Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Russ Ingalls (Chair, Vermont Senate Committee on Agriculture)]: Good morning. Still morning. Back in action here a few minutes before eleven. We're a little bit early. We're going to spend some time with the agency of agriculture, food, markets. We have secretary, Anson Tevitz, and Nicole and Amy in as well, and we're gonna talk about their 2027 budget. Sir, the floor is yours.

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Good morning. Anson Teavitts, Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets, joined by Nicole Mueke. She's our Operations Director and Amy Mercer, our Financial Director. I am here to present our budget for the fiscal year that's beginning on July 1 and running through the July. You as a legislature, of course, are facing some incredibly difficult decisions, transforming our education system, addressing property taxes, and responding to challenges in housing and public safety. And agriculture intersects with all these issues, and it's a role to play in Vermont's future. Our proposed budget largely level funds are core programs, and I say in the current economic and budgetary climate, I consider that a real victory. With those constraints, though, we are making targeted investments in a couple of areas, reducing the cost for our dairy farmers and strengthening our business support staff, which is urgently needed to improve customer service for our farmer's safe living systems. So with that, I thought I would just walk you through our proposed FY twenty twenty seven budget. And I think you have a copy of it, but we'll also share it for folks as well. And I always like to begin with our mission, which highlights what we all do at the Agency of Agriculture. And 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. So that is our mission at the Agency of Agriculture. Also like to just give you a sense of how the flow of funds happen at the agency. So in general fund, it's about 22% of our base budget. Federal funds, about 33 of our base budget. And we have about 40% of special funds. And this is a variety of areas, fees or licenses and registrations. And the revenue received from these fees is used as part of our base budget and or supports our staff and operations. We also have a small interdepartmental transfer fund. It's only about 5% of our base budget. We have six appropriations within the agency. We have the administration, the three of us here are all part of the administration. We have food safety and consumer protection, agriculture development, plant industry, we have the lab, which we call Vail, and agriculture So farm that's a sense of where the different divisions are and where the money flows. Our proposed budget for FY '27, our total budget is $61,191,197. And it has a breakdown of where that's all divided between general funds, special funds, federal funds, and the transfer of funds between different ages of agencies, state capitals. Areas of change by fund category and we can get deeper into this as we walk through the budget. It's about a 1.8% increase over '26. And we have some, the general fund broken down, special funds, a decrease in federal funds and we can explain those as we go forward. And then some transfer dollars as well. This next slide is the areas of increase and many of these are just the cost of doing business because how it flows to state government, Retirement funds, medical leave insurance premium, a net increase in childcare contribution, special funds, and we explained the Clean Water Grants, and it does look like a big number, but essentially that comes from the Clean Water Board and it's transferred over to us, so it's part of the budget process, but it looks like a large increase, but actually it's just sort of a normal transfer that happens through the Clean Water Fund. Health insurance, the Pay Act, look at the salaries. Some of the things with, I think we talked about it last session where you were right in the middle of the new administration dropped some of the grants that were coming to us and you'll see those reflected the months went along, how they're rolled out, see that there. And then some transfer from the runoff course, like, based grant program. So here, we do receive, as you all know, we have a significant federal funded program at the agency, is the Dairy Business Innovation Center. We did get some good news last week. They did release the funds to us and that was about $3,500,000 So the next round of funding, we're back on track, we're ready to go, and that was released. And the Innovation Center serves Vermont, New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey as well. So, we got some good news. We're back on track there. It was a little bit of anxiety waiting for that. Normally, would have gotten that maybe in October, but it had been cleared and we're ready to go, as well as the other innovation centers across the country, Tennessee, Wisconsin, California. So you see the breakdown of some of the federal funds that have are gonna expire or have been reduced. And some of one of the bottom one, the $1,000,000, we're coming to the end of, I believe it's a five year grant that we got from the USDA and RCS. We're asking for one new position, and the Agency of Agriculture probably has the smallest business office in state government. Being as a one of, what, four? One of four. And we have reflected in some of the work we're doing. We are receiving more federal dollars, we've received more state dollars. So we think we need some more help making sure we take in the money and get that money out the door as quickly as possible for our farmers and producers. So that's the one ask or one new position within the agency of agriculture. I don't know if you want talk more about it or if he wants to talk more about it, what the role would be, but if there are questions about that, that's a.

