Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Good morning. This is the House Appropriations Committee. It is Friday, 02/06/2026. It's 09:30 in the morning, and we are continuing our travels to FY27 budget. And this morning, we're delighted to have folks from the Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets. So welcome to all of you in person and on the screen. And if you all want to introduce yourselves and thank you.

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: Well, good morning. It's it's great to be here today. I'm Anson Tebbets, secretary of agriculture, food, and markets. I'm also joined by Nicole Dubuque, who's online. She's our operations director, and Amy Mercer is our financial director is with us today.

[Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson (Member)]: Glad to have you all.

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: So I am here to present our proposed budget for the fiscal year running from July 1 through the following July. You as a legislature are facing some incredibly difficult decisions, transforming our education system, addressing property tax, pressures, responding to challenges in housing and public safety, and, of course, agriculture intersects with all these issues, and it has the role to play in our future. Our proposed budget largely level funds are core programs, and we can get into that in just a bit. But in this economic and budgetary climate, it's essentially level funded in many areas, and I consider that a real victory. And within those constraints, we do have a couple of targeted changes that we'll highlight as we go through the budget. One is reducing a fee for our our dairy farmers and also strengthening our our business support staff, which is, urgently needed to improve customer service for our farmers and producers across Vermont as we try to make sure that we are customer service friendly and get the money out the door to many of our farmers and producers. We are now managing some significant federal money as well as our state dollars. And with that, I thought I'd just start with our presentation, and I always like to begin with our mission at the Agency of Agriculture. Our mission is to facilitate, support, and encourage the growth and viability of agriculture while protecting the working landscape, human health, animal health, plant health, consumers, and the environment. And our recommended budget from the governor for f y twenty twenty seven, it's 61,190,000.00. And we have the breakdown. As you can see here, we have federal funds. We have a small fraction that comes from transfer between departments. We have the general fund dollars and then we have special funds. So I just want to highlight the general fund. We're about 22% of general fund dollars, the rest coming from other areas.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Have you you lost some federal funds last year in March or something, about 1,700,000.0 or 1,500,000.0. Are you continuing with any of that part of the program? I can't remember which one it was. And then have you lost anything else? Are you concerned about any other federal funds, the risk of losing any more?

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: Yeah. You're correct. The two that were in play, there were two federal funds. One is the local food systems and schools grant. Yes. That was that one, and also that was $300,000. And then there was a half 1,000,000. It was the local food purchase assistance grant. Those are federal funds. And a lot of those dealt with purchasing food from, our Vermont farmers and then distributing it either to schools or to food hubs. So those have gone away, and and I believe you addressed some of that last year in in last year's budget. Those are the only two that we have heard from since that have been discontinued. Right now, it's been kind of status quo as far as the federal funds. So we haven't lost any since last spring's announcement.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: And is it not to continue those with special funds or general funds?

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: Yeah. Those we we they're not in then they're not in our budget, to to to backfill them. Okay. So, here's a little graph on the the flow of funds. The general fund, 22%. Federal funds, 33%. We have special funds, about 40%, and that is essentially we register a lot of products and and we have fees. So that money comes in and that helps with our staff.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Do you know how many special funds you've got?

[Amy Mercer (Financial Director, Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: Around? At least a dozen, maybe 15.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Okay. Okay. And are they all do they all have a positive

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: balance? Yes. Yes. Yes. And then there's a 5% transfer funds as part of our float funds. So we can go to, we have six appropriations. So we have, you know, six divisions administration, food safety, consumer protection, agriculture development, plant industry, which we have renamed. You may recall it as farm, but we're just gonna keep it simple and just call it plant industry. Vale, which is the lab in Randolph, and then our water quality. So those

[Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson (Member)]: Tell me more about what plant industry means.

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: Plant industry is, it could be entomology, it could be pesticides, it could be feed and fertilizer, it could be apiary. So it's all anything that's in and around plant, I guess, would be a simple way of putting it. Anything that's addressing a plant. We're going back to an old name, it used to be probably a couple decades ago. Was called plant industry, and farm seemed a little confusing.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Or was it before or were you

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: just from was Farm?

