Linehan (Strafford Selectboard member and small farmer)]: That's right. There were four on the main road, and they're there as farms, but they are dramatically reduced. Are you a 10 acre or? I'm an 18 acre. So just under the thing. The town. The town. Mean 10 acre? Zohoning? We have Zohoning. We just rolled out the unified bylaws. And let me tell you, that is not fun. Terrible. We are having so many lawsuits over this, which again, I worry that this would only add to the town's strife over how to restrict use of land.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I think we need to move ahead here. Do you have two more?

[Unidentified committee member/staff]: I think we have Foster on the screen. I just want to offer one point of clarification related to Mary's testimony. I serve on the Two Rivers Regional Planning Commission as commissioner representing Youth and More. And while Strapard is not attached to the septic system, the regional maps, they map village areas and in theory, any village area in the long run could apply, but one day become tier one B. And the zoning authority issue and where agriculture may be or may not, it's not just a matter of tier one A and B, but it's really a matter of the map in general. So in the map, there's going to be rural areas that are going to be designated for agriculture and forestry use. Towns based on the regional plan are going to be incentivized to basically develop the village centers where there's agriculture and to push agriculture out to the green areas that are more clearly designated in the plan on the map as suitable for agricultural use, a town like Stratford that does have zoning based on the select board and how it might evolve over time, that could lead to zoning ordinances regardless of tier one A and B status that is that for agriculture and food growing practices are. So just a point of clarification on that. But I think Buster is on the

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: And then Buster

[Unidentified committee member/staff]: And then we have one more engine room if there's

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Okay. What about Michael?

[Unidentified committee member/staff]: Michael, Michael is joking. I mean, Michael is joking. Would

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: prefer shit. All right. Well, why don't we have Buster next? Okay. He

[Unidentified committee member/staff]: might need a clear time.

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

[Unidentified committee member/staff]: Maybe we start with Michael.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Okay, why don't

[Amber Perry (Vermont Farm Bureau)]: we start with Michael?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Then if Buster's available later today, could also, he might be. We can have him speak to us again or

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

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Okay. Good morning, Michael.