[Nicole Muelke (Operations Director, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: I mean, I'm happy to if you're interested for the record with both of you, operations director. Like, Heffernan said, we've had the same number of people in our business office for many, many years. And over the last five years, with the influx of federal funding, we've been able to get our budget has actually doubled with federal funding, and we haven't been able to add any additional support in our business office. So being able to comply with all the federal requirements and have kinds of specialists there that can help us get the payments out would be incredibly helpful. Right now, Amy jumps in, I jump in, we bring in people, you know, who redirects them as needed. So, that's where we're at.

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: If we can move on just to some of the budget items, and these are all a level funded, you know, the fairs, farm to plate. I would note the Vermont Resource Conservation Council. The last couple of years, we may have asked for a decrease in that. We're not asking for a decrease this year. We're asking to level fund that as it was last year at $612,000 there. Farm school grants, local food grants, again, working lands, the base. A couple of years ago, the governor and you all agreed to increase the base to about $1,000,000 and that's what we're laying again on stage. I don't know if you want to go through the crosswalk of all the divisions or not. I'll leave that up to you, Chair. I'm really seeing through this. I'm fine. Yeah. Okay. So, it's pretty, you know, we talked about, you know, the administration, the one position that, I think that is the highlight there. We are, there's been some changes with ABS, it's the digital services agency, so there's a new budgeting system with that. We're still working our way through that, so we've got our best estimate of being, the cost of that may be about $55,000 more, but it may not be. That's one of those where it's a new system and we're working through it and that's reporting about $55,000 more than that, thinking that's made the change. Consumer protection, which is our biggest division, pretty much status quo there, but we've had a little bit of overtime in some temporary with our HPAI, which is the bird flu. We've had some people testing there, but we've been able, unfortunately, to cover that mostly with federal funds. There is a grant from UVM that we had to decrease because of what's happening on the federal level. FDA reduced some of the dollars coming to the states to perform produce safety programs with us. So we removed the education part of that, but the inspections are still going forward. Ag development, that's our economic development division. Between parks and that division with federal and state funds. We saw some decreases, some of the programs from the federal government, and folks are well aware of those. And the local food purchase assistance reduction of 5,100 ks was due to USDA, CINEMED grant on 3725. And you folks, I think, addressed that in some capacity budget as well. That's the main the pretty status quo there. We're just keeping our eye on what's happening with federal funds. And the part that hasn't really came in is there could be increases coming from USDA. We don't know. Know nationally, it's a pretty rough economy, like in Vermont, the farm economy is in a pretty rough state right now. And I think every state of The United States is having some rough challenges for soybeans, soybean, corn, within specialty crops. And it'll be interesting to see how Washington reacts to this latest weather event. We had pretty easy with plucking rain snow, enjoying outdoors. Had been dealing with the cold. If you look at Texas all the way to the East Coast, some of those farm states are still suffering. Really severe weather. Power outages. Freezing. All those states are beginning getting props and so forth. Well, it's gonna be interesting to see how they respond to all that.

[Nicole Muelke (Operations Director, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: There's a typo on the printout, so that bottom number is 10.96, which is corrected on the slide statement.

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Okay. So this is the one where it has the highlights.

[Russ Ingalls (Chair, Vermont Senate Committee on Agriculture)]: Yeah.

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: $12,700,000 That should be 10,960,000.00 federal dollars.

[Russ Ingalls (Chair, Vermont Senate Committee on Agriculture)]: Are those new monies or just monies that we've had in the past?

[Nicole Muelke (Operations Director, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: These are primarily just the ag debt granting programs we've been running. Okay.