[Amy Mercer (Financial Director, Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: Public Health and Ag Resource Management. Farm? Farm, p h a r m. Oh.

[Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson (Member)]: Okay.

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: So just a name change, but we think it's a little more for the general public to to understand. So you have the breakdown of the the fund categories to that and the areas of increase and some of that is you know we don't have a lot of control of this. Retirement, some of the cost of doing business bonds you see them here.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Right, don't need to worry about those. The different And I'm seeing you have an increase in clean water grants.

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: Yes, and a lot of that has to do with the clean water budget and the clean water board. Board works with all the agents who's not developing a budget through the summer. They they vote on a budget, and then that budget is included in the governor's recommend. And then it's your turn to take a look at that, how that flows. So does that

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: pass through to ANR? Is that one of those interagency transfers?

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: Yeah. So it's a you know, transportation is involved. We're involved with municipalities, and then there's some members of the public on that board that also review that budget and make recommendations. And it's a very public process. And I

[Amy Mercer (Financial Director, Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: was just gonna clarify that the the money in the clean water budget comes from the surcharge on the property transfer tax. So that money goes to the clean water board, then they decide how to distribute the money.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Let me get my second question, but go ahead.

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: So that doesn't have a relationship to the fees that you're proposing to? No,

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: that is going to be dropping a fee and replacing those dollars with general fund dollars.

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: But it's not for

[Amy Mercer (Financial Director, Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: Not for the grants. It is for that fund, but not for the grants.

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: You'll get to that in a little bit.

[Amy Mercer (Financial Director, Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: GAAP and operating. Correct.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So I'm looking at something that we get from FFIS, federal funds information for states, and this actually just came out yesterday. And some of this isn't yours, but the the cuts that they're doing, they have it by state and all the different federal funds. The EPA drinking water fund is down $7,000,000 and the clean water SRF, and maybe this is all in corrections and institutions, they're cutting that back by about $5,000,000 So you're not being affected by what they're doing at the federal level, this is all state

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: Yes, I'm not aware of those as of yet.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Okay, so I think it's ANR. Right, so none of the clean water stuff that you're talking about is Okay,

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: great, thank you. So, we can go on to the next slide. So here's some and you mentioned the the middle two. So we mentioned the middle two of the areas of decrease with the federal funds. The bottom one is grant that is coming to the end. It was a five year grant. Really has nothing to do with what's going on at the federal level and all the conversations we're having there. That's just the end of a grant that will come to it at the end of the cycle of that through the NRCS. And then the Dairy Business Innovation Center, this is a it could get a little complicated to explain, but essentially, the Dairy Business Innovation Center is a federal program. We administer it here in Vermont at the Agency of Agriculture, but it's a multistate program throughout the Northeast. And its main function is to either distribute contracts or grants to farmers or processors. So what the federal government does, the USDA, they'll send tranches of money, chunks of money to us from time to time. And this one particularly, we are not gonna be sending as much out in contracts, but we're gonna be putting the money out into grants to farmers and processors. So it may seem like it's a decrease, but essentially, I wanna it's a wash, but it's it's just how we're managing it, what the money is going out the door with. It's gonna be more in this particular cycle, we're gonna be focused more on grants going to farmers and processors as opposed to technical service providers, like maybe UVM Extension ran a program through that. It it's it's it's the turn we're we're going on to the next iteration of what we wanna do, and it's all sort of scaled to USDA. We have to get preapproval of what we wanna do. But it's not it looks like it's a giant decrease. May get anywhere from 7 to $12,000,000 a year depending on how much Congress allocates to us.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So you're still getting some money?

