Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: A sense of whether we're in a place now where people are comfortable with that or want to continue committee conversation. So let's just, I don't want to spend too much time on this, but I just want to get a sense of where people are. So maybe John, you can let me know by voice vote or raising your hand. I'm gonna put

[Becky (Unidentified Committee Member)]: what we've come up with and I think it's time for government ops and their expertise to get a chance to ask questions you don't want to ask. Okay.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah, I'm okay with what we have as far as most of my questions are all about what happens in November and just the general sort of hemp slides into cannabis territory. A lot of unknowns, but I think the language is is still what we have. Okay. Good.

[Rep. John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: I think it was good. You mentioned that one change about changing taking off from processors. From processors. I think that changed. Thank

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: you.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Charles? Yeah. I'm okay with I'm okay with. Becky?

[Becky (Unidentified Committee Member)]: Yeah. I'm sure we like a creepy to source up. Okay.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: You know, we we we covered the right from the the possessor intermediaries, the licenses of bottling, you know, will be covered under the new new rules. You know, we talked about the the impacts of their fees for their different products, and, you know, that'll be we're gonna allow the c b c b CCB CCB to write rules on that, which we will get a look at. And if we don't like, we can weigh in. My biggest concern is still the movement of full spectrum distillate, but we can wait and see what happens between now and November and where it goes with the board and their rule making.

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

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: And, again, if we don't like it, we can weigh into it then. Mhmm. They they have they have assured me that they are mindful of what the industry needs, both industries, and it is two different industries there. Mhmm. You know, they can always peel out the isolates more from the full spectrum and do things with that as well. Thank

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: you. Yeah, and I believe that we each have our own areas of expertise, each committee, and that the committee may have more to say about this. It will be useful for us to hear. So the process is really, it's our bill, we'll ask them to look at this section and give us their feedback. And generally speaking, we will be open to their feedback, but that will be what happens next. Okay, good, thank you. I think we learned a lot about hemp over the past few weeks, so that's not a bad

[Bradley Shulman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: thing. Let us, if everybody is ready to steal themselves to jump back into the municipal regulation of agriculture.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah, so well, think Bradley, do you want to come up and just quickly walk us through it? Were you planning to So do while Bradley's getting set up here, just to refresh everyone's memory, the bill that we passed out on the floor was a standalone bill just dealing with this issue. And in the meantime, the Senate was working on the same question, and they put a different approach into the miscellaneous ag bill. Really And looked at that language. I think that the agency came in way back when in January, may have given up maybe language is very similar, maybe even identical to what ended up in the bill. But it's been a while, and we weren't really focusing on that approach. So the reason that I asked the agency Steve to come in today and Bradley to show us this language now is that the conversations have been continuing outside of this room. And I hear from the agency of agriculture that there's been some positive movement towards a solution that a compromise solution that is a little bit closer to the sedative version than to our version. So we I think ought to hear what that compromise language is just so that we know and can decide if we want to move ahead. I think the Senate Ag Committee is also going to be doing the same thing. To preface for that, I think we should just go back and see what's in the original bill. So Bradley, just quickly, I think, go through it again. Okay. Helpful. Then we'll have Steve come up.

[Bradley Shulman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. Bradley Shulman, Office of Legislative Counsel. So this is sections one through three of the Senate Miscellaneous Agriculture Bill, municipal regulation of agriculture sections. Section one is findings and intent. So you'll notice that section one calls out the Taft Street decision specifically, and it tells it it asserts that is the intent to overturn that decision and and to clarify that municipalities under ordinance by law shall not regulate farming, construction of farm structures as set forth in '24 VSA forty four thirteen d.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah. I think we can just actually go right to section two. Okay. Don't need to worry about that.

[Bradley Shulman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And, great. Great. Great. And so section two, there's it does similar things, just in different places. So you might recognize so this is forty four thirteen d. You'll recognize the cultivation or use of land for growing plants, in the house version, it's plants for food, including actually, the language is a little bit different, but what is included in the senate version is fiber and Christmas trees, and horticultural crops, whereas the house version more focuses on just plants for food.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Let's Let's see if I

[Bradley Shulman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: can suit.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Page where you are, Brad.