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: And one of our signature programs is the Working Lands Enterprise Program, and we're grateful for those general fund dollars. And I want to also want to congratulate Steve Vermont. They did make $20,000 a year to that, which we're very grateful for that helps a lot. Steve Vermont's been a great Ag partner with us. They're always there to support us. I often think the ski world is something like the farm world where rely heavily on the the weather and sometimes the margins can be really tight with skiing ropes while We're visitors to make it successful seasons, but they donate $20,000 from their skiing program to us. So you have a background and we have a, you know, a full report on, you know, the investments that have been made and what it's leveraged, reaching all 14 counties, lots of acres. It's all focused on farm and forestry. Also, one of you mentioned that working needs is just not at the farm side. There's also some value added work being done in forestry and the great parks. Here are some of the highlights of the Innovation Center. 11 states, as I mentioned, breaks down how much we have ordered across the region. I think Vermont, if you look at it, it's done quite well, I guess, but the other states are caught on and are really looking into this program. Three seventy five applications, 29. 3,000,000 in funds requested. Ordered about $134,000,000 dollars in funds. And this is going to everything from infrastructure on the farm or process as well. So our our farm community very appreciative of this and it's a program works really well. We have a map so you can see where it's all headed and it's like Lemont, you can't even see Lemont.

[Russ Ingalls (Chair, Vermont Senate Committee on Agriculture)]: That's good.

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: We are the biggest in Gary State in the big life. New actually took this program and modeled a state program after they figured out it was very successful. So they made state dollars and an infrastructure program that helps their their farmers over there and that we do have cabinet farmers. We have other Agobarkett in New York's house of aging smallest. So that runs through that. Plant industry, we had dropped the word, you're not gonna hear the word farm, you may remember when you called it farm, but we thought farm was a little too confusing. I can't remember anything. What is it?

[Nicole Muelke (Operations Director, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Public health and ag resource management.

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Exactly. But it's really focused on the delay. It's going to go back to just call it the planned industry division. So just a name change. But you'll see some of the work we're doing there. We continue to work on our pollinator world and working on our new creation of a bee survey grant, which we see as progress to make sure that we're paying attention to that world, to value what they are to our agriculture economy and landscape. And moving on to the lab, which supports all the divisions, farmers across the state, pretty much status quo there, down in Randolph, no big changes within their budget. And then, add clean water initiative. This is one that continues to make progress each year, 14 milli, a panel, we put out a full report on all the data and all the work that's being done and the farmers continue to make strides working through our clean water initiative, both at the agriculture and the crops. And I also want to highlight, you know, one part of, I guess, within water quality. We had proposed dropping the fee that currently our meeting farms pay and also our large ones pay.

[Russ Ingalls (Chair, Vermont Senate Committee on Agriculture)]: 2,515. Yeah, $2,515,100.

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Small farmers have not paid the fees, so that's not why you're not hearing from us on that. And it's been in place more than a decade. It was initially part of the clean water scope back when the new law was passed. This is an opportunity to make it more affordable for our farmers. I want to make it clear this is not solving the economic issues that our farmers are facing, but we look at it and the governor looks at it the way it's taking one bill off the pile that needs to be paid. So the $2,500 annual fee would go away for large farm operations and also the medium farm operation, the fee would go away and it's $1,500 We believe this will benefit about 131 depending on the path month to month goes. Right now, was about 131 farmers would benefit from us. And we were close with general fund dollars. General fund dollars is about $233,002.31. But the record is heeding Berkshire, financial director, 230,000. 233. So we still need, you know, dollars to operate what we're doing in water quality. And in no way this changes the scope of work that our employees are doing our programs. It's simply dropping a fee for our farmers. There are no other states that do this. So the others are and this is another competitive thing. Dairy can be quite competitive with our neighbors. So this is the way that essentially makes us even with our neighboring states that do not require this fee.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Vermont Senate Committee on Agriculture)]: So just, Mr. Secretary, from what we've heard, this has been deeply appreciated. The farmers that have come in here and talked to us, some of them weren't even aware of it until the governor made his budget address, but it's kind of one of those little small things in a budget of $9,400,000,000 We're talking about two thirty, but it's one that really makes a difference for those 133 plumbers.

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: No, I'd say, in the money they're gonna save is gonna be right out the door again. Yeah. So they're gonna you know, they they may have this vertical piece of equipment that they need to buy to be you know, it it's just gonna be used. So it may help pay the veterinary bill or health check or something like that. And we understand it's not, you know, it's not going to solve the, you know, the bigger issues of the federal system or the pricing system of supply and demand and so forth, but we feel that the time is right. You don't control a lot of things in the dairy world, but we do have an opportunity here to at least take a pill off the pot. Just wanted you to know they liked it. Okay. Thank you. It's great to hear. I've heard the same thing as well, so that's nice to hear. Now you had him in last week. Yes. So that's kind of the budget. We do have, in the poll, if wanna go through, we have some of our performance measures that are important, and Nicole is prepared to outline those. We can stay on

[Russ Ingalls (Chair, Vermont Senate Committee on Agriculture)]: the budget for a second longer. I'm deeply concerned about the monies the losing from the federal government. Is there a reason why we're losing money? Is it political? Is it what is it? Or is it just losing some over here and gaining more over there? Where are we at with the overall dollars? And what's your take on why we're losing those that type of funding?