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: Oh, Yes. Yeah. And we actually got some good news last week where it was in play. We had been put on hold. We normally get notified in October that we're gonna receive, and this one was $3,500,000. And they announced last week that we would be getting it. So it was good news. So we're back on schedule, and that was the seventh round of money that has come through the program since it's been developed. So we're back on programming. We can start getting those, the notices of the grants out to folks so they can start applying.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: How much were you getting? And how much are

[Amy Mercer (Financial Director, Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: you getting now that's creating the $3,500,000 decrease? The $3,500,000 decrease is more or less, we're not asking for as much spending authority, because now that we've been involved with a dairy business innovation grant program for a few years now, we're finding out where the expenditures are actually, where most of the expenditures are hitting. And those are in the grant category, not contracts. So, the federal government will send out different rounds of monies that we can apply for. And they may say, this is for granting and not for contracts. So, we're trying to make it as true as we can to what we think, where we think the expenditures are going to actually occur.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Who's not getting contracts that used to get contracts? Well, we might have losing in this.

[Nicole Dubuque (Operations Director, Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: Can I hop in, secretary and sorry, I can't raise the virtual hand chair?

[Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson (Member)]: Do you mind if I hop in? Please.

[Nicole Dubuque (Operations Director, Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: Okay. So this is for the record, Nicole Dubuque. I am operations director for the agency of Ag. So it's not that people the people that are not getting contracts are really folks that were doing assessments for us. So as the program has matured, we really kind of know what the Northeastern Region needs as far as the sector goes. So we did have contracts that were with a variety of folks to do assessments on sector needs. And that's not something that we are choosing to invest in at such a high rate going forward. We have to already by USDA standards put 50 of our funding out in grants direct to dairy businesses. So now we are channeling more of that money into grants direct to dairy businesses. Same money. We just won't be putting it out in contracts to do assessments. We'll be doing more granting, less contracting. So more direct to dairy businesses.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I get I I understand that. But who's not getting contracts that used to get contracts? I

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: I can give you a few examples that did get contracts. So we recently did one about there is a need for whether we need essentially a chi school. So we needed to see the region where the gaps were with the emerging development of products. Could there be a brick and mortar place where people could come and learn how to make cheese or yogurt or dairy products? So we contracted with a firm to do that assessment. So that would be one example. We've done one with the goat industry. Were the gaps with the goat industry? So we hire a firm to look at that. They go out and interview all the farmers, the processors, and then they come back with a report.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: These are those are onetime grants? Yes.

[Nicole Dubuque (Operations Director, Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: Are there any

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: one time contracts with that.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: One time contracts that you don't need to do because you got the information you needed. Are there have there been any ongoing contracts that are now like you mentioned UVM extension, so I'm wondering if they're used to getting an annual contract that they're now not going to get?

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: It could be in play. We've done some work with grazing with them and that they've had a cohort that we've They got together a number of farmers and worked on getting together and working on grazing practices and technical assistance. I think they've come to the end of that process. I think Laura Ginsberg, who consistently has conversations with all the providers, and I think they are aware that these are one time funds, essentially, and it's not going to be an ongoing you cannot rely on this as ongoing. Okay.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I have Tom, John, and Wayne.

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: So the grant program, though, I attended a press conference a couple of years ago where you handed out grants to all of the not just Vermont company, but it was at Sabbath in Waterbury. That's what this program is. So when a grant is made to an ice cream maker to upgrade their ice cream facilities or any small mean, in my memory is that it was a lot of value add industries that were receiving grants of some size. Is that what this program is?

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: Yeah. And I don't know if we want to we could go to that slide, Nicole, if you can get to it. I can explain a little more detail. So essentially, we manage it at the agency, but it's all of New England, New York, Pennsylvania is also involved. And we have a neat little, little map. So here's the, so here is if you look at this map, you can see how many awards we've made and and look where the where the dollars have gone throughout Northeast. The average grant, $85,000, and that may be for a pasteurizer. Someone needs a critical part of new information, a new equipment for a dairy processor, or it could be on the farm. So we've we've financed robotic milkers for small farmers, cleaning equipment, manure spreaders, all that kind of infrastructure that's really important. We've also done marketing grants for dairy processors, establishing they work with a professional firm to update their e commerce, their websites, and we've seen some incredible results, some of those. But the goal is it needs to go to processors, and it needs to go to dairy farmers throughout the Northeast, and that's the goal of it. Just a

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: point of clarification that the 3,500,000.0 is not Vermont only. Right.

