Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Good morning, it's Friday, January 23. We're going to spend some time on water quality. As we know in farming, farmers are most concerned about water quality, and there's other people that are as well. We're going to meet with the Farmers Watershed Alliance, and who wants to lead up?

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: I can lead

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: up. Come on up, sir.

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: All right, where do we sit?

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Yep, right there in that chair, yeah.

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: There he is now on my chair. Okay, good. Just

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: tell us who you are, All floor is

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: right, so I'm Scott Magnan. I'm the chair of the Farmers Watershed Alliance. A little bit of written testimony, but definitely want to have some round table conversations. It sounds like you had some great topics yesterday that sound very interesting, so maybe we could work off that conversation a little bit if it's applicable. Yeah, absolutely. I'll start with just telling you about our organization. So the Farmers Watershed Alliance supports the agricultural community and water quality improvements and other environmental topics in the Franklin County Grand Isle region. We have relationships that extend that outreach to most of the state. We were formed about twenty years ago and have had major impacts on field practices in place today. We have 11 board members and two staff members. We currently provide outreach and education hosting or co hosting three or more events each year. In addition, primarily through the state funded CWIP grant, we are able to help support farmers in projects surrounding precision agriculture and conservation equipment. Much of the equipment is often on farms with state invested seed dollars. Precision Agriculture maximizes the utilization of nutrients and enhances record keeping. We also provide assistance to help that data get utilized, targeting key goals set forth in the tactical basin plan. Also, set as a basin plan goal, our collaboration with UVM Extension Agency of Ag, other water quality groups and agencies give the farmers a seat at the table at many events each year to further enhance their productivity or improve water quality on farms. Overview in a nutshell of what our organization is and has been. Certainly it's been more than that, but that's an overview. So my history is I grew up on a dairy farm. Where are you from? From St. Alden's. Yep. Yes. My dad farmed, milked like 60 cows in a ties style barn. He had eight brothers and sisters, most of them in the ag community. I think there's only one left that actually milks cows. I still farm 200 acres of cropland, but primarily I've been a service provider to farmers doing custom crop work, and then my role also went into precision agriculture as a dealer for agruder technology. I feel like we're definitely still trying to adapt to how the world has changed from a lot of different angles. It used to be we just we can calculate our expense of our equipment, our labor costs, we could do business, and now all these other buckets keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger, which adds complexity to it. Just some stats on affordability. Last year, our receivables went up by 130%. So now we're forced to send out letters to farmers and tighten our belts there, not knowing if that work will still be there. We don't want to force the hand of people that have supported us to go out, but we can't handle that type

[Senator Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: of cost. Can you repeat that? Just went up?

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: Account receivable and our services we provide to other farmers. So installs on equipment, doing custom work, going to their farm and bailing and spreading manure. So that number's good, and we've always had it be in the $50,000 range, which is something we could kind of roll over and manage, but this year we were running like 140, 160, which we could not, we can't sustain that, so we had to get it back to that other level. But it was a metric that I could throw out there as something that shows that it's gotten harder on the affordability front. The bucket I talked about, accounting's gone up significantly. It's probably tripled or more in ten years. That used to be a couple thousand dollars a year, now QuickBooks used to be a software program you could use for four or five years. Now you get an annual fee of $2,000 and then with tax laws and whatnot, accounting's gone up in their cost of living. That bucket's gotten really big, insurance has gotten really big, taxes have gotten big, so those sidebar buckets on top of fertilizer costs and whatnot, those buckets are getting bigger on the portability front, which sounds like that adds stress, which sounds like you guys talked a lot about yesterday, also the constant change in business structures. So one thing we're doing is trying to get more out of our farm. We've got 50 acres of woodlands we own. We're trying to build trails and have a food forest and open that up to farm members. What are you cropping on your farm? So we mostly hay, soybeans, and corn as our commodity crops, and then this one's going more into fruits or veg- more fruits, like fruit trees. I want to come on mountain biking, so you can mountain bike and take food and kind of get agritourism, and healthy living and good food, and just an extra revenue source. We're doing maple there, so trying to keep it small scale and just do it on farm members so they can be part of the ag community, but then and figure out liability insurance and how that fits. So there's Act 31 passed, which should allow for agritourism and trail use, but then you talk to the insurance company. It doesn't really do much facts there, but it basically protects them, not the farmer, in some regard. It might help your premiums or it might not, depending how they want to look at it. The law tried to help

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: the farmer,

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: kind of helped the insurance company, but somebody's still going to fight the legal battle. That's good information. Even with a lot of deflation, it still could raise the cost to me to be able to do what I want and maybe we can't do it or have to tailor around what we can do or can't do. Some of that's good, but it's also an obstacle that you're trying to figure out how to stay in agriculture, find those niche markets, and then overcome whatever obstacles are in the way.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Where are your soybeans going? Soybeans

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: are going to a commodity market, so they I think we don't sell directly to Canada, but our vendor does. So, that's going to be a hurdle, and we're nervous about it. We're not looking at dry beans. There's other business, think Warren, that does dry beans. We're considering, like, maybe we can utilize that local market. I hope they're doing well enough to be able to pay what we need to get paid. Just trying to pull out of that commodity market a little bit, but in some regards, that commodity market is helpful because you can sell high volume.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: So you're hearing about the soybean, the trade, and all that stuff? Are you feeling that pinched as far as that market?