[Bradley Shulman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I am on page two. And then the raising feeding management of a small backyard poultry flock excluding roosters, is in this subsection, which prohibits a municipality from regulating, that activity. You'll recall that the house version put that into forward, the the numbers escaping me, but put it into a section that permits a municipality to do some regulation about that. Farming that meets the minimum threshold criteria, the required agricultural practices rule, and is therefore required to comply with the required agricultural practices rule. So this C towards the bottom of page two highlighted on the screen, essentially just restores the pre tax rate status quo to what we thought or what the state thought it was prior to that Supreme Court case, which is that if you are subject to the required agriculture practices rule, you are not subject to municipal regulation. The house version did carve out a couple of exceptions for that. This bill does not do that. And then also with the construction of farm structures as defined in the required agriculture practices rule, municipalities cannot regulate the construction of farm structures. We changed some definitions to clarify some definitions and add in poultry. Section three, is changes to the wraps. And, and so part of what the senate ag Committee did was focus more on changing the RAP's rule to change what activity will be subject to that rule. And in some instances, it will make it will increase the threshold to be regulated by the agency of agriculture. So we are on page four, line thirteen and fourteen. One of the changes is to increase the income threshold from $2,000 to $5,000. So if you have gross sales of $5,000 or more in a year, you are subject to the wraps rule. If you're preparing, tilling, or fertilizing, or harvesting crops for sale or for charitable contributions of farm crops that are allowable and are made to this organization, and they're unrelated to the owner of the land. So so this, permits people to be subject to the wraps rule if they're doing farming activity as defined here, but donating those crops and are no less than four contiguous acres in size. And then scrolling down to page five at the bottom. And, so we're chain so this, the senate bill changes some criteria, to be subject to the wraps with respect to raising, feeding, or management of livestock. So raising, feeding, or managing livestock on at least one and less than four contiguous acres and has a sufficient land bass land base for appropriate nutrient and waste management. And so this would permit the Secretary of Agriculture to come in on slots of land between one and four acres and regulate that so long as there's a sufficient land base for appropriate nutrient and waste management. And Steve might be able to talk a little bit more about this, but, you know, there might be some instances where people had the stock, the livestock, and that fit that definition, but there wasn't an appropriate base for nutrient and waste management. And so it didn't make sense for the agency of agriculture to regulate that, and that would permit municipal regulation. But seed might be able

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: to talk to you a little

[Bradley Shulman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: bit more about the kind of the nuance of what's getting at in there. Because the key difference with the Senate bill is that it's going at the wraps. Right? It's going at what does the agency regulate versus what does municipalities get to regulate. And the secretary has a discretion to determine after consultation with the appropriate municipal authority if the land base is adequate to properly manage the number or type of livestock while evaluating whether compliance of the wraps is reasonable or practical. Right? And so it's trying to get at some situations where there might be conflicts on parcels of land between one or four acres. The secretary of agriculture is is has a discretion to kind of confer with appropriate municipal panels to make that determination about who gets to essentially who gets to regulate it.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Bradley, would the one to four acres fall under wrap metrics or it's its own sort of special category that the secretary really gets to weigh in on whether it's appropriate for farming.

[Bradley Shulman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I mean, this would be, it falls under the wraps if you're raising, feeding, or management livestock on at least one in less than four contiguous acres and has sufficient land base for appropriate nutrient and waste management. So the secretary has to make that determination if that land base is sufficient for raising, feeding, managing livestock. And so you could have the land base, but you could have maybe a number of livestock that are not sufficient there. And then perhaps a municipality could then regulate that if the secretary of agriculture says there is not a sufficient land base.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: But it expands potential farms, I guess, we call them are farm homesteads, right?

[Bradley Shulman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Would actually yeah. Rats. Yeah. Does also On the flip side of that is also potentially bringing more farms into the rats. So so there might be some give and take in there in terms of how that that works out. That that is correct. Yeah.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: So if a farm was on three acres let me read this part up here. Less than four acres, so three and a half acres, And they had five buffalo on it. And they're subject They are subject to the wraps. Are there they subject to zoning?

[Bradley Shulman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: They they could potentially be subject to the wraps so long as there's a sufficient land base.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Land base to handle the nutrients. So if they collect their nutrients, they could export them off-site to another farmer that's subject to the rocks and can put them into his nutrient management plan to handle that?

[Bradley Shulman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That I'm less I'm less familiar with, about what they could do with the nutrients. I think with with respect to whether or not you

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Or if they had a suitable compost in site, they can compost them and sell the compost off-site.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Is that a Steve question?

[Bradley Shulman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I I I think so. I think so. Yeah. Yeah. If with with apologies. I'm a little I I'm just a touch confused there.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: That's fine.

[Bradley Shulman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Then section the f is amended. So what it is taking out is taking out the pathway to be regulated by the wraps by filing a ten forty f. And so taking out that pathway to be regulated by your wraps and replacing it with something that's different, right, is raising, feeding, or managing livestock on less than one contiguous acre or on between one and four contiguous acre in a municipality that lacks ordinances or bylaws to regulate livestock. And the secretary determines after opportunity for a hearing that the livestock are causing significant adverse water quality impacts, and the RAP should apply to protect water quality. So this is this is talking about another creating another pathway to be eligible or to be regulated by the RAPs If you're on, less than one contiguous acre or on between one and four contiguous acres and, in a municipality that lacks ordinances or bylaws, so lack zoning, the secretary can determine after an opportunity for a hearing that you are, having a significant impact on water and need to be subject to the RAPs. And then so this brings potentially brings more farmers into the the RAPs regulatory scheme to ensure water quality standards and things of that sort. So just kind of another way to do it on these smaller parcels.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Bradley, this language confuses me a little bit. So the first is the new language is raising on less than one acre. And then this or between one and four acres if the town doesn't have zoning essentially. What's the situation less than one acre in a town that doesn't have zoning?