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: That's for that. 11 states. And there are three other regions that in in The United States that have them as well. Wisconsin has one, Tennessee has one, and California has one. We are the only one that's at an agency. The other ones are more academic research based. So Wisconsin, Tennessee, dairy is different throughout the region, but we're the only one that's at a state agency. So just so so so for example here, so the assessments have kind of resulted in a schedule where things get more directly allocated here to upgrade what whoever might need that based on. So we have to, you know, go back to the contract discussion. Right. Got the goats, so we know where the opportunities, the gaps, the challenges are with goats. So now it may say, hey, we need more infrastructure on farms. We may need more technical assistance or veterinarians or feed technical assistance. So now we'll develop those grants to the farm, the goat farmers. So we've got that information. Thanks.

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: So mine was the same along the way, so just getting to the bottom line. So money was spent on grants or rather contracts to figure out what should be done. And now you're at a point where you know what should be done. Question now is, will there be more money available for the grants now that you're not doing the assessments?

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: I think it will go in stages. So I think this is maybe call it a time out on that. And then we're gonna put more money out onto the ground to the farmer and processors. But the next round that we may get, and that's the other thing that we've got to make sure we do is we need to have it reauthorized in a farm bill to get these centers reauthorized again. We're coming to the end of the authorization through Congress. And then as you can see on the map, it's become quite popular. So we're also advocating for more dollars from the federal government because the need, you know, we're way above the need as people learn about it. And it's a wonderful model. It is, know, we work well with USDA on it. It was started, let's say five years ago with some seed money, but USDA approves our plan and then we manage it. So we know where the needs are. So we know what the Northeast needs. And so it's unlike some of the programs the USDA are down in Washington, they're not on the ground as much. They may not know what the needs of Vermont or New York or whatever. So it it really works well. And they don't micromanage it for us. They just put they put sideboards on it. Send us the dollars to pre award it, and then, and then we go to work, distributing the dollars. So it's it's a good model, and I was I hope USDA will think about doing it in other sectors. For example, the meat world, particularly, I think it would be a wonderful model if we could get to some of our smaller and medium processors could have this sort of program because the infrastructure needs on our meat plants are too easy be needed. So when you have I

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: think this is a different way of asking the same question I think you were asking. You've done these contracts to do these research reports, does that then redirect how you give the money out in grants? Because now you know more about the goat industry, or you know more about Are you pivoting a little bit on how you distribute grant money based on what you have learned from your contracts?

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: Absolutely. And it may be and some of those reports say it's not doable. So we don't need to we don't need to put those resources in that because it's it's not gonna be a it's not gonna be something that's gonna be beneficial to to the Northeast. And the other part of this is all this information, even if it goes to a group, it's shareable for everybody. So part of the contract is so that information proprietary. It can be used for others so that they can share it with others throughout. And New York has actually modeled through their state programs. They have taken this program and done their own tranche of state dollars to help with infrastructure in their dairy processing world. So we hope it continues. It's been a fabulous, We do not control the price of milk. We all struggle with that every day, but this is something that we can offer that can keep thinking about developing new products and helping some of our smaller processes as well.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Alright. So

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: do you wanna go back and we can start going through the Okay. So this is is one I wanted to highlight that we are asking for one new position at the agency, and this would be in the business office. We probably have the smallest business office in state government. It's an office of four. So we're asking for one more position to really make sure we're timely managing the money correctly, following all the bulletins, getting out the getting the money out the door. We have received over, you know, the last five or six years a lot more resources from the federal government and also just the amount of grants and contracts we do through the agriculture development division, but also through water quality and our and this would be in Amy's Amy's shop for asking for one new position. And we would go to the pool to get this position.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Oh, this is in the governor's recommendation? It is.