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: It lowered our price a little bit. We weren't overly profitable this year on soybeans. Nervous about the future of what that market looks like for sure, especially if there's tariffs on Canada. We go there, then we gotta look for another port, which inevitably is gonna lower our price, most likely. What do

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: do with your corn? Picking it or silage? We pick.

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: That also goes to a vendor in IBA. Most of that's distributed locally, but it's still on a commodity market, so we'll use the Chicago Board of Trade to lock in price. So we can pick our futures price anytime during the year for December, we can basically legalize gambling. Hope you lock in a profitable price, like we'll try and lock in one contract that's profitable, maybe a second that shoots pretty high, in hopes we definitely hit the profitable one.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: So do you pick it and store it, or do you pick it and get rid of it?

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: We pick it and get rid of it, the bins are in Heidi, through shape fertilizer, set up bins there. There's a couple places we can sell through local agency. One's direct to a farm, and then that deals with commodity markets and forward trade.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: So I'm sorry to keep on pressuring you with questions, but just, education for us is very, very big. Your business that you're going around doing custom service, what do you have for equipment?

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: Round balers, newer spreaders, a bunk tractor, mowers. My model, we had an uncle that found a couple thousand cows, so we were pretty big there. Since I didn't, I've invested more into smaller operations just because the investment's less for me. I'm getting older. There's demand there. Still less demand each year, but still some demand, so we've chose that path. Then the precision ag sales and service is probably geared more towards bigger agriculture that can cover more acres.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: When you say mowers, are you the self propelled type, the big The

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: self propelled, that's a 15, but not as big as the big amps. But we still cover a couple thousand acres a year with it. True. Yep. But that's down from twenty twenty.

[Senator Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: So Scott, in terms of regulatory entities, do you interact more with ANR or the ag agency? Good question. So I definitely have that in my testimony.

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: With regulation, we've had a relationship with the Agency of Agriculture over a lot of years. I think we've helped, we've had meetings with them about how they do business. We've received funding from them. It's generally been, I think there's been times where that hasn't been a good relationship, but we worked through it. So right now, I think it is a very good relationship. We definitely have concerns where things have headed and why they have headed there with ANR. The general consensus with the board is that ANR has had some opportunity to enforce where they haven't enforced, which now is leading to another level of regulation. So now we're gonna have two, we're still gonna be under the RAPs, but we're adopting CAFO, now they're gonna comply with two, some farms have to comply with two things, which is going to raise costs, then we're going to move, as a state, we're going to move resources from Agencies of Ages so they can develop with ANR, which is going to be a cost issue, and I'm not sure if any of that really does anything for water quality at all, because it's not boots on the ground, it's a lot of bureaucracy. That's kind of our opinion on it. Maybe there can be some good out of it, but we see it being pretty a lot of work, a lot of meetings, and if they don't do what they could have already done, then the letter is going to come back. Yeah.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: One of the things that struck me yesterday,

[Senator Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: I don't know if the other committee members feel the same way. So if you're an LFO, you have annual inspections from the agency. And I didn't realize, from what I heard, the turnover that exists there with the staff, so that someone may come and inspect the farm, and then maybe the next year as well, and then they're somewhere else in the agency or they mourn somewhere else or they're not there anymore. So there's a sort of continuing lack, for better term, of institutional knowledge. In other words, if I kept coming to your farm, eventually I kind of get what you're doing, and I try my best to make it as easy. I didn't realize how stressful the annual inspections could be, but it was pretty clear that there used to be two days worth of walking in, now it's one, but it's a full day, and you're almost afraid to say too much for fear that it might trigger something else. I don't know whether your experience is similar, where you see a turnover

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: one Yeah, at a personal experience is inks on a small farm. Larry could definitely speak to it, because he's a large farm.

[Senator Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: Yeah, would love Larry.

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: And Tim has also had some experience with inspectors So as I might let those guys talk a little more to that, but within our board, there's concern in our meetings about how those inspections are gonna be handled, and we've met with agency staff in the past to help with that inspection process. Tim being one of those cases that triggered a meeting with the agency and Hansen, and it was a very productive meeting, led to some positive, Oh, good results. Do what? Now we have to do it again as it shifts over to ANR, repeat the process and understand their process.

[Senator Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: So I could think, one of the

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: things I put in that would help the ag committee is just clear expectations, consistent, fair regulation, and competitive markets. So we all talk priorities.

[Senator Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: Supposedly, ag and I are gonna work together to do a transition. Correct. And if if you if you don't believe that's happening, please come back to to let the guy know.

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: I think it is happening. Like, I think it is happening, but is it necessary?