[Michael [last name unknown] (Battenkill Groves; Bennington County Conservation District)]: Good morning, representative Durfee, thank you all so much for taking the time to hear us out. You all have seen me in the past in my work with the Bennington County Conservation District. I'm largely taking that hat off today, and I'll be speaking to you all as a farmer and a constituent here in West Arlington, Vermont, where on our small diversified farm, Battenkill Groves, we raise sheep, poultry, chestnuts, and annual produce berries. Do a lot, grow a lot of different crops, and I have a formal educational background as an agroecologist. I wanted to talk about two primary issues today, the first being the right to grow, the second being the Act 181 changes. You all have heard a lot of testimony about the more urban core areas, but I'm gonna focus more on if my dog will stop trying to turn my laptop off. I wanted to be up there in person with y'all, but my lambs started dropping first thing this week. So pardon my rather disheveled appearance. I haven't slept more than two hours at a stretch in, like, a week and a half. So starting first with the right to grow, I wanna concur with the the sentiment around rabbits bleeding into the Bennington County Conservation District side of things. Representative Durfee, I sent you our official position regarding rabbits. We wrote that before we knew about the schedule f and reduction or increase in current use levels. So we we also think that those should not be incorporated in the session. But we've already talked about rabbits and I wanna focus the conversation on mushrooms. As an agroecologist and as someone who got my start of fifteen years ago in a small suburban backyard plot in Portland, Oregon, rabbits and mushrooms, I want to emphasize the really critical importance of the fungal kingdom in a resilient local food system in a way that I don't think has been brought before this committee in the past. Indoor mushroom cultivation especially is extremely efficient, high value add urban agricultural practice that is already occurring throughout the state at the small to medium scale. Here in Arlington, we have an incredible example of this with Soul Connection Farm, Pat and Casey McLaughlin, had hoped to make it today, but their kids have had some kind of croup for the last month and and they haven't been able to to get away from that. So I'm speaking a little bit on that. They're in the schedule 1B zone, believe, and produce a truly incredible amount of food out of a basement utilizing a waste stream from a local sawmill. They're not only helping the state meet our collective food security goals that have been spelled out in the Vermonters feeding Vermonters plan, the food security roadmap in the state agricultural plan to focus and produce more of our own food locally. But they're also helping the state meet its universal recycling goals that waste stream and waste streams like it would otherwise be diverted into a landfill or simply allowed to decompose on-site. By having these small scale, sometimes in a basement, sometimes in a shed, mushroom farms allows communities to support businesses that divert a waste stream provide a steady flow of really healthy proteins and other important nutrients out of something that would otherwise be completely wasted. Especially in these urban for as much as we can call a lot of these places urban agricultural activities, I feel personally and the organization I work for, even though I'm not speaking for them right now, as though this is a really critical component to long term food sovereignty in communities. The Sole Connection Farm example, that farm stand, especially while the Dollar General was shut down in town because the heat didn't work, other than Stewart's was pretty much the only place that anyone within the town of Arlington could go and buy fresh produce. The closest next option would be in Manchester or Bennington, which is about a thirty minute drive and is very difficult to access on public transportation. So just wanna if no one has brought mushroom indoor mushroom cultivation to your attention before, I just wanted to bring it to your attention now because it it's something that's really a missing piece of this discussion that I have noticed going on statewide. Also, yay rabbits. Can't can't say enough good things about all the experiences I've had with rabbit production. I wouldn't be where I am today owning a piece of ground and being able to farm at scale if I hadn't started with rabbits the way that Kirsten was was discussing. And then on the issue of increasing the income requirements for farms through the required agricultural practices, one of the main reasons that we, me, my family and my partner chose to purchase land in Vermont on a non ag conserved land that was super vulnerable to multi use property development outside of the village core and pay through the nose for the welcome to Vermont tax was because we two parcels, one in New York and one in Vermont just across the state line. When we were looking at comparing where do we want to really focus our efforts and energy and starting this business and scaling it up, New York versus Vermont, a huge part of that decision was the low barrier to entry required to start being designated a farm within the state of Vermont. In New York, it's closer to 10, it might have even been increased to $15,000 per year in revenue flowing through the business. In Vermont, it was 2,000. So for us, that part made Vermont put Vermont up in our estimation because under the current RAPs in order to be considered a small farm, we had to have a minimum of 15 sheep. We purchased those sheep, we got breeding stock on top of that. And even with, it was a terrible year for grazing as you all know, but even with that small herd meeting those required agricultural practices, we just barely cleared that $2,000 threshold. I think we netted a total of $2,300 off of those 15 sheep, just because the grazing year was so bad. And if that had happened in New York, we would have been a year behind schedule and getting our current use appraisal done. It really would have negatively impacted us and we would have had to invest a lot more money upfront in fencing, in stock, in watering infrastructure, and all of these things that would have made it prohibitive to try and purchase a property and start a business that's helping meet a lot of the state's both food security and conservation goals. Moving on to Act 181, this was another key consideration that we looked into when we were deciding on purchasing a property with home site. Under the previous iteration of Act two fifty that allowed for much more flexible construction of on farm buildings, accessory dwelling units, etc. Vermont really stood head and shoulders above New York in our ability to work with the agency of agriculture to build barns, potentially with farm worker housing located above the barn for myself and my partner to be able to move out of the main house and get our family going. Under these new restrictions, we're having to very seriously consider once 2027 rolls around and all of these new regulations come into full force and effect for the tier three areas. Do we keep going in Vermont? Or do we try and shift our production and our land acquisition and leasing strategy now that we've established in Vermont for a home site, do we not continue trying to increase production in the state of Vermont? Because I'm looking right now at a parcel up in Rupert. It's about 120 acres that would really allow us to expand our production and make it a long term viable business that would take me hopefully retire me out of the district manager role at some point. I would pay roughly $3,200 an acre for that ground. It's relatively degraded. Or I could go hop right across the state line into New York, where I'm now going to be facing really similar restrictions on construction on road input, but pay less than half the per acre cost for the land itself. So as we're all struggling with this issue of needing young people to move into the state, people moving out of the state because of lack of opportunity, I feel as though it's really important to emphasize that my over the last four years, I've met with hundreds of producers all over this state, The young beginning farmers have a very typical track. They like you've heard today, will start very small, sometimes within a village area so that they can get something started and then they'll either lease or purchase land in a more rural setting to expand their operations. But if these changes go into effect, the removal of schedule F increasing the amount of revenue required, increased zoning regulations, having to run plans through a much more rigorous and expensive process, you're going to have even fewer young people moving into the state. And every aspect of what the state is trying to do, what the Vermont brand is of building local food systems that can rely on local food sovereignty starts to go away very quickly. So I respectfully submit that as a state and as a now citizen and taxpayer of the state that we not continue to shoot ourselves in the foot and discourage people like Pat and Cassie McLaughlin, people like myself, people like Kirsten, people like all the young small farmers who've moved to this state with a dream and not a lot of money in the bank account, but nevertheless persist and start those businesses and feed their communities. Stand with us. And I know that that's the intention and make sure that we're able to realistically and reasonably follow the rules, but follow rules that allow for us to be successful and start because the starting is the hardest part. I'll pause for questions. I had a script, I went off of it really horribly. It just tends to be my way. And representative Durfee, if other folks are interested, knowing the caveat that the district also supports rural Vermont in their quest to keep the RIP requirements at $2,000 and everything else that's been said here are fully fleshed out argument on why right to grow should be looked at through an eco lot, agro ecological lens and a whole diet lens, rather than only looking at plants or only looking at livestock, looking at it as a systemic whole. I'd be happy to distribute that position paper or representative Durfee can share it with you all since I sent it to him.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah. Feel free to send it to the committee. That's fine. I think we've already posted it, but doesn't hurt to have a second round. We I wanna note that we are, a, a bit over time, b, we haven't had a break, and some of us haven't gotten out of our chairs in two hours. I don't I know we had Buster, and I I don't know if Buster's if we're sitting in, but we I'm hoping we can maybe have him this afternoon. He was I know he was available this afternoon.