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: Yeah, go ahead.

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: I did have a conversation with a little yesterday about this. This sounded to me like you needed this just status quo, like, as of today, regardless of what happens when because I know you're still waiting for the 31,000,000 that was federally federal funds that were put aside or tended to be for losses, farmers losses from 'twenty three and 'twenty four. Is that still accurate and need more people Yeah, will that grant help you have another limited service person or something like that to to handle the management of those of those funds?

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: I I think I think the goal of asking for this position is just to make sure we stay even for what we're currently managing. For example, if we have someone that goes out on family leave, and I think we have someone on family leave right now, we're down to three. We're down to three. So I think I think it's that just to refresh on that, we are awaiting a USDA grant that we're negotiating with, and it will be a block grant coming to Vermont to manage losses in the severe weather of '23 and '24. Now there may be some resources to help with that, to manage that grant, but I think our goal in this one is just the everyday business that we're currently managing, we need this position. And the ones that would come would be a limited service position. I think under the negotiation, we're looking at a five year program for that. So they would come to the end, those positions would come to an end because they would be limited services. I don't know if you want to add any more about that poll, but Nicole was

[Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson (Member)]: helping

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: negotiate with USDA on this.

[Nicole Dubuque (Operations Director, Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: Yeah, I can give you a brief summary. So the two twenty Block Grant was appropriated in the continuing resolution in December 2024. Vermont is one of eight states that are included in that, and our, so to speak, is 31,750,000. I have been working with USDA, specifically, Farm Services Agency central office in DC on, writing up our statement of work. We definitely got delayed because of the government shutdown, and now we are working on our work plan, and we are pretty close. I think we're pretty aligned with New Hampshire and Massachusetts. And so I I'm hoping we can get that executed soon. Right now in our plan, we have written that we would have five limited service positions. So we would have an additional person to help in our business office on a limited service basis, as well as people that would review and process applications, do the site visits and do the follow-up work on those grants that go out and then also a supervisory position to oversee that. That's how we have designed it at the moment.

[Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson (Member)]: I

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: think we're at the point where we talk about some of the budget items. Estimates. Saw them high profile. These are essentially all level funded.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: That was gonna be my question. This doesn't mean anything. It's like compared to what?

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: So Yeah. These are all

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: 110, it was this year too?

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: It was. And and one that we've had over time that the the Natural Resources Conservation Council, that is level funded this year. Sometimes we've come in with a trim on that. We're not coming in with a trim on that this year. You have, I think, raised it by $100,000 over the last couple of years. So we're gonna keep that status quo it was by good. Farm to school, local food grants, working lands, the base, you've increased that a few years ago to 1,000,000. Very appreciative of that. And we're going to keep that on our proposal the same.

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: No, only statement that, of course, we've heard from many advocates who are advocating for higher base on the working lands and of course higher one time to others as well. So we'll sure have conversations about that over the next several weeks.

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: And then we can go through the administration essentially. It's we talked about the one position we were asking for. There's other areas that's the cost of doing business.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yes, ABS, you know, that's changing. Yeah,

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: we're just managing that change.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Everybody kind of has to.

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: Food safety consumer protection, pretty much the same. We did have, this is one area was related to federal government. FDA manages a food safety modernization grant, and we and we do inspections at produce, and also we had technical assistance. So they gave us a trim of about 40% in that program that's sent to the states to manage the food safety part when it comes to produce. We had to remove about $30,000 and we did on the technical assistance grant and education. So we continue to do the inspections on the farm and and work with our producers on it, but we had to remove about a $30,000 grant to UVM extension because of that. So that's reflected in this particular budget. Just real quick, so all the engineering you're providing through that $30,000 know, it's all of Is that different than what you're having your staff do? Yeah, they would, you know, they, you know, through the fruits and veggies farmers, they would go out and offer essentially advice, work with farmers on, you know, everything from washing, how you wash the vegetables, what kind of infrastructure you need, if you were in, maybe you have something in production agriculture, maybe you have animals, maybe you have your sides, you may have vegetables, making sure to make sure it's all safe, but it's mostly technical assistance for them to do an extension. Moving on to Ag Dev, we talked about the reductions in some of the federal ones there. We have a pass through program through the Vermont Dairy Promotion Council. This is a group of farmers that manage this fund. It's a checkout program, but we manage the program at the end.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So the Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure. No.