[Bradley Shulman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So if it's less than one acre in a town, based on the plain reading of this language, on less than one acre in a town that doesn't have zoning, the secretary can determine after an opportunity for a hearing that the livestock are causing significant adverse water quality impacts, and then the farming activity should be subject to the wraps.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: So in a town that doesn't have zoning, it's anything under four acres?

[Bradley Shulman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Actually, for raising, feeding, and management of livestock, potentially for anything under four acres could come into the wraps if the secretary of agriculture makes that determination after opportunity for

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: a hearing. So the first the first section there, the the one less than one acre, that's any town. Yes. Regardless of zoning. Okay. And then one in four applies towns that don't have.

[Bradley Shulman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And I think that that is it. Yes. That's it for that piece. Okay. Good.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Questions? Bradley, all right, thank you, Bradley. Steve, you want to join us? Please. And while you're getting seated, Steve, so it appears to me we spent a lot of time looking at the numbers of animals that it takes to qualify, but 99 sheep or 58 cows, I'm not sure what the numbers are, ducks. So big numbers, a long list with numbers that qualify you if you're over four acres. But you can also qualify if you have $2,000 in sales or file a schedule f. So in reality, how often do you need to be looking at the numbers of animals to determine whether a farm is covered by their apps?

[Steve (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Sure. So it just depends on the circumstance. The I mean, the way that it's constructed, if you qualify, if you meet any of the criteria, you're a farm subject to the RAPs. So you might make it in four. You might meet that criteria in four different ways, or it might only be that you have $2,000 in sales. But there are some differences because keeping in mind that one of the objectives is waste management. If even if you have four acres and a certain number of animals, you're measuring waste. And so if you have 600 pigs on five acres, then it's obvious that something needs to be done with that waste. So even in that circumstance, even if you're not a commercial farm, you would still be subject to the REPs. Generally speaking, everything about the REPs talks about commercial farming only and not about raising your own food, raising homesteading. It's all about commercial, but with a land based requirement, it's land plus animals. So even if you're just raising your own horses for for fun, if you have 50 you have four horses, you have to meet the water quality requirement. So there are some differences. But generally speaking, it's all about commercial farming with that kind of exception.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah. Interesting. So so the horses, yes, you might have somebody who's got a few horses and they're not commercial business. It's their own horses that they need. Yeah. But if you've got 600 pigs, if you've got three pigs, I don't know how many pigs you would need before they're no longer just for feeding your family and becomes commercial.

[Steve (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Well, the so on the with the current construct, you need at least four acres to even fit if you're not selling anything. So so you you could have any number of pigs under four acres and you would not be subject to the RAPs unless you're actually a commercial farm as well. So that's a little bit of the of the disconnect. Right?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: But how often would you encounter and I don't maybe you're not the right person to be asking, but how often would one encounter a piece of property with more than a few pigs on it that wasn't in selling them commercially?

[Steve (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: I mean, the smallest places are the places we go to the least, so it's a little bit hard to answer that. But generally speaking, our RPs were designed so that if you are commercially farming, you should be covered by them. If you're raising your own animals, they're not really meant to apply unless you've got more than four acres. So where we tend to get involved in the smaller parcels is where our neighbors complaining. And so that might be about the three pigs. If somebody has blissfully three pigs and they're not selling them, they're raising some some them for themselves and no one's complaining, then it's probably not ever gonna get on our radar. But pigs are not there's not a lot of swine in Vermont. There are you know, there's a fair amount, but it's not a it's not a heavily farmed animal in the state. It's more common for farms to have some pigs, but not to focus on pigs. There's more where you live, we're afraid.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Let's hear your thoughts on possible changes to this, if you want to talk about that.