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Yeah, I think the one that, you know, was the biggest one that we lost was the one that, you know, purchased food from farmers, and then that was distributed back for those that are out of need. And with the new administration, I think they continue to evaluate every single program that is out there, and that was one they deemed they did not want to go forward with. I believe there is a bill, bipartisan bill that started in the Senate that would recreate that thought. Now, I don't know, you know, that has legs. It's gonna continue. I think that's the biggest one. The other one we're working on and keeping an eye on is through the FDA and we've branded as Progus Safety. That one is a mandate by Washington probably, I would say, maybe about eight to ten years ago, and they turned it over to states to do this. It it stemmed from some really significant health scares from lettuce, California, became apparent that there wasn't a lot of infections. So what they did is they essentially gave block grants to states to manage this so we could go out and educate, but also inspect, know, are you getting a water, are you washing your vegetables? There's a lot of concern, my colleagues around the country, that they trimmed that one significantly. Think it was close to 30 to 40% they trimmed. You know, we're not not a huge produce state, but we have some really significant ones moving forward to

[Russ Ingalls (Chair, Vermont Senate Committee on Agriculture)]: our food system. Well, that's something that we see here, and I think that there's no question that we feel that farming as a whole is under assault. But we see these emerging markets, these growing markets, as very, very important to agriculture in the dairy pond, especially because we have a focus now more than ever as far as growing our own food, sourcing our own food, and there's so many things that are being set up right now to keep that part of it going. We had great testimony today about a farm and. North Of White River. Really be fairly growing 38 acres and they do whatever that they want to do. Are. They were very comfortable in the fact that they could expand if they wanted to or they just didn't really need to. The life was good and which is very good to hear, but we want to make sure that that's going. Then of course with the CSAs, we got John Ramsey's group coming in tomorrow at Hardwick. I see those as emerging markets in these small rural communities that give everybody a chance. Again, I always reference peach greens. I used to source vegetables out of his family garden and now he's one of the largest organic producers in New England. We want to make sure that those people still get a chance to do what they want

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: to do. We see that as the growth in agriculture. It's very discouraging to hear money is being taken away. There's tremendous diversification going out, innovation happening in farm world. You're absolutely right, fruits and veggies, just incredible what they're doing. You know, with some of them probably are looking at close to starting some of their veggies already inside and that infrastructure is pretty expensive. And then heating that goes with that and so forth. Then a lot of them, you know, we had that drought last year. So a lot of our foods and veggie people got hit hard because of the drought conditions, which actually, right, it's one of those that we want diversification and you can see the CSA world turning to growing flowers. We have a couple of significant flower operations that are even tulips right now to various places through the CSA package and dropping off at retail operations in their part of the agronomic acid seed. It's pretty, it's, you know, they're transforming these, but they, you know, it takes a lot of innovation, hard work, and sort of figuring out how to get a tulip to blossom right about now, delivered for eight weeks straight. They've got it down in that particular world. They've hit with some tariff issues because they're getting a lot of red polyps out of Europe. So they're, but all that kind of stuff is happening. And we're now able to get fresh fruits and vegetables, you know, twelve months out of the year, as well as other things that bring joy to us. I think we all could use to observe that now in January.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Vermont Senate Committee on Agriculture)]: So none of us in this room, with your exception, get a seat at the cabinet table. But from what we heard, Governor had asked his agencies to limit the growth to about 3%. That's the number that we heard. So congratulations, if it's really 1.8% in the agency of ag. I don't know if there was, I shouldn't probably say this this way, but a contest to see who which agency would would come out with the, you know, the best result. But I'll tell you what, if if the whole state had gone up 1.8% with education and everything else we've been talking about, This