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: No. That's the the Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure. That's a new one. That's another that was an infrastructure program

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: From the federal government?

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: From the federal government. And it was done by region and it was discontinued. There there were some grants that were awarded through the process, but with the new administration, they've decided to discontinue that program. There is some chatter in Congress, maybe to think about bringing it back, but that will come to an end.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: That like a positive for FY '27. That's why I'm getting confused. Yeah, it's

[Amy Mercer (Financial Director, Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: a one time grant.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So you have it for FY '27.

[Amy Mercer (Financial Director, Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: Correct. Right. And then it expires at the end. Okay.

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: So this gives you an overview of the number of, you know, a lot of grants that come through Agdev, majority of them coming through the Innovation Center, but other areas as well.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Do you

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: farms? Is it the 10.9%,

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: is that predominantly farms? Yes. Whether it's animal or plant based farms?

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: Yeah, yeah. And a lot of the 10.9 in federal dollars awarded, a majority of that is gonna go through the the dairy innovation side. So that's that's what's been

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: People get more than one gram?

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: I believe they can. There's a rigorous scoring matrix, and we manage it, but we call on people from other regions to also it's become quite competitive now because it's where it's got now. But, yeah, they can. Do you follow-up on

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: the impact of your grants and what's happening as a result? Do you have any data on that?

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: We're coming to it? I believe we're getting Oh, we're out of time. Yeah, I think we're going to go on to working names now. So just an overview, and and this is a particular one. There is a lot of impact statements and work and, you know, number of jobs created. It's been a very successful program for three years.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Anything you want to highlight in that?

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: I would just say that, you know, the part that, again, it really helps with affordability. It helps getting that, maybe that key piece of equipment they need. It's creating jobs. It's also the other area, outside of the farm area, it's also the forestry world and also the forest products. And sometimes there are not a lot of opportunities for that sector, but it's the working landscape and they're part of it. So they're a part that take part in this. But you can see it's matching funds, how much we've invested over the years, and for the most part, we're pretty proud of it. It's again, very competitive, Just a matter of finding the dollars. I also want to thank the ski areas. Ski Vermont also contributes $20,000 to that. The working lands. Working lands. So that's, know, skiers have been great partners with agriculture. They all rely on the weather for how it's going to work, but the skier is, you know, with the food sector and how important the food sector is to our visitors that come and ski. They give the program $20,000 which is, you know, that's a couple of grains, so that's wonderful. Yeah. I think we went over the Dairy Innovation Center and that's being done. Plant industry, essentially no big highlights there. Lab status quo, down in Randolph, just to essentially, if we do need something in a lab, it usually goes to the capital budget. If we need some key part of equipment or something, we use some of those, sometimes some big ticket items, so they go through the capital budget. What's B industry doing? B industry, agency is Steve and inspector, they're working really closely with the bee industry. I guess it it depends, you know, the big issue, I think a lot of it has to do with the mites and and and how they survive that. But Steve Gwynnell in in plant industries working with University of Vermont on research, And I think there's still a decline. And exactly where it's all coming from, I think that's up to date. But Steve has a lot of good experience and is working, trying to work on pollinators and working on everything from backyard gardeners to the farm industry to figure out best practices with that.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Lynn? Yeah, bail.

[Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson (Member)]: When that was being considered and billed after

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I was being dealt with. I was

[Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson (Member)]: in institutions at the time and there was a question whether ag and environmental information will get along. There's always been a tension between those agencies. We This has worked out.