[Steve (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Yeah, please. And I just want to start by thanking you all for how much attention you've all put into this process and the bill. You know, we've been talking about it for almost a year now, And it's really been, we're actually really pleased by the engagement of everyone, including this committee and the Senate ad committee and the farm groups have been heavily invested and sort of more aligned on this than almost anything in a long time, which has truly been wonderful to see. And what we really appreciate is that all of the stakeholders that we've been talking with, including the farm groups and the league, have all been aligned to restore the exemption, which is really important because farmers have a, this committee all knows the litany of problems that farmers can potentially face. And we truly, we believe that the best thing we can do for farms is to try to make their ability to be viable as successful as possible. So it's not that we don't believe in good, responsible, reasonable regulation, but we are very cautious about duplicative or extra or unnecessary regulations. So we think it's a really important conversation. We're really pleased with everyone's commitment to it. I just want to start there because we've talked about it so many times and I've talked to you all so many times and you've taken so much testimony about it that it gets a bit circular and confusing, but I don't think we should lose sight of the fact that almost everyone seems like they agree that farming should be should be subject to regulation, but not unnecessary duplicative municipal regulation. So that's wonderful. Unfortunately, I also would like to apologize because I wish this had been a lot more streamlined than it's been. And we really wanted to be able to present to all of you something that everyone felt comfortable with and then we could move forward. And although the differences have been pretty small, they've been meddlesome. They have been difficult to get those last few things into place. And we have not been able still, we've had a lot more conversations. We haven't been able to get everything into place, but I don't think we're going any further. You know, we've had enough conversations that at least from the agency's perspective, we've gone as far as we're going to go. And we actually think that the proposal that we have, which is mostly what the Senate passed, but with some additions that I'll talk to you about in a moment, if you'd like. But we really feel like it's better than what was there before the Supreme Court decision. It's more reasoned, it's more enforceable, it's more understandable, and it just makes more sense. So as painful as some of this has been, we think that if you all agree with where this is going, it'll have something that's actually creates a lot of new rights and important rights for people, and also creates some reasonable protection in the most densely populated areas. So we feel good about where everything is. We wish it could have been a lot easier, but all of the conversations, all the communication, I think has been really constructive. And I hope the farm groups can stay as united on some other things that also need attention in our view, you know, for farming to be successful in the state. So it's been a good process, albeit not as simple as we would have liked. But I would say that, you know, S. Three twenty three, what the Senate passed and what you all passed is not significantly different, but there are some key differences. And I think the biggest one is just to level set, like where things were before the Supreme Court. And we were just talking about this a bit. But to be a farm covered by the RAPs before the Supreme Court decision, you either needed four acres, four contiguous acres, or that was one threshold, or you needed to be a commercial farm and that was selling, you know, at least $2,000 in annual products or a schedule F. So nobody else was covered. So if you had 50 acres and you weren't and you were growing all kinds of food and you weren't selling anything, not covered. If you had 50 acres and two pigs, not covered. If you were growing food for yourself, not covered. If you were raising animals for yourself, not covered. So it worked well for commercial farms, but it had, in our opinion, the old structure had two flaws. And those flaws are embedded in the REPs, which is why we think it's important to fix the REPs. Because if you don't fix the REPs, then you're not actually getting to the root of the problem, sort of dancing around it. And if you dance around the root of the problem, sort of have to go over broad in your solutions. And so we think if you just fix the problem, we can be more targeted on what towns should be able to do and what they can't do. And the biggest in our opinion, and I think certainly the league's opinion, although they had a different solution for it, the biggest problem with the RAPs was that there was no land based requirement for livestock in particular. So everyone agrees you should be able to grow plants that they're not problematic. You know, that's a new right that can be created, but livestock needs some land. And that amount of land depends in part though on where you are, but under the on where you're located, if you're in the middle of a downtown, that's different than if you're in the middle of the countryside. And so that was the, because of the $2,000 and the schedule F thresholds, you could sell $2,000 worth of eggs, or you could sell half a pig or two pigs, or, you know, you could sell very limited amount and still be subject to farming, but there was no land based requirement. And the only way that we've come up with to fix that deficit is actually just to fix it in the RIPs because that's where it was established. It was, I think it was an oversight. It was always kind of meant to be farms would have land, but we also wanted to allow commercial farming, but there was no specific requirement. So I told you all before about the situation we had with somebody who was milking goats and making soap in their walkout basement on less than a tenth of an acre of land. That's fine, as long as you know, it's fine if someone wants to do that, we support it. But it's not something that we can regulate as farming, because we have to regulate what's going on with the waste, with some sort of land based requirement. And if neighbors are complaining about goats on an eight that was 0.08 acres, it's just not, we don't have the capacity to, we don't want to regulate those kinds of issues because we want to regulate farming. And that's just something which would require us to have a whole slew of new regulations that we don't want to subject farmers to, things that are more based on densely populated areas than on actually how you raise livestock. So that, like that was the one, I think that one area just, worked fine most of the time, but when it didn't work, it didn't work. You could have, you know, if you tried to stuff 500 chickens on a half of an acre, like we could regulate the waste, but that was farming and we couldn't do anything about reducing the number of chickens, even if it's in the middle of Burlington. So just, there was a gap, but the reason we were so reluctant to change the gap was because there was no, if you were not subject to the RAPs, there was no protection for you at all. So if you were just growing your own food, if you were raising livestock for yourself, there was no protection. So we were very reluctant to increase the $2,000 threshold of the Schedule F because people didn't have any other ability to get protected if they wanted to grow their own food. So to us, the solution is let's just fix the structure, protect the things that everybody agrees should be protected, which is growing food. And also the small backyard poultry like that's part of growing food. Most believe has told us before that no town prohibits poultry in the state. I don't know if that's true with every single town, but that's their belief. Poultry, everyone sort of agrees, you can have a limited amount of poultry if you have some land, which is the small backyard poultry. You can have some amount, nobody knows really what that amount is, but you ought to be able to have chickens, you know, meat or eggs or other poultry as long as you can manage it without the town saying no. So it's really, let's figure out, let's make sure you have enough land to manage your livestock and let's protect the other things that everyone agrees are not controversial. So those things, we believe if you correct those, then you can kind of tie a nice bow around it. And it's important to, we think, to tie that bow because the whole point of the REPs is you're not subject to municipal regulation. But if you're the other piece of the REPs is if you're below the threshold, you don't have to meet those requirements, which can also be good for people. If you have two horses, you don't have to comply with the requirements, but that also means you're not regulated by us. And so we think it's fair and reasonable for the town to have regulations if they think it's necessary to address those. So the point is we like to have the demarcation where you're not so because no one really likes to be regulated by multiple entities for the same things any more than necessary. So if we can have that line, you're either regulated by us or you're regulated by towns, that means that farmers or people raising their own food aren't subject to both us and the towns may be coming in with different things. So we the reason to amend the REPs is is that like, let's let's fix it at source and try not to create any more duplication than necessary. Does that, I mean, does that kind of make sense? So I think, so Bradley just went, I don't know if you would rather go over. So the good news that I have to report that we consider to be good news is one real concern of the farm groups and a legitimate concern is they didn't wanna raise the $2,000 and the Schedule F thresholds because those are, you know, pretty permissive and they protect new farmers and beginning farmers or small farmers, and they don't raise the barrier. So after further discussions, we've, because we had an agreement with the league, as you may recall, that we wouldn't change our position unless we could do it with them. And although we weren't able to get to reach full agreement with them, they agreed that we can support the farm group's position to stay at the existing $2,000 in Schedule F proposal. So that means we can go back to what already exists and don't have to touch that at all. And our only proposal then is just to change the land based number. Instead of having four acres, which is the current standard, we can go down to one, which is better for farmers. You no longer need four acres. You can have one as long as you can manage the nutrients and the waste above one, you're farming. We make you were talking about that a little bit earlier, but we have the discretion to make that judgment. So as long as we believe one acre plus, then you have the land base necessary, you're farming, you're protected, you have to comply with our rules, but you can't be duplicatively zoned by the towns. So that being able to return to the Schedule F and the $2,000 I think is really important to the farm groups, especially some of the groups who are more focused on the smaller farmers and the farmers who are raising their own food. So that, I think that has ameliorated a lot of their concern about the changes that were proposed. And really the only thing left now is the only potential person who loses under this new rubric is the commercial farmer of livestock on less than one acre. So if you are currently raising pigs on less than one acre and you're selling them and you're making $2,000 or filing a Schedule F currently under the old system, you would be subject to the RAPs and couldn't be zoned. Under the new proposal, you could be zoned by the towns. And that's the only group. And we've talked a lot about, do these people exist or not? Because it's not just livestock on less than an acre, it's people commercially raising livestock on less than an acre. And I haven't heard anyone come up with, there may be some, but there are not many of these folks. And the number of those folks who live in a town with zoning, you know, none of us know because even if you have less than an acre, if your town doesn't have zoning, it's irrelevant. But if you have less than an acre and you're in a town with zoning, then you'd have to have your town's permission or work with your town to do that. So

