Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. David Durfee — Chair]: Here, set aside a little bit of time to hear from the maple industry and get an update from our ag agency on state of maple and hear from folks doing research. And we're going to be spreading those out over the next day, I guess, day or so. But we're happy to have the Maple Sugar Makers Association. And Alison, thank you for joining us again.

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: Yeah. Thanks for having me. I just wanted to give a brief overview because it's on the record and then talk to you about things that are sort of in my lens or what I'm hearing from folks. We've been around since 1893. We'll be around long after I'm dead. But it's turning out to be a good season, and I know that also because of who is or is not at the table. I like to paint a picture of who Vermont Maple is, so who are sugar makers, because I think it's just such a fascinating cross section of the state, right? It's a mishmash of folks who have different political beliefs, live in different parts of the states. Some of them own their forests, some of them don't. Our membership is made up of folks who are current and retired producers of all scales, large and small, 450,000 taps and one tap and everything in between. And that's the joy of what brings this group together is that if you're tapping a few trees in your backyard, it's a pretty low barrier to entry. If you want to start a rowing, you need some capital or some grant funding to help you do that. But just to get started and catch the bug, it's pretty easy. We have bulk packers and co packers. You all know we have one of the largest co packers of maple syrup in our backyard, Butternut Mountain Farm. They also have their 30,000 tap operation right there. We have equipment manufacturers, and we're lucky that they all have bricks and mortar in the state in Franklin County. So Dominion and Grimm and LaPierre and CDL and leader now H2O Innovation all have storefronts there and originate from Canada, which brings up interesting conversations about tariffs. Maple related businesses, industry researchers like the ones you'll be talking about, foresters and other forest management professionals. And then they all have different attributes. Some of them are enrolled in UVA, and some of them are organic certified, and some of them are certified through our food safety operations. Some of them are civically engaged. Some are in your room. Some of them are on school boards. Retired and active military, we have a lot of that in our house too. Teachers, we have a lot of multigenerational operations. And so all of the policies that you make here affect these folks on a number of different levels. And it's just fun to sort of pull back and think about that beyond just the maple production. And here are some of our pictures from this year's successful Maple Open House, which was just that first weekend of spring, twenty first and twenty second. And what do we do for all of these wonderful folks? We like to use the acronym MAPLE. We do a lot of marketing, advocacy, which is some of what we're doing here, partnership, legacy and leadership, and a lot of education and best practices. We always talk about how if you're a sugar maker, you have to be an engineer, a mechanic, a food safety expert, a forester. You have to know about soil science. You have to know about invasive species. You have to know how to build a roadway and manage water. There's a whole host of things that you have to be able to figure out. And then you have to be able to tell your story if you're going to do more than sell it in bulk. And so we work with folks in a lot of these areas. We had some great headlines this year. We were on the front page of The Boston Globe last week talking about maple and climate change. And the joy of having an association is that we are a point of contact. We're an easy point of contact for media. They don't have to figure out who to call. We can make those connections for them. And so when The Globe or this year it was The New York Times as well, or anybody else comes calling, we can say, Hey, I hear you on the topic that you want to write about. Here are some folks. Now that we have the food safety certification program, I can feel really confident that I know you are top notch. I know you've gone above and beyond for what you need to do. And so I'm going to send reporters more often your way so that they can take pictures and have those conversations. And it fully reflects what we're looking for in the industry. The Boston Globe was really looking at climate resiliency. And so they talked to Marcus Lehardt, who you'll hear from tomorrow, and Doctor. Ruddemacher, who runs the Procter and Maple Research Center. They went to the Brannant family Maple Orchard, who's a sugar house certified operation in Fairfield. And they went to Baird Farm in North Chittenden, where you see on the front page. And that's great news. I mean, Baird Farm is a hop, skip, and a jump from Boston and a lot of the readers in the population areas. So it's really wonderful to be able to engage with them and let folks know that, well, we make most of the maple syrup in the in the country. We make 12% of the world's maple syrup. We should be in the news scene and really talked about in terms of the cutting edge of research because folks look to us for that information. And then food and wine and other places during sugaring season. Maple is an easy topic to talk about. It doesn't take up a lot of bandwidth in terms of like, we want you to use this as your local sweetener. This is Judd's farm way up in Morgan that food and wine covered for where to go.

[Rep. John O’Brien — Member]: Representative O'Brien, question? Oh, just quickly, it's not this after media, but I was in a restaurant and in Olde Bismar, across the fence, was doing something on a So, big