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: I think the I always struggle with that too, and I've actually have taken that concern, Senator, that you have with that in your observation, and I have expressed that to the agency with that today. To go just kind of what Senator Heffernan alluded to, come back and talk to us. I think that is one of the things that I was most impressed about this committee and the group that was in here is how much we are alive, how much we're paying attention. And sometimes you don't know that you are until you're told that by the group that you are supposed to be helping. So yeah, so we would encourage everyone to make sure that they keep in touch with our I think. I think yesterday showed us that we have a good finger on the pulse of what's important to farmers and the political side of it. Yeah, so why don't we bring in who wants to go next? And then we

[Tim (Franklin dairy farmer; FWA member)]: can Larry, Larry's probably about to be a feather.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Larry? Oh, he's back. Larry, you're on, Larry. And you're muted. There you are. There you go.

[Larry Jarvis (Vice Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance; Enosburg dairy farmer)]: Hey. Good morning. I'm glad to take part in this meeting there this morning. Just give you a quick update about myself. A I just went through a knee replacement surgery, not doing very well. So my mind's not really too, too much into everything. I might just

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: tell us who you just for the record, Larry, just tell us who you are.

[Larry Jarvis (Vice Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance; Enosburg dairy farmer)]: This is Larry Jarvis. I'm a dairy farmer in Ennisburg. I'm vice chair of Farmers Watershed. Frank and Granite Watershed Committee. I also sit on Ennisburg Select Board for about fifteen years. And our farm is a family farm, but it's classified under a large farm operation. It's actually two dairies rolled into one and one permit under the LFO permit, two different locations. We milk approximately 2,000 cows total, another over 2,000 replacements. And we crop over, I would say close to 4,000 acres of grass corn land.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: You heard that the governor has proposed eliminating the MFO and ALFO permit costs. That was something that we're going to take up with this committee as well. As the governor has said, we shouldn't be at this point in time with the price of milk. We shouldn't be asking these people to pay just for the right to farm. We hope that we're successful. I know this committee's going to be successful as far as pushing that forward. I feel strongly about We'll, we'll try to shepherd it through the the rest of the building.

[Larry Jarvis (Vice Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance; Enosburg dairy farmer)]: That that just that's just for the the LFOs and MFOs. It does not apply to LFOs?

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: LFO and MFO, both both medium and large farms.

[Larry Jarvis (Vice Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance; Enosburg dairy farmer)]: Okay. That'd be great Cause I've always thought of, you know, that was kind of money not well spent at all. And I think it's up to $2,500 a year for real.

[Senator Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: Yep. Yep. And 1,500 from the NFL's.

[Larry Jarvis (Vice Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance; Enosburg dairy farmer)]: Yeah. Yeah. Thanks Scott alluded to, you his cost as a custom applicator has gone up and cost for us farmers have gone up astronomically. You can just roll a dollar over so many times to figure out where you're gonna put it and help your firm be more profitable. And he's escalating costs is, you know, it's a real thing that we don't know going forward how we're gonna apply it to the right areas to keep farming viably.

[Senator Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: So I'd ask Scott, and he referenced that as a LFO, you deal a lot of times, well, every year with the agency in terms of inspections. Do you see the same inspector year after year after year, or are are there new faces all the time? And what sort of relationship do you have?

[Larry Jarvis (Vice Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance; Enosburg dairy farmer)]: We we had originally, we had Katie Gere for many years. She was the main one for us. And then then there was a little bit of a turnover for a few years, and that's we've had David Wardrop for last, I'm guessing, maybe five years, four years. There's always there's always somebody else with them maybe an MFO inspector. In this past year, there was a, a person with ANR. This is the only year that I this is not physically there for the inspection, so I can't really speak too much of it. Going forward, I guess that's what's gonna be occurring is ANR is gonna be part of these inspections. So like Scott said, you're gonna be dealing with, farmer's gonna be dealing with multiple, comments basically from two different departments because one department's gonna see, see certain things. The other one's gonna see, might see something totally different, but I do sit on staff or stakeholders committee. They had a meeting yesterday which I couldn't attend because of because of my leg situation. So unfortunately, that group is very large and it's and seems like we sit three hours and don't get a lot accomplished, but, we're trying to get this stuff in front of legislators. I think it's supposed to be in two or three weeks. Some of

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: the We're staying pretty in tune with that. There's gonna come a time here in the next little bit. We're gonna ask for an update as far as where all that talk is going. We do have some House members that are keeping us in tune some, but we are concerned about that. We're concerned about this new language which just mandates that everyone has to be an LFO, or all LFOs have to have CAFOs. And so so yeah. So we're we're staying in touch with that, and we're gonna help where we can with that. So yeah. What else what else, Larry? What would you like us to know?