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: we just saw the language in the s three twenty three, the original proposal. What you've explained so far, think, Steve, is you would strike out the removal of schedule f. So restore schedule f and restore the $2,000 rather than raise it to $5,000. But but everything else would be as in the in the language that we saw in s 02/23.

[Steve (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: That one, correct, except there is one there's a couple of little tweaks that are just to make sure the intent's clear, but the but there is another exception that relates to to pigs. Okay. And there's been a I don't know if you've heard of it, but there's one spend, one specific situation that's been lingering in one village center in town for a long time. And so there there is a there's the new language that I just shared yesterday, and I've talked to the Senate committee about this as well, and I plan to talk to them tomorrow, is it would allow towns to regulate pig waste in downtowns and village centers, even on farms. So nowhere else like, but in those limited areas with downtowns and village centers, the municipality could regulate pig waste. And we try to be clear that it's not prohibit pigs and not prohibit pig waste or even regulate their storage structures. But if the pigs are causing an adverse impact to the community and the agency of agriculture can't manage that issue through application of the RAPs, then a town could step in with zoning bylaws and essentially make sure that the that the farmer was managing the waste in a way that wasn't causing serious issues. And we're we're, you know, we're reluctant to carve out a specific animal, but on the same token, it's pretty widely understood that pig manure is pretty different than other livestock waste and when it gets anaerobic and when it can spread more easily and can be more pervasive. And so recognizing the challenges of living in densely populated areas, and there's an ongoing enforcement action that would be impacted if there wasn't sort of that carve out. And so that's the other new proposal.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: It should be in a downtown or village center. Acreage is not a factor.

[Steve (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Correct. It could be because if it's not subject to the RAPs, then the town could regulate through zoning entirely. So if you're in less than an acre, as an example, in those areas, then the town would have the ability to use zoning. But this is for even if you're on a farm in a village center or a downtown and the pigs are causing a problem, you have to give the proposals, have to give us notice and the farm notice so we can try to fix it. But if we can't fix it, then the town could could not prohibit them, but could but could require the farm to manage the waste. To representative Nelson's question earlier, that might include exporting waste, you know, or at least not letting it linger unnecessarily or spreading inappropriately or just some regulations to make sure that it was not having an adverse impact to the community.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Reverend Bartholomew, had to hand up. You kind of

[Becky (Unidentified Committee Member)]: just touched on it. I just I'm not totally convinced that pig waste should be it should just be living in pig waste. Well,