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: across the fence, did Maple Week. So I was on the first part of Maple Week leading up to Maple Open Weekend. I always talk about Maple Open House Weekend and the association. And then they've gotten into this habit of making something nice for them. So I made a gooey maple butter cake, and then I always just leave it there. And this time I did a maple gin mule, and so I always model a cocktail there as well. Mark Islehart was on. Tim Murttemacher was on talking about the Maple Club and what he's been doing in his couple of years at Procter. And they went to Brannan's again in Fairfield. And of course, because it's March Madness, I think some of those didn't make the week we had to push them up to another week because college basketball. But we've had we had some really nice coverage this year, and it's a fun topic to talk about, and it matters. It matters for agritourism, and it matters for family farms, and it matters for our forests. We do an awful lot of maple marketing inside and outside of the state. So Maple Open House Weekend is a huge example of that. We get a lot of folks from outside of the state. We get a lot of phone calls from people who are trying to plan their trip. So this year, we took a page from tourism and used and it feels uncomfortable, I think, a Vermonter to use tourism's names for the different part of the state. Like, I think you're down in the Shires. And so like it's but but that's what like, I'm not the demographic for open house weekend necessarily when we're talking about that. So we created itineraries based on tourism's different parts of the state with everyone who is in that section. So you could pick one or all and just do your own driving tour. And folks had a great weekend. Some folks set aside sap. Some folks added a little water so that they had something to boil. But there's so much to see, and there's so many great stories. You've heard me talk ad nauseam about the Big E. That bottom picture is Ken Hastings from Bread Loaf View Farm in Cornwall and Brian, who works with him there in our Big E booth. We partnered with the Agency of Agriculture this last summer and had a heavy lift of creating a brand new website for the association on a very short timeline based on when their USDA Acer funding that was a carryover from 2021 was going to expire. So it was welcomed and painful all at the same time. And we're still sort of fine tuning that website. It really is beneficial on a consumer facing side to really market to consumers. It's been really helpful.

[Rep. David Durfee — Chair]: Grant? Yeah.

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: So the agency often has they have in the past had regular USDA ACER funding, so for the ACER Access and Development Program. And we had been down to the USDA earlier this month to talk to them about how we'd like to see that program going. But the agency was hanging on to grant funds, they had put in part of their project proposal that got funded that they would create a new Maple website and then realized they didn't have staff to create nor continue to maintain. It takes a lot of work to maintain a website and keep it refreshed, and that they had an association that could do that. And so we worked closely with Madison Barry over there to to make that happen, and we're super grateful for that. We do a lot with social media. We have the BMSMA branded containers. So the ones that have this logo on the front are association containers, and the association hid that branding. We continually update the nutrition facts panel to make sure it meets the standard. If our members have their own private label, I give them our fax panel because that's part of membership. You can use that updated nutrition fax panel, which the feds like to touch fairly regularly. And then we get a royalty from the sale of those containers. So those containers help fund our work. And also, they have our website on them, which means that when people have a question, they're calling me, they're calling Ellie, or they're calling Cara. And we get to be What I put down here is the Maple two eleven for consumers. So we're the central point of contact. If somebody has a question, they'll just call us or they'll email us. It's really helpful to have. Sugar House certification, we're the only association in the country, and I would hazard to say North America, that has a third party food safety certification program that's voluntary, that was created by sugar makers for sugar makers. And it takes every best practice and food safety regulation and puts it into a program. You can read those resources for free. You don't have to sign up if you don't want to, if you want to self assess instead. The education and the information is really the point. And so we have presented on that across the region into different states to talk to them about that program. All we want to do as an association is make sure that we're continuing to uphold that brand and that quality and that consumer promise, and it's really important to us. We'll probably be doing another open certification during the Maple Festival in April. Sugar makers are already collecting there to go to the open houses at dealers. And so an open certification is just someone who says, I'll open my sugar house. I'm going to let people walk around, and I'm going to do this on-site visit as part of the certification in front of people, which that takes a certain kind of sugar maker to agree to answer those questions and let people see sort of behind their own curtain. So we'll do that. And then I don't know if anyone ever talks about this, but I really appreciate the Vermont Brochure Program and the welcome centers. All, as a state, we have some really great managers of welcome centers. And the woman who runs the Vermont Brochure Program is communicative and right on task. She's great to work with. And so we pay a small fee. It's like $1,500 a year. And then we get brochures in every welcome center in the state. And so we, of course, pay for those brochures. But we put these consumer guides in every single welcome center in the state. So if anybody's looking for maple, they have our website, they have recipes, they have information on how it's made, they could just take it with them. And that's huge that the state maintains that. And this year, because I'm close to Linden and Bradford, I talked to the managers of those welcome centers, and we put up Maple Open House Weekend displays in those welcome centers. They have some beautiful display cases. And we try to make use of them. And I put those welcome centers on every single one of the press releases we put out so that they know how to talk to their visitors about Maple, which is pretty great. They're a good crew. On the scope, I have a bigger number for you this year than I normally do. Mark Islehart puts together this chart just based on USDA National Ag Statistics Service data, which will always add the caveat, we think is an undercount of the industry, but it's getting better. They have a shorter survey that they started with our help. In 2005, believe it or not, we were making under a million gallons production in the state. And last year, we made over 3,000,000. I dare I mean, tell me any other ag or forestry crop or product that comes to you and says, we've had 650% growth in twenty years.

[Rep. Richard Nelson — Ranking Member]: There are price in milk like we had at 650% growth a year,

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: but Yeah. This is just production. Yeah. Yeah.

[Rep. Richard Nelson — Ranking Member]: It's amazing. And the price, maybe not enough, but it it's held steady?