[Larry Jarvis (Vice Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance; Enosburg dairy farmer)]: Just, you know, like Scott was saying, whether it's KFO or LFO, not seeing the water quality side of it. With this change that they're doing, I think it's more paperwork that the evidence is Keith's getting put in front of us. It just seems like they want cleaner records, which at the end of the day is not gonna change the outcomes. Know, one thing is just basically, we gotta measure our pits every day or every week I should say, and then, you know, apply accordingly, which most part we're doing now and you gotta move it around. Now you gotta have better record keeping system. And and it and as a farmer, you take, like, last year, the beginning of the year, it rained, you know, the May, beginning in June. So farmers are trying to get a corn in the ground and they're trying to harvest their crops. And when you're trying to also keep records on in these conditions, they're not very accurate records. I mean, you know, one day you're blowing it into a truck, you know, you're say a tonnage records for a load of grass. Next day, you're in a height up, but it's a different size height up. It's a little wet. How do you mark that down? How do you know, you're not getting complete, yield records, but you have to put something at the end of the year in front of, for your permits. But, so on our, in our equipment, we keep putting more, technology on there to, to get these answers. You know, on our choppers, we get these, harvest labs that record the yields and things that's in that nature. What do you do when that technology goes down? You don't stop chopping and, try to get it fixed because when that technology goes down, it's not one or two hours. It could be two weeks, could be a month. And, you know, we run a couple of choppers. You're getting one has got some very accurate information and the other one, somebody's writing in a notebook, you know, so many loads per field and such knob. But at the end of the day, I think what you really can assess the land is by looking at the soil sample results, you know, whether or not your records are accurate and stuff, soil samples are not gonna lie. If you got high phosphorus on your lands and stuff, well, that lands should be cropped and, nutrient supplied accordingly. Whether or not you get two tons per acre or five tons per acre, you know, the answers, you know, shouldn't rely on, you know, the information that you're gathering there. Another day I wanna touch real quick on to a I'm talking about some of these technologies is I always go to these national no till conferences and I just recently went this year to St. Louis and one technology is starting to come into our area is a drone technology and they're using this to, you know, maybe apply the cover crops a little earlier. They're also using it to to spray pesticides and stuff. But what I'm hearing is the state of Vermont is holding that up because the language of, you know, whether you're doing an aerial or with a a ground rig different is is not differentiated correctly. So they're not able to apply, you know, maybe a roundup or something with these drones. So it leaves Vermonters at a disadvantage. That's something that is very accurate and less intrusive on your land because you're not compacting your land. And you may be able to just go do some spot sprays with these things and stuff. It's really, really something that we need to be forward thinking on and helping the farmers not putting us behind the other states. Feature I saw out there is like, we've had a lot of rain in the summer and stuff. So like the corn may have some fungicide on it. And our practice is the the rigs need to go in between these row crop corns and they're knocking corn over and stuff. These drones can fly right over the top of them and apply it foliar there. And they may not have to the whole field, like I said, and they can assess the situation and just put it what's needed. And, you know, it's a win win for the crop to grow more healthy and it actually pulls more nutrients out of the ground and and gives the farmers a better quality crop.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Can you elaborate on that just a little bit more? I kinda lost on the first part of it. There's a whole lot for the state that would keep this technology from moving forward.

[Larry Jarvis (Vice Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance; Enosburg dairy farmer)]: It's the chemical, the labeling for some of the chemicals. Okay. Last summer, Brevant Seeds had a field day and they had a drone and that was a discussion that this, this outfit was there with a, a drone rig. They're not these little, little drones. They're more like four.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Oh yeah. They're bigger. I've seen them. I've seen them. Yeah. They're big.

[Larry Jarvis (Vice Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance; Enosburg dairy farmer)]: Yeah. And they can do, can do this, this particular outfit that I talked with out in St. Louis, they're basically doing They said they could do 200 acres a day.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Larry Jarvis (Vice Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance; Enosburg dairy farmer)]: And it's not one of these. Here's a, here's a drone. Here's a chemical, we'll put fly it on. They have to

[Senator Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: go to

[Larry Jarvis (Vice Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance; Enosburg dairy farmer)]: aviation, basically an aviation school and get certified to-

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Yeah, yeah. Well, will bring some people in and talk about that. I think that's very, very important. We will, I thank you for making us aware of that. We'll bring some people in, Larry's, and have those conversations.

[Senator Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: All right.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: What? Yeah, go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[Senator Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: Larry, many acres do you grow corn?

[Larry Jarvis (Vice Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance; Enosburg dairy farmer)]: We planted approximately 1,200 acres this past year.

[Senator Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: Are you using treated seed?

[Larry Jarvis (Vice Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance; Enosburg dairy farmer)]: Yes.

[Senator Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: Okay. Thank you.

[Larry Jarvis (Vice Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance; Enosburg dairy farmer)]: We're also on UVM's trial for Neonix seeds.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Oh, nice.

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: We-

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: How did that, well, can we talk about that just for a second? How did the Heather Darby's coming in on Tuesday. I'm sure that's who you were working with.

[Larry Jarvis (Vice Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance; Enosburg dairy farmer)]: Yes. Heather and Jeff Sanders.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: How do you think with the drought conditions and all that that it went that that would that study went this year?