[Steve (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: I mean, that's an interesting question. And we in part of our negotiations with the league, we're trying to get them to fully support this. And ultimately, they just felt like what they want is the ability to regulate in tier one, and that's and that's what they're going to that's what their position is, and it's it's not going to change. But we did we were willing to compromise on all livestock waste, but but not without reticence because there are, as examples, I think there are manure pits in some village centers. And just the broader you get, the more you potentially run into challenges. So it's not an unreasonable request. And I think where we kind of left it with the league is like, if we have an actual problem, let's talk about it and figure out how we can resolve it because we can always go onto a farm and enforce as appropriate. But if we don't have problems, maybe we don't want to start them.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Representative Nelson? Yeah.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: There are some tier one, you know, tier one a would be one issue. Tier one, because you include one b, is a big area with some really robust farming going on in one b commercial operations, some of them quite large. I can think of a whole lot of them, and some of them might be quite personal to me, but there there is a lot of robust farming operations in tier one b that that need to, you know, as we we did last year, the right to farm bill to cover them. And, you know, for the most part, believe those farms are proud and work with their communities to the best of their ability to get along. This there is a situation that's close to me that's problematic.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: So that reminds me that in our bill, we exempted anybody who is currently farming. So existing farming would would in our bill be exempt from municipal regulation even in well, turned out not to be tier one, but smaller less. Is your proposal here going to exempt anybody? It sounds like maybe not. It's not the proposal. Not the exempt.

[Steve (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Right. I mean, we actually we're expanding. We believe the proposal expands the rights much more than it shrinks them because it protects the right to grow food, drops the livestock threshold down to one acre and you can still be covered by farming. It creates the right to poultry, which doesn't exist right now if you're not farming. And the only where where the rights are are shrunk at all is on the one acre with livestock. So if you if you're on less than an and you're raising strawberries and you're selling them and making smoothies, you can still be farming can still be protected. But if you've got if you've got pigs on less than an acre, then you're subject to municipal regulation. And we're not we were not trying to grandfather people into that

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: threshold. So the it's just pig, just swine, and can the municipality regulate anything at once?

[Steve (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Unless an acre, it could regulate livestock except for small backyard poultry flock.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Okay. And in the case of a five acre, say, farm in a downtown, what what would the municipality be able to do?

[Steve (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: So if you're a if if you're five acres and you're either commercial or you meet the animal threshold, you're farming, and you the only thing a municipality could do in this language is if you had pigs and you were in a downtown, then they could regulate the pig waste if it was causing an adverse impact to the community, and we couldn't provide or address through our enforcement. What would regulate the pig waste look like in practice? Well, I think it would probably be about the actual management of the waste. You know, if you're storing it for too long, you're not exporting it, you don't have the land base maybe to spread it because in everybody, everyone has to store the waste, especially during the winter, but you also can't store it indefinitely. So it's kind of responsible management of the waste and in a downtown, arguably, depending on the impacts that might include requiring someone to export it. If it's just, you know, depending on how if you've got five acres, maybe you have enough land to management, maybe you don't. But if you've got 1.5 acres in your middle of town, maybe you really can't reasonably keep your waste out there. So it's meant to give flexibility to address problems. But I mean, I think towns, hopefully there won't be any. I mean, we're aware of one. So hopefully it's not going to be a cavalcade of issues, but at least in but it's been that one has been pervasive and ongoing and frustrated a lot of people for a long time. So providing some, again, without prohibiting the ability to have the pigs on a farm or to have waste on a farm, but making sure that it's not just stacking up and never being used and not being, you know, properly managed, then the town would have the ability to require that.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: It sounds like the farmer groups are conceptually supportive of this compromise or this version.

[Steve (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: I think in our last conversation, we were still trying to get to full consensus in that conversation, and then we and the league's board didn't support us, so we couldn't get there. But in that conversation, the representatives who I was meeting with seemed fine with amending the RIPs. Originally, they had some significant consternation about taking that approach, I think only because they were worried about the unknown, you know, what not the actual amending of them, but what might transpire when that happens. So they didn't they seem to be okay with that. Now there are a couple of things that at least some of them want. I don't know how aggressively, but they would like to include rabbits in the poultry exclusion. So, you know, the right just for a small backyard poultry flock. If you're farming rabbits, you're already protected. But if you're on less than an acre and you had rabbits, then currently under this proposal, towns could regulate that. And there's at least some of the farm groups would like to include rabbits into that protection. And I think more broadly, they would really like to create a right to grow livestock period or sorry, raise livestock period, you know, even if you're not farming. But I maybe my sense is wrong on this, but I think I don't know that they think this is the time to do that. That's quite a bit more than what's been on the table. They'd love it and they probably will continue to ask for it. But I think from my understanding, they're really quite comfortable with everything except they'd like to include rabbits. And ideally, they're also interested in maybe continuing to study the issue, specifically vis a vis municipal zoning, like not saying towns can't regulate on things that are smaller than farms, but also they'd like to have some protection, some of them for the small homesteaders, like maybe towns can regulate, but let's make it so that they can't regulate you, prohibit you. So they're interested in continuing that small scale conversation, think that's below the farming threshold, which is totally fair game from our perspective.