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: It's held steady. And so, like, that is one of the things I mean, these lines are beautiful, and we love to see them. And our our portion of what the world makes is continuing to grow from the 12% we're at. But it's the same with any kind of farming. The input costs continue to go up. And for us, the market price is a little different for maple syrup. It is, for most folks, a nice to have. I think of it in my house as a pantry staple, as the world's largest consumer of maple syrup. I go through an awful lot of it. But but for others, it's a it's a pantry staple. And I think during COVID, it it creeped towards more I want to know where my food comes from. I want to use more all natural single ingredient sweeteners. And and we're making headway. But the shelf price is the shelf price, right? And we all benefit from maple syrup, pure maple syrup, being in every grocery store. When I was a kid, you couldn't go to Hannaford's or Price Chopper and find tofu on the grocery shelves. You had to go to the food co op to do that. Now you go across the country and you can find tofu on every conventional grocery shelf everywhere. Even the little locally owned white's market in Lindenville always has tofu. It has monpelier rhapsody tempeh. It has kimchi. Maple syrup is the same way. You can go into any conventional grocery store across the country, very far away from maple producing states, and you can find pure maple syrup. Sometimes it's a blend of US and Canada. Sometimes it's full on Canada. But what we want is for people to be able to show up and find pure maple syrup. Eventually, they'll find Vermont. They'll find us. Maybe they'll get connected with a producer. But it's that rising tide lifts all boats. But it comes at a cost. And so those contracts are won or lost on pennies. And there isn't much flexibility in that retail price. You go up too much and you're going to lose your shelf space. So it's a difficult one. My understanding is the bulk price went up a little bit this year. If you talk to anyone who sells bulk, they're always going to tell you the bulk price is too low. A lot of sugar makers that I talk to don't put all of their eggs in the bulk basket. So they might make some value added products. They might sell some retail. They might sell some wholesale, and they might sell some bulk. The bulk market also means that if it's not a great year and you have some buddy syrup or some not so great tasting syrup at the end of the year that's not grade A, you can't put in a retail container, you still have a market for it. And for some people, that can make a huge difference in a bad sugaring year. So it matters. And frankly, 85% of the syrup that's made in Vermont or thereabouts is sold to a bull packer. 85.

[Rep. David Durfee — Chair]: 85.

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: Yep. And that doesn't mean that some of those people aren't also selling retail. But it's hard to sell retail. It's hard to sell retail. It takes a lot of extra effort.

[Rep. David Durfee — Chair]: Representative O'Brien had a question. Yeah, I just wondered, following up on Richard,

[Rep. John O’Brien — Member]: in dairy, because the milk price has been so stagnant, the efficiencies have come in inputs. And I wondered if the maple world's doing that also or grow because we've seen, I was growing up 4,000 pounds, it's a lot.

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: Yeah, it was, right? And now it's like, Oh, you might kind of have to have an off farm job to Yeah, make that Although for the sealsation, that's our bread and butter, and that's a good size operation. It is a yes and answer. Like, yes, savings come through innovation. And also, innovation helps with climate mitigation, frankly. Folks who are on gravity fed systems and buckets or not using reverse osmosis to concentrate their sap to lessen the time on the evaporator notice a difference more than folks who are availing themselves of technology. But also it means that when the sap flows, if you have enough storage, you can boil when it works for you. And you don't necessarily need to staff until one in the morning, which also means you could show up for your off farm job if you needed to. So you get to time it a little bit differently between sap flows if you can keep that sap at an appropriate temperature. The folks who have availed themselves of technology have lessened the impact over the last fifteen years of climate change. My concern is that climate change is going to continue to grow like this scale here, and I don't see huge leaps in the next ten years in technology necessarily. Like you can get a bigger reverse osmosis machine. They're very expensive. But we've kept pace. And now I'm curious what that looks like in the next ten years.

[Rep. Richard Nelson — Ranking Member]: Well, you you think of the innovations in Maple done at Procter and the tap the tap now and the tap size, and it's allowing them to tap it in in the my buddy's bush in the edge of Williston. He taps in December and got a run. Then got one in January.

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: It's very common if you have if you do that algebraic equation, so the Brannan's in Fairfield we were talking about. Well, there are lot of Brannan's. Cecile and Tom and kids in Fairfield. They have enough taps that they tap in December because if they didn't, they wouldn't be fully tapped out by the time the sap was really running and that they needed to bring in most of their crop. And so there, you usually see them on the news in the December as like the first run, not always the first run, clearly, but the first run of the season. And sometimes smaller sugar makers are shocked because, you know, there are some sugar makers who are smaller and still don't start tapping until town meeting, which is what we used to do.

[Rep. Richard Nelson — Ranking Member]: And the pipeline monitors vacuum and going to their phones so they don't have to walk all 762 miles of tubing to find the leak. They can look to the line.

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: The sensors will tell them how high their vacuum system is working, so what percentage it's working at. And then they can go out to that section of the line and say, Oh, this line is usually it's colored red on their screen. And so then they can go out to that red section and it saves time. You all know in order to tap trees, you have to touch every single tree multiple times a year, and you are walking what feels like that old school uphill both ways. And this year, was in the snow literally all the time. And so it was a tough year to tap. We saw all sorts of pictures of people tapping on ladders this year, which is going to make fun when you have to go pull those taps. But that's going to look like what a joy. Right? So it's hard work. Any time you can create efficiencies, it matters. But it's hard to find labor. And so that is definitely one of the top two on here. So climate resiliency, those weather patterns. And I know the farm security fund is out there. It needs to be funded. But the idea of how crop farmers are impacted is very different and can be very different from how maple farmers are impacted in terms of the high wind events. I heard from Goodriches out on route to that that high wind event we had in December was so localized, but they got it. And they got hit. And so when I talked to their lead woods guy this weekend, they finished tapping just the end of this month, so just recently, because they had so much cleanup to do from December. And I say they finished tapping, but what they said is that they didn't actually tap out. They left a part of their woods untapped because they just didn't have time to get to it. And that's that's impactful. But it's not impactful enough that I can call, you know, Wendy at the state FSA office and say like, hey, we need emergency funds because it matters how many people were impacted and there weren't enough people to release any FSA funds, which I think is where that farm security bill comes into play.