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: No, it's worked out wonderfully. Share space with ANR. It could be Fish and Wildlife as spot down there, DEC water testing. It's worked out very well from our perspective.

[Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson (Member)]: Yeah. They assured us that it quit.

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: My understanding is it's going well.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: Yeah. Thank you. I have oh, and okay. Here's one. This is the I think the headline in this particular one comes to affordability. So about eleven years ago, when the new water water regulations came forward, farmers paid a fee and are still paying a fee. So large farms pay a fee of $2,500 a year, and medium farms pay a $1,500 fee. You don't see small farms on this slide because small farmers have not paid the feed over the last decade plus. So what the governor and we're all proposing is that we drop the fees. This will benefit about a 131 farmers, and we replace these fees with general fund dollars. And that is our our proposal. The dairy industry right now is going through a really difficult stretch for the price decline, for the price of milk well below the cost of production. So we see this as not a, you know, not an answer to those structural problems with dairy, but it does take one bill off one bill off the pile that they would not have to pay. And we would go to replacing that fee with the general fund dollars. And the total cost to the general fund will be $231,500.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: That this year and next year, it's gonna be twice that or is this typically what you're doing on an annual basis?

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: This would be annual basis. I don't I don't see this I don't see this changing increasing. The other thing I want to highlight is this is not changing our programming, what we're doing out in the field. This is just a simple, instead of asking for the farmers to pay for it, that we're spreading it over to the general fund. But the programming, same number of employees, same programming, focused on water quality, just asking the funding source to change instead of the farmer paying for it, it would go to the general.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Sorry. We understand it. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you.

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: So this is the part, if appropriate, these are some of the results of our measuring what we do. And Nicole can do a walk through this if you want. We changed the system a little bit this year. It's important that we do this so we know how we're doing. And if there's an issue that we need to correct, we have some data to figure it out. So, Nicole, if you wanna begin?

[Nicole Dubuque (Operations Director, Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: Sure. Sure. I'm happy to kinda whiz through and you tell me if there are particular areas that you wanna talk more about.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So I'm I'm looking at this and I just see one year.

[Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson (Member)]: Mhmm.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Vermont, what I don't see is what it was how it compares to last year. There's no There's no trend. I can't tell what the trend if there's any trends from this.

[Nicole Dubuque (Operations Director, Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: Right. So, there isn't any trends with several of our programs. We have been working with the Chief Performance Office and within our divisions on updating our performance measures. In previous years, we had several programs where we had some really basic information about how many licenses, for example, how many registrations, etcetera. And some of the measures were really not things that were within our control. So we've been working to update them. So we did not use these performance measures specifically in 2024.

[Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson (Member)]: Okay. Thank you.

[Nicole Dubuque (Operations Director, Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: Yeah. So for the produce program, we are specifically looking at the number of grantees, for produce safety innovation grantees, who indicate new markets reached or current markets maintained. So 88% of grantees. Number of support services provided to Vermont produce farms, 104. Number verified farms in the Vermont WinWAM database, that's seven seventeen. Moving on to working lands, we look at the percent of business grantees that show increase in net income over the grant period, 56%. The percent of grantees that added FTEs over the grant period, 49%. The percent increase in product output for business grantees over the grant period, 68%. Moving on to DBIC, these performance measures, we did not change. So I have twenty twenty four in here as well. So the number that experienced increased sales because of marketing and or promotion activities has gone from 70 to 319. The number of new and or existing delivery systems access points reached, you can see we have a big jump here from sixteen forty five to 19,544. The number of farmers who have learned new management strategies. This went down, and my understanding is, you know, we did a lot of outreach in the beginning, spoke to a lot of farmers. We're not necessarily teaching the same thing twice, but I can get more detail on that if needed. So we went from fourteen 27 to three twenty three in 2025. The percentage of participants that expressed satisfaction and positive outlook for the future of their business, ninety nine percent both years. This is a self report measure. Moving into Food Safety and Consumer Protection Division, we have, multiple programs within this division. So I won't go really in the weeds on things. We we do track the number of licenses, registrations, permits, which is fifteen fifty eight in meat inspection. The number of in plant non compliance reports, 23. Number of inspection visits at the plants, 3,056 in 2025. Number inspections resulting in enforcement actions for compliance inspections, 28. Number of compliance inspections overall is eight seventy six. So that's a it's a pretty good number. And then the bottom two are really important ones that we added for 2025, which is the number of recalls, state inspected product, zero, and the number of implant microbiological, can't ever say that word the first time, residue samples positive, zero. That's what we want to see, right? That means we're doing our job.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Great question, Claire. Yes. Yes.