[Larry Jarvis (Vice Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance; Enosburg dairy farmer)]: It's in my location, it didn't the the trial didn't turn out very well. Of course, I do no till also. A lot of seed population didn't come up quick and there was a little bit of weed weed control issues. We did knock it back, but the population wasn't the greatest and it ended up okay. But it was this past year wasn't a good and our, our plot just did not come out very well.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: And think

[Larry Jarvis (Vice Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance; Enosburg dairy farmer)]: the thing about the seed is they're getting this neonics non treated seed, but I don't know the viability of that seed compared to the other seeds. There might be other genetics in that seed that makes it early vigor out of the ground compared to this one or that one. It may even have nothing to do with the neonic, but they don't have a huge amount of these seeds that they can try on these different types of soils.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Yeah. Okay. We'll be mindful of that. I think it's something, yeah, that's helpful as well. So just a little bit more on that. So on this controlled testing that you were doing, you had neonic seed and non neonic seed standing side by each or whatever or in different plots. It's just measuring the amounts, the grow rates, all that yield rates, all that. That's kinda how that went along.

[Larry Jarvis (Vice Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance; Enosburg dairy farmer)]: Yeah. It's it's pretty comparable to the two. It wasn't really a huge significant difference. And we're trying to do it on land that had been inside.

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: And

[Larry Jarvis (Vice Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance; Enosburg dairy farmer)]: not not something that's been in the in the turned over into the corn lot of years because you want to look at the the neonics you know they're in there before you know even before it's into corn they want to get barbie in that field. And I don't know the exact findings on what they came up with. I haven't seen the report, but.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Yeah. Thank you. Helpful. Yep. Go ahead.

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: And part of what he said too is the accessibility that it creates, like the genetic piece of it. Like, it's hard to compare apples to apples.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Well, is. It's denominator, you know, it's BMR or whatever it is, yeah, so we get But

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: if you limit what you can get, then it, even if you do neonics to no neonics, there's other things like you can't get there because of that.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Certainly a lot to chat about. Senator Plunkett was part of a group, LCAR we call it, a rule making group, and they made the determination amongst other things that there might be some solutions if we can't get treated seed to make sure that Vermont farmers can get treated seeds through a permit process and also through the process of doing pest control management classes, certifications, and stuff like that. There'll be a lot more to come on that. Ultimately, at the end of the day, I think the real goal will be to make sure that we don't handcuff farmers into doing something that isn't going to work for That's what this committee will work hard about. A lot more to come with that, but we do appreciate that ruling. It was helpful. Larry, are you good for a minute? Can we bring in Tim for a second?

[Larry Jarvis (Vice Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance; Enosburg dairy farmer)]: Yeah, go ahead.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Tim, come on up.

[Tim (Franklin dairy farmer; FWA member)]: I was running a 100 cow, 120 cow operation this fall. I sold my cows currently renting my farm out to a neighboring farm that also purchased my cows. I also did the neonics study with Heather this last fall and I think my results were similar to Larry's. We had water issues from the rough spring we had and then dry kind of did make a difference in the production of that. We had these problems. Didn't get the yields that we thought.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: We had just a terrible year of trying to do that, so. And yeah,

[Tim (Franklin dairy farmer; FWA member)]: that was you can't necessarily blame the neonics.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: No. No. Where's the farm?

[Tim (Franklin dairy farmer; FWA member)]: In Franklin. Okay. Right outside the village of Franklin.

[Senator Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: Yep. And we took testimony that even if you're 25 miles away from somebody else, the weather could be completely different.

[Tim (Franklin dairy farmer; FWA member)]: Oh, from what I heard, yeah, Addison County especially got hit. Farmers down there. Yeah. But I am still working with a farmer that is purchased my cows and renting the farm out. Is that a larger farm? Yes. Okay. Because I got to the point with my farm one of reason I retired was finding help to do it. I heard you guys talk about stress. No days off gets a lot for So a I, things aligned and I decided to sell my animals and be able to hatch. And how long were you farming? All my life. Yep. I'm the third generation. Third generation, bro. Many acres? About four forty acres. Yeah. And how much is cropland? About two forty, two fifty in that area. Yeah. Yeah. I rent to that out to the truck and the pluffing counts. Yeah. What types of soil? Mostly wall. Yeah. We have plenty of snow. But yeah. And I and you guys talked about going through the little inspections is stressful. Yeah. I got accused of being dishonest. Oh. And it was, my whole experience was kind of poor on that because when I got accused of being dishonest, they asked me to show the location. I showed, I went to their specs of a location. They said, You're being deceptive. I want to see the other side. I said, Let's go see the other side. And then they refused to go inspect the other side. I said, I was very disheartened with that. You know, it's stressful enough when you're in an inspection, but to be called dishonest when you're doing it really adds a level of Did you file a complaint or saying No, I never filed a complaint. I just let it go. I knew what I was gonna get. I knew what was gonna get. Go ahead, Scott.

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: But you told us and

[Tim (Franklin dairy farmer; FWA member)]: we filed a complaint

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: and then we had a meeting.

[Senator Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: Yeah. Was there some resolution to that?

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: I feel like the process was approved.