[Rep. David Durfee — Chair]: And, Vasan?

[Unidentified member ('Vasan')]: I'm wondering your final bullet, the connection between Act 181 and maple syrup.

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: Yeah, me too. So for me, I'm in listening phase. I think there are a lot of people calling, asking us to sort of get on the bandwagon and have an opinion. And I think it matters where people are located, and I think it matters what people's situation is. My goal in April, May, and June is to share fact based information with people. I feel like a lot of what we're hearing on both sides of ACT 181 is very much short sound bites, which is a lot of what we hear when we have contentious stuff coming up. I'm sure it's the same with the education consolidation conversation. Right? And what I want is I want and I hear from a lot of sugar makers either that they're not happy with it or we're eggs, so we're exempt. Right? And and both those things are true and also not true. And so if you're a sugar maker and your sugarbush is below 2,500 feet in elevation, then you're mostly exempt unless you live on the same property that your sugar house is on. And you get into these nuances of, do you want to set aside land for your kids. And is that land that you're setting aside pretty far away from the state or town maintained road? And how does that affect your driveway length? And so I want to offer our members information based on what the Land Use Review Board is trying to create to help enact what you all passed and give them some information about how it might affect their situation and also invite folks in to answer their questions. So our spring newsletter will have an article from me about ACT 181 with information sharing that is nonpartisan because our group is a huge tent. And so you can feel however you want to feel. I just want people to have the information to make an informed decision. We have Maple Summit that is my next and last slide at Proctor this year on June 9, where we get movers and shakers and larger folks and researchers in the same room. And my goal is to have someone from the Land Use Review Board come and talk to that group and answer questions as well. I had a long conversation with one of them. They're eager for comments. They are getting into the weeds on it. They can answer questions about situations. And I want folks to feel informed, I don't want them to bypass it or not pay attention because they think ag is exempt, because it's true and it's not true. There's some nuance there. In terms of tariffs and the Canada, US, Mexico agreement, that's not you all, but boy, it plays a role, especially in terms of steel and aluminum and sap storage and tanks and the equipment that's coming across mostly from Canada. And we sidestepped a lot of that the last time around because the Canadian equipment manufacturers stopped coming, and they preloaded their inventory. But we're at the point now where that inventory is mostly gone, and they're going to be taking orders at the open houses in April during Maple Festival. And so I'm curious how that's going to work out for them. And I keep hearing comments about reopening Kuzma that replaced the NAFTA. There's And a lot of maple in there that's at zero tariff. And so it makes

[Rep. David Durfee — Chair]: my heart rate a little faster. I didn't read. I saw maybe just a headline of an article on labor and using HIVs

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: as Yes, there a private is some. It's hard, and it takes a certain person. So at our December conference, I invited Reed Miller from Dwight Miller Orchard, who's one of our members, has a very successful orchard and is a sugar maker. He uses visa workers in his orchard for a long time, and now he's using them in his sugar bush. And so he came and talked about his approach, which is a wonderfully holistic approach that I love hearing about. He does a great job with his visa workers, and he is a great ambassador for that sort of program. Most folks use third parties. It works. It takes more care and oversight than it otherwise would. And so you have to As sugar maker, know thyself, right? You sort of have to know what have capacity for in any given season, what that oversight looks like. And then it comes with all sorts of rules and regulations that you need to understand, which is why people usually use third parties. So there are pockets of folks using visa migrant labor, for sure.

[Rep. David Durfee — Chair]: So we've taken some testimony, so it's fresh enough that we remember. We don't always remember.

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: You take a lot.

[Rep. David Durfee — Chair]: Yeah, and obviously, housing is part of the rules of And it occurs to me that if you are in the business of growing apples and you're already using migrant workers, then you have housing.

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: Right, exactly. You have housing and you already have this system for oversight, reporting, training. You understand. So it really makes sense if you're going to use them in your orchard that you could keep them keep them longer or bring other folks in for your sugarbush. And then, of course, in Parity, you have to offer domestic workers. You have to advertise for domestic workers and you have to offer them the same solution, which might make it easier to find domestic workers because gosh darn, I'm pointing out the obvious here, but it's expensive to find a place to live in Vermont if you can find a place to live and then if you can afford it. And so if you are working for an operation that has visa workers, they have to offer you the same benefits as a domestic worker, which means they're offering you a place to live. It might not be the height of luxury, but it's going to have what you need.

[Rep. David Durfee — Chair]: Getting back to a 650% growth over the last couple of decades and how some of that is technology and it's allowed that. But imagine you also can't without do some increase in workforce.