[Becky (Unidentified Committee Member)]: Why not with rabbits? We

[Steve (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: don't. Our only position is that when we negotiated with the league and with the farm groups about this poultry was thing that was under discussion, but the rabbits have been brought up with the league and the league was reticent to expand beyond poultry because their belief was that no town was prohibiting poultry, so it wouldn't be a change, but they didn't have that same comfort with rabbits. So they were concerned that it was expanding, you know, what it was. And so our, you know, we reached an agreement, so we're just not changing the agreement, but we don't have, if the league the farm groups were content about a rabbit solution, we'd be completely supportive of that. It's just that we we feel like the league was quite gracious in a lot of on a lot of their discussions, and they were not trying to to keep the supreme court decision intact, and they're willing to to give a lot. And so what we we're trying to work to be reasonable about it. We don't have a problem with rabbits. It's just that it wasn't part of the agreement.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Rabbits are flying until a hawk grab them.

[Becky (Unidentified Committee Member)]: Think I know the answer to this, but since the agency can change the required agricultural practices, why do you want us to do it?

[Steve (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: So it's a seamless solution because if we don't, because if you don't do it, then we'd have to go through rulemaking, which is at the shortest amount of time, eight months. So there just continued uncertainty for that amount of time. People can disagree with what we change. And so there's a lot of We thought if we're going to do this and especially in negotiations with the league, we ought to have a package deal instead of pushing the envelope and not really knowing what comes out of it because we can't guarantee. I mean, we can tell you what we want to do in a rule, but until the process is done and LCAR agrees with it, it's not done. So in our view, it's no different than you just changing the statute. And could have been done in the statute. It could you by statute, you could just direct us to change the rule. It would be the exact same thing, but leaving the RIPs as they are. As an example, like you're three quarters of an acre proposal, it makes perfect sense, but it would create duplicate regulation there because we don't look at a part that looks at a parcel size, whereas we look at a farm size. So most farms have many parcels. And if a farm has, you know, 30 acres, but 15 different parcels and two of them are three quarters of an acre and they want and they're a farm and they want to put up a farm stand on three quarters of an acre, we don't want that farm to have to get a building permit, you know, from their town, just because we're trying to, you know, avoid the real issue, which is livestock on land. So it's hard to, if you don't, you know, fix the issue, which is you've got to have certain amount of land and densely populated areas to have livestock, then you kind of can create some unintended consequences. It would work, but it's just not quite as clean in our in our judgment.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Jed L.

[Rep. John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: Bartholomew. So one of the distinctions I was seeing between the Senate version, the House version, it's a wording in the Senate version is that no bylaw shall regulate poultry, backyard, small flock, whereas ours says no bylaw shall prohibit. Or no, sorry, yours is, yeah. No, you're right. Yeah, that's the way, which would allow mid size to regulate backyard poultry, which kind of, I'm worried that the Essex situation where it's $35 to have, you have to pay $35 for four or six chickens, whatever it is. Mean, then you're gonna say it's a hypothetical stuff, something in Essex, but I'm worried that you could price people out from wanting to raise poultry in towns. You're not prohibiting it, but you're definitely regulating it through cheese. I do, I'm like saying, I like the fact that they can't regulate small. So how are we defining small?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I'm gonna ask before we go, let's talk

[Steve (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: about that. Well, so small was presented on purpose because in the preliminary discussions, no one could agree on a number. And so I personally always thought that there would be some further definition of that, but still no one has really come to agreement on it. In our view, that's, I mean, obviously it's a judgment for you all to make, but we'd love it if the league and the farm groups, because this is below farming, so we'd love it if they had something that they were all comfortable with. In my mind, it was, you know, 25, 30. I don't know exactly, but I think it's fair to say, because you could be farming on three acres and farming. You could have poultry on three acres and not be subject to the REPs if you're not commercial. So it seems prudent to us that there's some flexibility, kind of like what we've crafted with the one to four acres is you can have livestock provided you have the land base to manage it, you know, the nutrients and the waste. And I think from my perspective, the same thing could exist for towns. Like you can have poultry provided the town thinks you can responsibly manage it with a land base, because if you got two tenths of an acre, that's quite different than three acres. And so I think some flexibility would be great there. We just had small as a placeholder and I don't think it's unworkable small, but no one knows what small means. I mean, if you get up to 200 birds, I don't think anyone's going to argue that small, but 50, I I don't know. 15, probably small.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Because no one knows what it means, though, it could end up in court with the town saying, you know, 15 is not small and the landowner saying, yes, it is. I

[Steve (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: personally think it would be preferable to have either a maximum and a minimum, you know, so that and based on the land base or just give the town the discretion to allow, you know, at least blank depend and and more something like that. But yeah. And I and and everyone acknowledges that. You know, the farm groups and the league all understand that small is a pretty indefinite number.

[Rep. John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: Seems to me that the idea is to, the line that we draw where say, okay, you can't break, okay, Is where to me, in my mind, a family that's looking to feed itself, right? And has sufficient, sufficient land base to do so. With poultry, really, how much land does 25 land hens need? Not a lot in my mind. So once you get down to the poultry, how much land base do we have to talk about at this point? I mean, that kind of seems, maybe that isn't, it's not in the conversation here. It's just, it doesn't talk about land based size from poultry. I think you'd be put in 25, have maximum of 25 where, and that's where

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: these families can't regulate. I don't know.