[Tim (Franklin dairy farmer; FWA member)]: You felt it was afterwards. I never really I thought had a feeling

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: they were very receptive in that meeting.

[Tim (Franklin dairy farmer; FWA member)]: They did see a bag. Right. End results, I knew I was gonna need a leachate system for my bunker silence. They gave me the state engineers. They said, we'll engineer it. You know, we'll help you find the money to improve it. So the first thing I did the next morning, I called the agency engineers, got myself lined up. A couple of weeks I heard from them, they came up. I think it was a month or so later they came back and said, we can't handle this. We're going to set you up with a professional engineering company cross consultants. They did that, I met with them and I told everybody when I met with them, I want to get the thing engineered this winter so we can do construction in the spring. I don't, you know, I've got to crop my crops in the spring. I wanted to get that all pushed through. I wasn't doing, you know, beating on things that weren't necessary. I could hire my construction company and you know, trying to align my cropping in between having a construction company around and not working with stuff that could be dealt with in the wintertime they fell with. Well nothing ever happened. It's still to this day hasn't happened. And we're still running, the farm's still running because I rented my farm out to the east, now moved cows out, what halfers. So the fire was still running, but the leachate's never been Were

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: you a parlor or a type tax collector? I was a, well,

[Tim (Franklin dairy farmer; FWA member)]: I built a freestyle. My father and I in 2001 built a freestyle barn and we put a parlor inside the old tie stall. It was what they called a step parlor or it was kind of a combination and we still had a tie style in the old Thai style bar which still exists well in Victoria now but

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: To more like what they would call California parlor?

[Tim (Franklin dairy farmer; FWA member)]: Yes yes that step parlor like California parlor yeah there's a dozen names. Right, exactly. Well, we've tore that out and we're making it. It's a heifer facility in the house. Yeah. What

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: else would you like to tell us?

[Tim (Franklin dairy farmer; FWA member)]: That's kind of just what I came to say is that I feel that there could be better communication between the farmer and inspector. Yep.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Well, we're gonna work on that. What are you doing now?

[Tim (Franklin dairy farmer; FWA member)]: Basically, I said, I'm only retired. Yeah. I'm helping the farmer out that's, that's wild, buying cows and stuff like that. I've always enjoyed farming. Yes, I heard you say, you know, you lose $100,000 a year, but when you're taking care of animals, it's not as simple as shutting the faucet off and doing that It is, you know, a real stress in the farmer's life, but those animals are like pets. How's

[Senator Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: the new guy doing?

[Tim (Franklin dairy farmer; FWA member)]: His financial struggles. He was telling me, you know, with the price of milk, he's lost, like, dollars 8,000 a month or or maybe it was 80,000. I don't know. But it was I he was saying I forgot the number but it's you know he's losing money.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: And how many is he milking?

[Tim (Franklin dairy farmer; FWA member)]: He's milking I think around the 500 mark I guess I think it's around that. Yeah. Not really sure. Because he's a he's a I think he's an MF ball. Yeah. Well,

[Senator Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: 1,500 of that will go away, hopefully, if the governor's budget passed.

[Tim (Franklin dairy farmer; FWA member)]: Well, and I'm done. So it doesn't make a difference to me, but it does. Think that you guys are making a wise decision getting rid of that. I mean, all the financial stresses, especially now the price is melting so low. Yeah. That's just another stress to these farmers that are, you know, they're working seven days a week like I was. Oh yeah. That's tough.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Well gentlemen, what else? What else? I mean, you're here. Anything else you'd like to add before we move on to the next?

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: I mean, you guys had some other issues. Sounds like you're working on that. I had some questions on where those

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: were

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: at, and maybe just a little more information to bring

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: back the So

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: you get water quality, which we talked a lot about. I don't need to talk about hemp. Solar on Primatte was kind of interesting. Farming Leaf Fund, we've had some conversations with others about that.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: So let me tell you what's the And that's on the solar part of it.

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: Okay.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: One of the issues I one of the things I was actually doing with Tim as far as asking is acreage. And it's this, we want to keep the project off of Primag land. We really, really do. But we also want to help you guys make the land that used to be heifer pasture land that you're not doing anymore. We want to make that more valuable to you. Lots of times, they're just across the fence line. If you guys want to put solar up, that's great. Let's keep it out of the primag land. Let's have them put it in where the habitat passures were. It's harder for them to build on. We get that. It's harder for them to manage it. We get that. But that is, you know, that's on them. And I think if we do not be mindful, we can see the future, right? The future is Massachusetts, Connecticut, other areas where the sprawl is starting to eat up ag land and farmland and it's no longer there. And our job here as a committee is not to look today or tomorrow, but three hundred years from now, so that your generations can keep on going and you're going have this ag land to farm on forever. And I get that you're going to get more, less land's gonna grow more, but you've gotta have the land to be to to begin with. And I do see that there's a lot of land out there that is no longer being used by you because you don't pasture your land anymore. Let that land become more valuable, and that's where they can put their solar. That's where they can build housing if they'd like. But we're gonna do our best to try to protect you guys to keep these people from stealing prime ag land. That's our goal. We don't have a bill written. We don't have a bill written. We don't have anything like that, but we have started the conversations. We'd like to be We also want to be very mindful, as Senator Heffernan has brought up many, many times, that it is your land and that we need to be mindful that it is your land. I'm gonna let these guys continue. I'm just gonna step out for a second.