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: Some increase in workforce and workforce that you want to find a way to keep year after year, because if you are hiring people who are not tapping your trees correctly, you will notice it on the back end. It will make a huge difference in the crop that you bring in. And so getting the right folks at the right pay to tap your trees correctly and then check the lines and look for leaks really matters, Makes a huge difference. Organic producers, which are a large swath of the industry because there used to be more of a financial incentive, but there still is a financial incentive for organic syrup from bulk buyers. We had an organic defoamer called Transo five eighty, which sounds really great, right? It was not the most effective. It's not as effective as the conventional defoamer, but it was tested by the industry. So Doctor. Abby Vandenburg, who used to work at a Procter and Maple Research Center, and Tim Perkins, Doctor. Tim Perkins, who used to run Procter, tested TransO-five 80, made sure it was effective for maple, made sure it didn't create any off flavors and shared some best practices around how to use it. That is no longer on the list for organic deformers. And so people are back to organic oils like organic safflower oil, which is fine, but also not super effective. And so at the end of the year, when you need more defoamer or you need a more effective defoamer, that's when a lot of organic producers will draw that line in the sand and say, all right, anything I make after this day is not certified organic. And I'm going to go to the conventional product, which is actually not going to impart off flavors if I use a little too much

[Rep. David Durfee — Chair]: of it.

[Rep. Richard Nelson — Ranking Member]: Can they go back and forth?

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: I think once you've crossed that line, I my guess is once you cross that line, there's no going back. So that's and it's the end of the year when you would when you would need it. And so I put in a request for federal earmark money this year. And one of those, it's like the whole host of quality related projects. And one of those projects is to work with Doctor. Brandenburg to create an organic deformer for the entire industry, an effective organic deformer that is tested. What I don't want is for people to start finding all sorts of different products that are on the list appropriate for maple syrup.

[Unidentified member ('Vasan')]: What does foam or maple?

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: So when you are making maple syrup, often it will create foam and bubble up. You're heating it and sometimes you're heating it quickly and you need to keep that foam down so it doesn't boil over and hurt your equipment. And so the former is like some people have automatic dosers that will just release and you can set how often and how much it releases. And a lot of folks just have what looks like a plastic ketchup bottle and they just go by and squeeze a little bit in.

[Unidentified member ('Vasan')]: What's the non organic defoamer strategy?

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: It's called Atmos. No, it's just not made with all organic materials. It is mostly filtered out. The industry is actually doing some really in-depth research with Canada right now on what defoamer is left. But defoamer is a de minimis part of the process. It really is just to help in processing. But you can't call your syrup organic if you're not using organic defoamer. So we're left with organic oils, which are okay, plenty of people use them, but they're not a great choice overall for the long term. Also, cost share has been problematic for folks in that I don't think they've received their checks since last year. So there's usually a 50% to 75% reimbursement rate. Some of it comes from our region and some of it comes from the feds. And that, of course, is always related to how the farm bill is doing and how we piecemeal passing the farm bill at the federal level. ACER funding is the same way. Helen Thomas, who runs the New York Association, one of our folks in DC from our International Trade Association, and myself went to DC at the beginning of the month talk to USDA and our congressional delegations about ACER funding. Congress has appropriated $6,000,000 in ACER funding for research for this year, which is an increase. And last year they decided not to release a notice of funding opportunity, and they just decided to reach back into who's got projects in the last couple of years. We're going to send you a note. You have two weeks to fill out this couple page form and tell us if you want a little bit more money for your project. There was no public application process whatsoever, even though Congress had appropriated millions of dollars for it. We have no idea how much they spent. And if they underspent, that money just goes back to the Treasury. My understanding is that didn't come from USDA. It came from management and budget. So we wanted to have a chitty chat about how that was working because this money is really important to the industry.

[Rep. Richard Nelson — Ranking Member]: Dave Nelson? Yeah. You're familiar with the email that went out or somehow got out to our maple producers back March, MS 204?

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: Oh, somebody posted that on a Facebook page. Yeah.

[Rep. Richard Nelson — Ranking Member]: I I got phone calls on that.

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: Me too.

[Rep. Richard Nelson — Ranking Member]: Very upset. Yeah. I said, sounds like a hoax to me. Which

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: is what you should always think when you read things on Facebook. Right? I I mean, that should be your first guess. Yes. So that there was this whole litany. Somebody posted, and I actually think I'm mortified that it was in the Lindenville's Facebook group. I don't even know if it went beyond that. And they're usually good about moderating from

[Rep. Richard Nelson — Ranking Member]: my producer, Will.

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: Well, because it gets shared like wildfire.

[Rep. Richard Nelson — Ranking Member]: Very upset, man.

[Unidentified member (likely from Stowe)]: I well, it's fine.

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: Oh. Said you you all were gonna levy tap fees and, like, all the things you would never do. I looked at that, and I

[Rep. Richard Nelson — Ranking Member]: was You had to measure your flow rate and report it every week, how many gallons of sap and what flow hearing about this.

[Rep. David Durfee — Chair]: Yeah. We have sophisticated salmon.