[Unidentified committee member/staff]: He's he's helpful. Be that too

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: young. Okay. A question or two just for Michael. Let's start with Yeah. Just a comment.

[Unidentified Representative (St. Albans area; former dairy farmer/selectboard member)]: These towns, we're all talking house, we don't have. A lot of these select younger I'm like 30 years old, been in next select board member. When you take, if it's an acre or a 100 acres, you put a house on, And the goal we're gonna go to Grand Lakes, but that house needs fire protection, that house needs a road plow, that house sends people and kids to school, and it costs a lot of money a town and the push is to get more and more housing. But in the end, the tax rate will go through the roof. In open land in St. Albans town, have hundreds of thousands of acres in Paramount. And if that disappears, it's gonna be very hard to live here.

[Mary Linehan (Strafford Selectboard member and small farmer)]: Not good for the state. Yeah.

[Unidentified Representative (St. Albans area; former dairy farmer/selectboard member)]: I know I get bad when I do rotational grading. I have paddocks along the road. When the car pulls up, the driveway wants to know if it can buy Subdivision Number 3.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Representative Bartholomew. Once we get past crossover and hopefully find some time, I'd like to petition for a primer on mushroom farming. Yeah. That would be useful. We've talked about mushrooms on this committee before. Representative Bos-

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: Yeah, that's actually just what I was gonna say. Michael, I appreciate you bringing up the mushrooms. It's true we don't hear about that very often here. Although two years ago, we did the Vermont State Mushroom Bill, and we had lots and lots and lots of mushroom testimony here. But in the last two years since then, haven't. So I would love to hear more about that. And I do think it's an important resource.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: There may be some ambiguity too, as far as how this state classifies or interprets mushroom growing and agriculture.

[Michael [last name unknown] (Battenkill Groves; Bennington County Conservation District)]: There's I can speak to that briefly. Currently, outdoor mushroom farming is really highly encouraged. It's available for grant programs like the Working Lands Enterprise Board. However, indoor mushroom farming, is one of the few rare forms of controlled environment agriculture that consistently turns profit and there's a multi billion dollar and growing industry around it that's accessible to producers at a small scale at a commodity rate that generates a livelihood with dignity. That level of activity, the indoor mushroom cultivation that is we view and I view is really critical is not considered an agricultural activity. It's almost treated the same way that cannabis is in a lot of ways. It's excluded from all state grant programs. There's no technical assistance available for it in the state outside of maybe myself. I'm the only one that I'm aware of that gives technical assistance on indoor mushroom cultivation statewide. And the consideration around waste management and integrating and encouraging small scale local mushroom cultivation as a waste management technique, I don't think has ever been addressed. So I'd be happy to come back and talk about that some more.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah, I think that would be great. And and I think that is something that we could we could try and tackle this year. Yeah. After even even after crossover. Yeah. Alright. I wanna say thank you to everybody who testified and those who didn't testify also for joining us and helping, us better understand concerns and hearing what you had to say. So thank you. We will take a short break. Not too long because we have another witness who may have already joined us online. He's just coming. Okay,

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: could you?

[Unidentified committee member/staff]: It's a good medium, but we

[Caroline Gordon (Legislative Director, Rural Vermont)]: can to next.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Well, to our next witness would be five minutes.