[Senator Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: So I had a question totally, anything we've already touched on. Any members of the Alliance do acceptory on farm stuff and how's that going? Yeah.

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: So I wanted to know what that definition was.

[Senator Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: Well, it could be tours of the farm. It could be bringing community people in, having dinner there or lunch, could be a

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: bunch I of feel like that's what I'm trying to do with my trail system. Okay, That's an accessory, trying to find an extra revenue stream that might be attractive to something other than food.

[Senator Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: But you haven't done it yet.

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: I'm in the process. I registered for this day. We did a trial pilot year last year with friends just to get feedback. We started planning stuff, making trails for our own use, and right now friends, tried a couple memberships.

[Senator Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: One of the farms that's in Senator Major's District in Windsor County has a barn that for part of the year is just storage, hay, whatever. But then in the summer, they pull all that out and they actually have bands show up, and they got in a hustle with, I don't know if it was a DC or ANR. I don't think it was the Ag agency. Think it was DC, that by definition, this is what you have to do. If the barn is not used primarily for storage, they need a permit. I don't think we've got the answer that he at least hopes we're going to get.

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: There's always obstacles. You try to do something then there's a zoning permit or an insurance issue. What is the conversation, and what's the purpose of the accessory on farm topic? It's obviously an extra revenue stream. It's part of Vermont culture that seems some of that's marketable, you do get some marketing ability, which self marketing fits good in the capitalistic approach. It pulls you out of commodity market a little bit, so I think it is good. The models are hard sometimes to work with and figure out how are you going to make money off it, which that's not new.

[Senator Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: Well, that's why I asked members of the Alliance whether anybody's raised their hand and said, Hey, we tried to do this. We ran into this hurdle. How do we fix it? Of thing. Sounds like I don't think there'd be an issue with your fighting trails and all that. To me, that sounds pretty crazy. Part of this had to do with actual structure, and whether they built it as a barn or It got into really hard definitions. Like I said, I don't think we haven't reached a solution yet to my number. Anybody else?

[Tim (Franklin dairy farmer; FWA member)]: I didn't want to try it all. I was milking cake because it just seemed like I had enough on my plate. Time off was the Sure.

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: Yeah. No, it takes time to these other ventures. Somehow you have to keep doing what you're already doing, but you fluff So to you gotta figure out the management strategy that's gonna enable you to do that, which takes a lot of thought, some extra hours and whatnot. When is your plate full enough? Yeah. Yeah. That is detrimental too. Workforce decisions. Should I hire a guy or gal? Well,

[Tim (Franklin dairy farmer; FWA member)]: that's a whole other pool of job because to try to find, like I was down in Scotland way down. I had already hired four high school kids and my grandson's first birthday was August 26. It took me two weeks before that just to find one person to cover one children. That's when you're, you know It's not like a helps the decision.

[Senator Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: Not like in the eighties when you could, like you said, go to the high school and get four people that might wanna come and work on

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: the farm.

[Senator Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: Or large enough family you could

[Tim (Franklin dairy farmer; FWA member)]: spread the Oh, I've always through my whole years of farming, always hired high school kids and I had them. You know what I mean? They they'd be there for a year or two and then, well, they graduate or they find a different job or something. You just always go back to the high school and find another one or find one of their friends. That's trend days. Yeah.

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: We're after higher profit margins, but the gross income will never be what the other ventures are. We we can can have losses in the other business which just eat up that margin super quick, so you're weighing it that way too.

[Senator Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: I asked yesterday the group that we had, and it was probably a dozen farmers, the gap between the federal milk price and what you really honestly need to at least break even, if not make a little, and it sounded like it was like $4 a hundredweight. I don't know where class one's still around 16 and change, 17 maybe.

[Tim (Franklin dairy farmer; FWA member)]: I they said around I asked Matt, I think it was around 16 or 17, it was in that area.

[Senator Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: And most farming you talked to have gotta be north of 20 before you go. Right.

[Tim (Franklin dairy farmer; FWA member)]: I was gonna say, yeah, at least 4, Yeah. For what he was saying. Yeah. Well, and not doing it that long ago, I would definitely agree with those numbers here.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Yeah. I can see why there's stress.

[Tim (Franklin dairy farmer; FWA member)]: And, and you know, our labor's doing the whole time. Like I said, you can't find these high school kids anymore. So Yeah. Minimum wage is out the door as well. I wouldn't even worry about minimum wage because you can't even hire people for that anymore. Yeah. So that's We seem to

[Senator Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: have lost our work ethic somewhere along the line. I don't know where I want

[Tim (Franklin dairy farmer; FWA member)]: it, but like that one. That would be

[Senator Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: Yeah. That would be great if we could.

[Tim (Franklin dairy farmer; FWA member)]: Yeah.