[Rep. Richard Nelson — Ranking Member]: It it it I

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: think it came from mains was what someone told me, and I was like, I can't even imagine anyone on the Golden Rule in Maine would ever put up

[Rep. David Durfee — Chair]: with But

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: I called Tucker Diego. I knew it was malarkey, but I wanted to make doubly sure when I started getting phone calls. And so I called Tucker over at the Agency of Ag, and he said, Yep, we've been getting calls. It's malarkey. And then Scott Waterman, their communications director, called and said, You know, I think we're not going to respond to this right now to add fuel to the fire. If you hear any more of it, let us know and we'll figure out a plan. But otherwise, if you agree, we're just going to let let it lie. And that post actually was deleted from the group that it was originally in. It was it I don't know what folks were trying to do, but we know better in Vermont, and we have access to the folks who make these decisions. But I know the agency doesn't have to do anything.

[Rep. Richard Nelson — Ranking Member]: That's a great thing about Vermont. The agency is accessible 20 fourseven.

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: I would

[Rep. John O’Brien — Member]: agree. Alessomina, this committee, we worked on heavy toxic metals in baby food and infant Yeah. And I'm just looking. So just could you speak to that? Sure.

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: So the state, the agency of agriculture decided to update this summer their lead action level for maple only from two fifty parts per billion to six. The thresholds at the federal level for baby food and drinking water are somewhere around 15 or 20. The Agency of Agriculture has been talking about this for years. Since before I've been around for six years in this role, the Agency of Ag has been talking about it for longer than that. Two fifty parts per billion is the going rate across the maple producing states in The US and in Canada, in Quebec. And so we've gone out on our own. There's nothing I can do about it, so I've decided to see it as an opportunity for more producer education. One of the goals of the federal earmark funding that I requested is we don't have any recent data, zero zilch none, on lead and maple syrup. So this was not this this felt more of a housekeeping move on the agency side and not because there's a problem. They didn't feel like they could stand behind the 250 parts per billion. Our sugar house certification program has zero zero tolerance for any lead introducing equipment, and we have a grant program to help get rid of it. So theoretically, we're on the same page. But it's big step to take, I think, without any data to understand the scope of the problem and no funding to help solve it if it is there. So part of what I asked the feds for through our senators' offices was some funding for our team to get syrup samples from across the state, different sizes of producers, from different types of operations, send it in for lead testing over the course of three years, and get some of that data. The last real set of data we have is from the '90s, and that's when you all might remember that someone was making apple cider in their old maple equipment. And because apple products and apples are so acidified, it was pulling anything it could out of that equipment. And there were some serious problems. And so over the years, and I have a graph for this, the action level has gone from like 3,000 parts per billion down to now in Vermont, it's six. And I would hazard a guess that the other maple producing states eventually will adopt that. So I've just seen it as an opportunity to continue to educate and talk to folks about the certification program. I mean, we certainly have a solution in Vermont with the certification program and the resources that we've already created. But it's a steep decline.

[Rep. David Durfee — Chair]: Is that enter only through interaction with equipment or is there naturally occurring?

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: So that is actually part of the opportunity in the conversation, right? There's long standing belief that it's naturally occurring. And there is no science that tells us that trees take up heavy metals in that way. We have no science that tells us that. We had a long conversation with Doctor. Perkins, who has since retired from Procter and Maple Research Center, who did the last round of data for lead and maple syrup. And so this for us has been a great opportunity to remind sugar makers it's the production and it's also roadside septic tanks. So if you have an uncovered roadside septic, road dust can be very high in lead, even though we gave up the dust on lead gasoline a long time ago. And so that's a really important piece of it. So it's the processing.

[Unidentified member (likely from Stowe)]: Alison, to fall off topic, the painting you

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: have. Isn't it beautiful?

[Unidentified member (likely from Stowe)]: Is that part of your collection, or is that the museum somewhere?

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: That is something that I commissioned this year. And do you recognize the artist? You live in Stowe, right? There's a Welcome to Stowe sign on the side of one of your buildings, and I believe that that mural was done by Tara Gurow. And when I worked at City Market, all of interior murals of the Southend store and the one exterior mural on the Burlington store, I hired Tara to do. And so I felt like we didn't have anything that brought together the history and the heritage of Maple into the foreground. And so I hired her to do a painting for us that we have started using on banners in the biggies, save the date postcards for Maple Open House weekend, and here.

[Unidentified member (likely from Stowe)]: Well, love art and that, and I need to have a painting by Eric Logan. Okay. Cathy's sugar operation with Tino horses and it's materially the most prized possession I have.

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: That's wonderful. Yeah, we have indigenous folks in the background and then we have birds and we understand that those birds are not there when snow is on the ground. We've took some artistic liberties with that. But we have the horses and then we have the tubing and the covered sap thing. We could commission that.

[Rep. David Durfee — Chair]: Right. Right.

[Rep. Richard Nelson — Ranking Member]: So your old maple cans Yeah. And Larry return of his team Sugar House up in Derby. Oh. And I would I used you know, we all had those old containers, and I'd love to find some again. Just to

[Rep. David Durfee — Chair]: Oh, I've seen one recently. Oh, yeah.

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: A lot of sugar makers have a display up top of the.

[Rep. Richard Nelson — Ranking Member]: Cans. The pinned ones with the lead solder. Right.

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: And the unlined ones that made your teeth tingle when you drank the syrup from them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're going to be coming out with tin aluminum cans that have the BMSMA logo on them because a lot of our sugar makers in Southern Vermont are interested in them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't put the emphasis on the right syllable.