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: will be a lot more pleasant session, for sure. Yeah, and, you know, I think, you know, Amy, doesn't, you know, we didn't have to do any cuts, which we were pleased with. But we do rely, I mean, we're only a small percentage is general fund. So that maybe is why we're able to be more successful and easier on us than other agencies that don't have Congratulations on the state We of the also have, and we've realized for those pesticide fees.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Vermont Senate Committee on Agriculture)]: So I didn't get a chance to talk with Senator Welch when he was here, but he's on Senate Ag Committee down in Congress. And from what we've learned this year, the gap, I'll just call it the revenue gap, between the federal milk price and what farmers honestly, truly need in order to stay afloat is about $4 a 100 a week. I mean, the federal thing is 16 and change, and they need about twenty, twenty and a half, maybe 20 So that's a big gap. I know it changes monthly, the price itself, but I wanted to at least speak with Senator Welch to urge him to continue to see if we could pick that federal milk price up a little bit.

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: And the insurance program is important, so I would encourage all farmers to sign up, we'll continue on that, get more details on that, but that's the one that kind of can fill in the gaps between the feed formula and the price of milk. Think, you know, Vermont's had a pretty good return on investment on that. You know, it's an insurance policy, there's a premium that has to be paid. But I think the sign up rate has been somewhere up to the 85% for that. So we'll be messaging to our farm community to keep your eye on that USDA one. We were pleased that Senator worked with a Republican Senator from Kansas to get full milk. I was just going to bring him back in schools, which was a heavy lift. That was a decade of discussion, but he worked closely with Kansas and his colleagues. And I think I already got a text from a producer that does online processing that had already made his, you know, big gallon for schools, I want to call them, I think, they call them, not the, whatever the containers, dispensed. He'd already, he was getting excited because they're going to go back into the schools. And my visits to schools and cafeterias, most of the kids will tell you that there's two things that have to happen. One milk has to be served cold and properly, and then it has to taste great, and I think most people would argue that a whole milk tastes better, and there's some evidence nutrition, but it's better. So, hopefully, and institutions are a big part of the dairy world, and hopefully that'll me pick up. We'll get a new generation of milk pickers again, and there's some nutrition there, particularly on the culture side, that Americans are really into yogurt, butter, whole milk, mungane.

[Russ Ingalls (Chair, Vermont Senate Committee on Agriculture)]: If dairy was created today, it'd be called a superfood, and I'm very discouraged that we allowed the attack for twenty plus years on that industry, I don't think it was people who were really interested in people's health so much as it was to promote other things other than dairy. I hope

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: we don't look guy happy again. Yeah, and we've got some incredible processors in this state. Have Dan Brown, we'll call them out, so we had a chance to visit them. You know, make sitties, another sitties brand of yogurt, which is very popular. That plant is running seven days a week. Pre shifts in all the cities that is being placed in it. You know, they're challenged with, you know, scenarios that energy is a big issue with our processors, the cost of energy speaks to that, but there's some incredible processors. You know, it's from our current and litho machines, butter, and cherries, and it's micro, small batch ice cream makers that they're really, I don't know, ice cream is taken off. Also, they went with jams, but they're up and down, a lot of food. But all that is, they're dealing with many of the issues that are generally listed outside of just ag center, if it's possibly in business, property taxes, and labor and all that stuff. Yeah, we're encouraged by the whole milk discussion. And that just took a while, here we are.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Vermont Senate Committee on Agriculture)]: Didn't mean to put you off, Nicole.

[Nicole Muelke (Operations Director, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: No, you're good. Excuse me. The next section is our programmatic performance measure, which is part of the budget. I'm happy to run through them all quickly, if you have specific ones that you'd like to talk about, pods,

[Russ Ingalls (Chair, Vermont Senate Committee on Agriculture)]: Don't you do. We'll we'll put it as we see something we like.

[Nicole Muelke (Operations Director, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Okay. Sounds good. So the first one is our produce program in our agricultural development division. The objectives here to help Vermont fruit and vegetable growers implement on farm 30 safety practices. This is outreach education, technical assistance, financial assistance. Ensure compliance with federal food safety modernization act. Produce safety rule by conducting annual inspections for all parts covered by the rules. So we have these three performance measures that we use for this program. One is the percent of grantees who indicate new markets reach their current markets maintained, so we're at 88%. I also do want to note that some of these you'll only see 2025 because we worked with our Chief Performance Office to update some of our foreign centers, so they were evolving with the programs, I guess, I could say. The number of sports services provided to Vermont produce arms, a 104. Number of verified farms in the Vermont database is 770.