[Rep. John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: And is that, have you talked about a number of ways?

[Steve (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: I mean, I don't want to propose a number only because people feel very differently about it. Think everyone agrees, though, that more definition is needed to make it reasonable to regulate. And there are some people keep in mind, if you've got over an acre, you can be farming if you want. So it's like, really, the question is how many birds can you have on less than an acre? And but but you also the backyard in that phrase is intentional because we didn't wanna say you can have as many as you want in your living room. Not that we regulate that, but I think that's a a town, it could be a health issue, a town issue if they want to. So there is still some land based requirement, which requires that you have a yard, but it's meant to be, you don't need a lot of land for it to have some.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Appreciate it. Thank you. Sure. I've seen them raised in a basement before, and I wasn't impressed. But Were they with the goats? No goats. The goats were outside in the back. So in our bill, we said that people can raise food, including eggs, and sell, barter, or give away to their neighbors and be free of regulation. Does this cover that in the senate side? I mean, if you got an acre and you've got 50 chickens, you know, 25 are laying birds and 25 are meat birds, 50 chickens on an acre works. You got a nice little coop farm. Can you, you know, you're not hitting the $2,000 threshold or the $5,000 threshold, but, you know, sell, bother, or or or give away to your neighbors and be free of municipal regulation? So

[Steve (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: kind of. So I I think the way that the senate version, it focuses on commercial farming versus raising for yourself. So there isn't, And if you keep the threshold at schedule f for $2,000, I mean, really, you can as I understand it, if you're raising if you're selling anything agricultural for profit, you can file a schedule f. So you just have to be doing it for I don't know all the

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: File schedule. If you're doing it, not making a profit.

[Steve (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Well, trying.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: I didn't know that.

[Steve (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: It's the objective is to make a profit. Yeah. So I I think it's so I I think it's covered if you're selling, but giving away, I don't know how that would really be regulated by a town, but I I think the

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Did they have something on donation in there? Did they have? This? Accessory on farm business.

[Steve (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Donations are included in the senate language, but that would to meet the threshold, you still have to meet the the 2,000 threshold to be farming subject to the RAPs. But donations is added. I think you all know there's a philanthropist who's trying to encourage more people to give away food so that it can be made and given to people in Vermont who are hungry. So it's a great initiative and we have no problem with people who are selflessly donating food being included in the same provisions who are people who are selling food, but that's obviously a judgment free.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah, and I think our provision wasn't just for the, as you were saying, that not the commercial farmer, but the home strata or somebody just growing some food could also didn't have to eat all that food themselves. They could also give it away and the town wouldn't be able to regulate their growing of

[Steve (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: plants or chickens. I mean, the way that the Senate version is you can grow plants, it doesn't talk about what you do with those plants. But I think if you were setting up a farm stand and you were not meeting the $2,000 threshold, arguably a town could say, can we regulate this as a commercial business is not farming.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Regulate and the league told us they want just be able

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: to regulate traffic in that situation that was there.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: You know? They didn't

[Rep. John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: wanna set up on a corner

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: and have cars whipping in and out.

[Steve (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: But I I from my perspective, if you're farming, trying to make a profit and you're selling, you can be subject to the RAPs. You you have to if you're selling, giving away, not unless you're donating and meet the $2,000 threshold, which is still pretty low.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Good, okay, pretty late. So I think we'll stop there. And I will be consulting with my colleague in the Senate to see what next steps are here. And I think you're scheduled to Yes. Be within a sec.

[Becky (Unidentified Committee Member)]: One more question. What is this draft of the next handout? Carrying books and shared Durfee Put some yellow on it. Is that

[Bradley Shulman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: might be

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: yeah. That's putting in that's that's something the agencies come up with that basically is what Steve just walked here. So proposed language to change the senate version. Is that what this is?

[Steve (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Yeah. If you're looking at the yellow highlighted language that I we shared yesterday, that's to put in the the pig language to allow downtown and village senate regulation of pig waste, also to tighten up the one acre to four acre a little bit just to make make it clear that you have to meet that threshold and not one of the other ones if you have livestock. And then to restore the 2,000 from the 5 thou because the senate passed the the $5.00 threshold because that's what what we agreed to with league. But now we can go back to $2,000 in schedule f. So those are the the yellow highlighted language is what we've proposed to change. And I'm gonna say the same thing to the Senate Committee tomorrow to change from their version that they passed that you now have.

[Becky (Unidentified Committee Member)]: What I'm looking at has also has definitions for downtown, and know that center.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: That was that's all for the pigs. Okay.

[Steve (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: And they're included for pigs. Yeah. And those are included because some of those are gonna be repealed potentially in the future. And so it just because of the whole act one eighty one change. And so it thought it just made sense to put those definitions in. In 2034, some of them are scheduled for repeal.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Right. Good. I think we can wrap it up then. Thank thank you, Steve.

[Steve (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: No. Thank you all so much.