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: If you go back to page 27, when you look at the percentage of communities who indicate new markets reached, the current markets maintained, 88%. Does that suggest that you have a 12% reduction? Is it? I mean, some were status quo probably. What's the flip side of 88%?

[Nicole Dubuque (Operations Director, Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: So this is I don't know if I'm understanding the question. So basically out of grantees surveyed, so the folks that had received produce safety implementation grant, I think is the eye, they had indicated that they were able to, with that grant, reach new markets or current markets maintained.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So So if they didn't the other 12%, then

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: Did not

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: even did not even did the grant didn't help them even maintain. It just it was less effective for those 12%?

[Nicole Dubuque (Operations Director, Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: Essentially.

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Okay. I'm just wondering

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Doesn't mean it wasn't maintained, it's just that the grant didn't help to maintain it.

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: Yeah.

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Let's suggest that 88% is pretty good rather than we've lost something to 12%.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So, I'm a little concerned about time. We're already running over, so I wonder if there are certain ones in here that you particularly want to highlight. And then, if we have questions, Tom is our liaison to you guys, and we can ask him to check things out. Absolutely.

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: I don't think so. We always get a chuckle of how many mosquitoes we collect. Oh, it's okay. It's well over

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: 89 is there over back.

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: Well, so yeah. So, you know, and it's an important part what we do, you know, we collect them for disease, same with ticks, but, you know, we're checking for West Nile and so forth. But I don't know. How many do we got there? Paul?

[Nicole Dubuque (Operations Director, Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: We have several. I mean, I would just suggest as you look through the presentation, and I can absolutely follow-up with representative Stevens as well. I really like looking at the regulatory programs to just see how much technical assistance we're doing and how our inspections are really helping maintain a market that really doesn't have a lot of violations. So, like, the where's a good example? Animal health, great example. So, like, doing 94 inspections and we're only having, you know, the number of compliance activities that are to the level of a notice of violation is three. So I those are the things that I just wanna highlight because I feel like those are real successes for us. Plant industry also does a lot of work. I know, secretary Tebowicz mentioned the amount of mosquitoes, our lab, right? We are continually year after year after year increasing the number of tests we're doing and also the number of programs across state government in both Agency of Agriculture and the Agency of Natural Resources that we are supporting with the lab. I think that's a great return on investment to discuss. With water quality, the thing that I like to highlight is these grants, right, that these are, in the capital bill or through the clean water board on the bottom here, the value of on farm implementation investments. Last year alone, it was $8,209,006.72. The state dollars very much make matching to the federal programs through NRCS possible. So I like to bring that up. Otherwise, we've got a list of carry forward funds here, which are all obligated and existing multi year grant agreements. So yeah, sorry if I talk too fast, but I think those

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: are the main things. That's great. Well, we can look. So basically, what I'm hearing is no particularly new initiatives. You've lost a couple of things from federal funds, and you're working to keep people in business and healthy.

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: Great. Thank you very much.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Thank you very much for coming. Yes, Doctor. Is our liaison to you, and we appreciate your time. Thank you

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets)]: so much. You. Bye bye.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Take care. Criminal justice folks, if we take a five minute break, are you okay for doing that? Okay. Let's start back at 10:30 and let's off five Thank you.