[Rep. David Durfee — Chair]: This artwork seems to somehow take inspiration from the old artwork that you're talking about, Richard, on the cans or something.

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: It's What

[Rep. David Durfee — Chair]: about it?

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: She she does such an amazing job. If you're ever in Burlington and you go to either of those co ops, go to the South End one and look up. She does agriculture across the seasons that is above the registers in the South End store. And all I have to do is say, here's kind of what I'm thinking. And then she's very talented and we're lucky to have her in the state. So, yeah, the original is in my house. I'm not quite sure what

[Rep. David Durfee — Chair]: to do.

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: But we've had

[Rep. David Durfee — Chair]: it. Just as far as the lead goes, the agency is coming in tomorrow, so we can quiz them as well. But this was a change in the rules.

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: Yeah. So it's interesting. Right? I'll I'll be curious how they how they talk about it. Originally, they were telling us it wasn't an action level. But at the same time, they were telling us that that they could take action if your syrup tested over six parts per billion. So I'm calling it an action level because that's I mean, that's realistically what it is. And and I understand that they don't wanna talk about it all too much in the public eye because they're being sensitive to the fact that we don't want to give people the sense that there's a problem because there's not a problem. And so there isn't any documentation on their website currently about it. And the session that we had with some of our members and Tucker Diego was really in the early days of when this was happening. And there were some questions about, well, at what point would you do something about it? Would it have to hit double digits? Would it have to be more than double digits? And what's that process? And I don't think it's laid out yet. It's not part of their retail inspection because you have to send these things out to either the State Lab or Endyme. But my hope is that the association can find some funding to understand the scope and actually work with. If producers come up with a higher level, then we want to work with them individually and get them into the certification program and get rid of that problem. It benefits the entire industry. And the other one I wanted to point out was just electrification costs. We are pushing folks towards electricity and electrification of operations and cars and everything across the state and the cost of electricity continues to go up. And when you start to use more electricity in your sugar house, you run the risk of jumping from a residential rate to a commercial rate. And the difference is enormous in many cases. And you might get some flex if you happen to be in GMP's catchment area, but we don't get to choose our electrical providers. And so there are a lot of lesser resourced municipal options, and that means that you might not get off peak rates and you might have to pay for your transformer. There are games you can play to get around some of that. There are plenty of sugar makers who have multiple meters on their sugar house and and can shut some off and turn some on. And I'm curious why the state does not have or maybe hasn't considered an ag rate for electricity to support ag producers. Making people jump from residential to commercial is a big step. In some cases, especially in the Northeast Kingdom, has tripled electrical rates, which then doesn't really do much for the overall efficiency when you're adding technology to increase efficiency.

[Rep. John O’Brien — Member]: Who is it using all those electricity?

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: Reverse osmosis, mostly. And it depends on what their other equipment is doing. But an RO can get you over there. But an RO is highly efficient. And we have state sponsored programs through Efficiency Vermont that will help you buy an RO. So we are pushing people in this direction. And at the same time, we're pricing them out of it because municipalities and other companies, once you need a certain threshold for a very seasonal piece of work, once you need that threshold, they're going to charge you for that threshold. Your base rate goes up astronomically. So it's a difficult one. And then lastly, here's our Maple Summit. Would love to have representatives from House and Senegal joining us for part or all of the day. We're going to start with a tour of Mark Islehardt's Quality Lab that's at Procter. And then our plan is to have someone from the Land Review Board talking about the intersection of Sugaring and Act 181, everyone's favorite topic these days. And then we're gonna move into the federal landscape and the state landscape research, and then invite some folks from extension to join us for a flavor conversation.

[Rep. David Durfee — Chair]: You can't hear me start if I said we were gonna take a break from hearing about.

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: We're information. It's an informational conversation.

[Rep. David Durfee — Chair]: I appreciate that. We take ties together and nothing happens in a vacuum.

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: Nope, it certainly doesn't.

[Rep. David Durfee — Chair]: Good. Well, thank you for the update.

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: Yeah. Anytime. I

[Rep. David Durfee — Chair]: don't think that I had any sense of the growth over the last two decades in the market. It's really fascinating.

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: It's enormous. And so for me, I want to make sure that the state continues to support our sugar makers in a way that works for sugar makers and is informed by what they need and that we don't wait until there are huge problems like there are in other sectors of agriculture in Vermont that we continue to I don't know what I'm talking about that we just continue to support them along the way and understand their needs. These kinds of conversations are really a big piece of that. I'm going to leave you some stickers and here is that artwork again on the cover of our one of our latest newsletters and also the centerfold. So By

[Rep. Richard Nelson — Ranking Member]: the way, I was a good participant at Maple House weekend and ate enough maple syrup. My balls were ricocheting in my head for the of the day, bought something. Did everything you're supposed to do.

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: We thank you. We bought I send my staff out and actually give them a stipend to buy syrup. And so last year we went out sorry, you don't get a stipend for that. Last year, we bought 28 samples of maple syrup and then we get together. Montpelier is the central point for us. So we usually go to the Unitarian church. They have a nice small classroom that we rent. So last year we tasted all 28 samples and had about it. And this year we'll do the same in another week or so and talk about it. But thank you. I'd get you an itinerary just like that. Can get you going around.