[Senator Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: And I don't mean to cast a wide net, but it seems like a lot of younger folks are more interested in being on their phone and doing some other things.

[Tim (Franklin dairy farmer; FWA member)]: I get concerned on another thing. I'm on the volunteer fire department. Oh, sure. And I just went to a meeting the other night. It's looking like all these gray haired guys. I'm like, you know, it should be dark haired kids. You know, I mean, it is. It is a problem.

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: Yeah. It's definitely like an educational issue. Like the younger generation just sends out email after email after email and like not necessarily the way to get things done. Yeah.

[Senator Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: Larry, did you want to jump in? I saw you unmuted.

[Tim (Franklin dairy farmer; FWA member)]: Yeah, I just wanted

[Larry Jarvis (Vice Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance; Enosburg dairy farmer)]: to make a comment when you're talking about the financials there because it's been very tough. It doesn't matter what size farm you're at. Yesterday, we just had to go out, reach out to our line of credits there and that's something that we normally don't do in January. And another thing that's gonna hurt our community right here is we're hearing that Franklin Foods is a cheese plant right here in local Enosburg that's been here for fifty years. He's gonna be shutting his doors this summer. And that's more or less one of these corporate buyout things because what it basically was was a bigger com competitive company that reached out and bought this company. And, basically, it was their competitors, so they shut the doors down. It's huge to this little community. You know, it's or town of Ennisburg is you know, you talk 3,000 people and you get all these jobs that have been here for fifty years and it's, you know, they're they're big for well, the refrigerator company that works with them. That's one of their biggest clients. The the electric company, that's one of their biggest clients. Water water, and it just keeps going. So you lose that, and there's a huge percentage of but these little towns need to keep to keep going forward as these businesses and it's really unfortunate. I don't know if there's anything that's kinda coming in its place, but that's something that it's probably happens quite a lot throughout Vermont and trying to keep these small communities viable going forward. Know, and ag's always been a big part of it. Like you're talking about all these little startups here. You know, I saw it on TV and welding or whatever. The guy had in the wintertime, there there stores a restaurant for snowmobilers, you know, as you're thinking outside the box, you know, something like that, but definitely need help. I like the comment too about the prime eye gland, keeping that out, keeping it for prime eye gland because we just saw that recently on 105 right next to the highway, very prime eye gland, and now it's got all solar panels all up and down through there. I know there's a place for that, but shouldn't be on the prime eye gland. And going out to the Midwest, these no till conferences, you'll see it even on a larger scale. There's these thousands of acres of cropland that are now factories. And so why do they have to put it on the best land? And you hear these AI places, these companies are going out to those areas because their permitting process is easier. They throw it out there not foreseeing that this land is never going to be cropped again. And it may look like it's okay to use, but you start adding these prime lands up, you know, across your your town, your state, your country. It's gonna come come down the road, you know, thirty, forty years. So where did all this go?

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: That's

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: a question though.

[Tim (Franklin dairy farmer; FWA member)]: What's going to happen to those things? They have a shelf life. That's going to be Yes.

[Senator Steven Heffernan (Clerk)]: Inquired of that. Supposedly, they're twenty five year life cycle. That's great. What happens in year twenty six? That's I'm trying to get to the end of it. Right. Well, we could store them, and they don't leak. Okay. You still haven't sort of given me an answer. Do we crush them up eventually and put them on the road? I don't know what the answer is,

[Tim (Franklin dairy farmer; FWA member)]: but- kind of what I'm wondering.

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: That covers the cost of removing them. Yeah,

[Tim (Franklin dairy farmer; FWA member)]: right. Right. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I mean, are helping the farmers if they put this on their land and then at year 20 '6, the power company goes. And then all that money they've made, you know, that helped them financially, all of a sudden saves them. Other questions? Are you.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Good. We're gonna probably move on. We wanna thank you gentlemen for coming in. We're here. We're accessible. We're approachable. We always want to know what's going on. If you've a concern, get a hold of us. From what you guys have given us today, we have some more areas that we're going to be investigating and trying to be forward thinking. We're here mad on for you. We really, really are. You've got a great committee. Sorry that Joe wasn't here to see you today. Thank you and keep in touch with us.

[Scott Magnan (Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance)]: Thank you guys. Yep.

[Tim (Franklin dairy farmer; FWA member)]: It's been very educational. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you

[Larry Jarvis (Vice Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance; Enosburg dairy farmer)]: for all your talk.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: See you later. Larry, good luck with your knee.

[Larry Jarvis (Vice Chair, Farmers Watershed Alliance; Enosburg dairy farmer)]: Thank you.

[Tim (Franklin dairy farmer; FWA member)]: Yeah, you're gonna steep up the good

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: work, too. Thanks, appreciate that very much. You got a three minute break or you wanna, well we're gonna wait till ten anyways because that's what it says. So I got it. Wow. We're gonna Gentlemen, just give us a a few minutes here to kinda we're on the schedule of There you go. Of at 10:00, and we kind of got that poking, so we gotta kinda have to do it then. So give give us a few