[Rep. John O’Brien — Member]: Just quickly, Alison, to give us

[Rep. David Durfee — Chair]: some

[Rep. John O’Brien — Member]: context. Quebec is such a big producer. Are they seeing similar growth in the industry?

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: Well, so Quebec is different, right? Because they get to decide who gets to grow and how much. Are. Yes, yes. So they're the ones who have the reserve, right? And they have all the marketing money. And they make 73% of the world's maple syrup. And folks get told how many additional taps they can get. And so my understanding is that that reserve is a little smaller than it used to be, that they have sold it down. And so they increased some tap counts this last year. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, they're a different beast, we benefit from they spend $10 to $12,000,000 marketing maple syrup in The US. And we ride their coattails, which we don't have that kind of money, but it benefits. During the hours. Right? See, it's themed idea. Yeah. That's beautiful.

[Rep. John O’Brien — Member]: Very nice things about Maple. How much how much Vermont starts to go back by?

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: I don't know that any goes north. I think we sell all ours here. I think most of it comes down by the tractor trailer load. Yeah. Here. Here. Oh, yes. Okay. Yeah. Yep. Or it is purchased up there and stored up there, but used down here and blended. We don't make enough to fulfill the contracts that folks like Bascom's in New Hampshire and Butternut and Vermont and others have across the country. So they have to blend. Or Sugarman in Hardwick, they have to blend. And to me, I see that as we could continue to grow by 650%, and we could continue to supply. And that's Okay, which is great. Because when I started, people were like, I don't know if we should be telling people that they should grow their tap count because we're going to have some left. And that doesn't seem to be the case. The market seems to have grown for us.

[Rep. David Durfee — Chair]: Can you have a follow-up question, please? Oh, I didn't believe anything profound

[Unidentified member]: you said. Other than, you know, if you're touring vineyards, I'd say sampling wine as opposed to touring sugar houses is you don't have the imperative driving issue.

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: Right, exactly. You just get maybe a little shaky, but you could get that from the roads and the bumps too.

[Unidentified member (likely from Stowe)]: Well, Rep Nelson has figured out how to read his, poems after. That's just really

[Rep. Richard Nelson — Ranking Member]: Allison, does Quebec subsidize their maple industry, like, to do all the rest of their agriculture? Do you know?

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: That's a good question. My guess is probably a portion of it. Like, there's a difference there. And Quebec, honestly, Canada drives the price, the worldwide price for maple syrup. And you'll hear that from anybody who sells bulk. The bulk price mostly comes from what Canada is doing and how the US dollar is doing in relation to the Canadian dollar.

[Rep. Richard Nelson — Ranking Member]: They they keep so much of it. It stores so incredibly well.

[Rep. David Durfee — Chair]: It does.

[Rep. Richard Nelson — Ranking Member]: They keep it in storage.

[Rep. David Durfee — Chair]: Yes. And

[Rep. Richard Nelson — Ranking Member]: if we if if the trees were to bud tomorrow and everyone ended up with three quarters of a crop down here, they were we release enough to make it a 100%

[Unidentified member ('Vasan')]: per crop.

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: More a blend. Yeah. Although they're my understanding was that they were getting to the point where they might not be able to do that if they only hit three quarters of a crop. And folks like Bascome and Butternut do have us. I think they always carry a small reserve. They have contracts that they need to fulfill for places like Target and Whole Foods and Wegmans and the Costco syrup that you see and every other place. So they need to be able to supply those. Yeah, I think is Maple Grove in Johnsbury.

[Rep. Richard Nelson — Ranking Member]: And it's a blend, but it's better than now Germinal.

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: It is. And and I see so sugar sand does blends as well for, like, the wholesale market or, like, the Sodexo style market. And I think that gets some people a little upset, and I see it as a gateway drug. Right? If you're starting from a preference for table syrup and that preference comes from your childhood and what you were served, all our preferences come from how we were raised, then a blend is a price point and a flavor that you're used to. And eventually, we can get you to the pure stuff. But if we don't have an entry point for you and we're just gonna tell you it's all or nothing, then where's the gateway? We need to show you where the door is.

[Rep. David Durfee — Chair]: If representative flips you the last word, it'd mean to be better.

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: Okay. No.

[Unidentified member (likely from Stowe)]: This is typical of me off topic, but you know how in the pyramids they found honey that was five or 6,000 years old? Do you think the longevity of maple syrup has that kind of I

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: think honey doesn't mold. Packed correctly, it could, and the pyramids would probably have that chilling effect underneath. But my neighbor gave me some 55 year old syrup that came with her house when she bought it, and I sent it to the quality lab. We tried it, and then I sent it to the quality lab to Joanna and Marc to test, and I still have to give my neighbor her report. Was definitely processing grade syrup. It was not grade A. It was not delightful. Might mix it in a like granola or something, but I'm guessing, we all guess that maybe it wasn't so delightful when it went into the container either.

[Rep. David Durfee — Chair]: It's just it. Yeah. Alright. Alright. Alright, Allison, thank you very much.

[Allison Hope — Executive Director, Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association]: Thank so much. It's nice to see you all.

[Rep. David Durfee — Chair]: We're gonna take a short, short break, Patricia.