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: What is the WinWAM? Interesting.

[Nicole Muelke (Operations Director, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: It's a database that we have where we can I don't know if you can explain more of the IT stuff? Do you know what we do?

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: But WinWAM.

[Nicole Muelke (Operations Director, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: I don't even know what it stands for, but I can get you more information on it. But it's a database that we use to Wind wind wind's good. Be able to monitor and verify farms, which getting up in the seven hundreds is great for us because we don't have, like, a clear system that captures all farms. Sorry.

[Russ Ingalls (Chair, Vermont Senate Committee on Agriculture)]: We have a section in our miscellaneous bill with watering, root produce, and all that. I'm sure you guys would be open to talking about that when this is something like that. I think the language might come from you both.

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: That's the what one again?

[Russ Ingalls (Chair, Vermont Senate Committee on Agriculture)]: The section would require that ANR in coordination with AAFM study the permitting process for the use of floor drains to produce larger facilities and provide recommendations for making that process more efficient. Water drained study, I guess. I have the definition of one land. It's

[Unidentified Committee Member (Vermont Senate Committee on Agriculture)]: a sweet, not tasting, sweet, of inspection and regulatory software used by government agencies, including State Department of Agriculture, to manage food safety, weights and measures, and agricultural inspections. You, Sure. Senator

[Russ Ingalls (Chair, Vermont Senate Committee on Agriculture)]: I fell asleep tonight.

[Nicole Muelke (Operations Director, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: So the next slide is for working lands, and this is to invest advance entrepreneurism, develop business, and increase the value of Vermont raw and value added products in order to develop Vermont agricultural, and fourth, product economies. These performance measures have not changed, so you probably recognize these. The percent of business grantees that show increase in net income over the grant period, 56%. Percent of grantees that added FTEs over the grant period, 49% increase in product output for business grantees over the grant period is 68%. And then we move on to DBIC, which is the Northeastern Dairy Business Innovation Center. We talked about this on one of the slides that Secretary Heffernan went over, serve the Northeast regions supporting dairy businesses. Here, we measure the number that experienced increased sales because of marketing and or promotion activities. In 2025, you'll see a big jump because we have increased money, increased grants. We're working with more farms as time goes by, so we're at three nineteen compared to seventy and two hundred four. Number of new and or existing delivery systems access points reached, So we're up to 19,544. We're doing a lot for the Northeast Region. Number of farmers who have learned new management strategies, that's gone down a little bit. The explanation that I got was that we're not gonna teach the same new management strategies to the same farm of the maneuver. Percentage of participants that expressed satisfaction and positive outlook for the future of their businesses, ninety nine percent of self report. Now we move on to food safety consumer protection division. Specifically, meat inspection, and I won't go into every one of these in detail because some of them are just like the number of licenses, the number of implant non compliance reports. The ones that I really like to quote to, which are exciting every year when you see them, is the number of recalls of state expected product, nothing. The number of implant microbiological residue samples positive, zero. So I like to point to that as like something we're doing is working. Right?

[Russ Ingalls (Chair, Vermont Senate Committee on Agriculture)]: Yeah.

[Nicole Muelke (Operations Director, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: And we did 876 compliance inspections for our commerce retail. Dairy inspection. So here, again, we track the number of licenses in our registrations, the number of inspections completed is 3,007.68, and the number of compliance activities beyond level of field staff. So this is like it has to go to a point of notice of violation. Oh. And that's eight, which I think is pretty good overall with how many inspections we do. Animal health, we measure the same things here. So we've got 99 licenses. We did 94 inspections completed, and we've had three compliance activities beyond the whole field staff. Again, we're to the point of a notice of violations. Weights and measures. So we've added a few new ones this year. The number of device inspections, we did 9,921. The number of calibrations performed, and that's in our weights and measures lab at Veil, which you all have two words. You got be that

[Russ Ingalls (Chair, Vermont Senate Committee on Agriculture)]: Oh, we got you up there on the picture, though. There lower one. Yeah. Yeah. The lower picture. So

[Nicole Muelke (Operations Director, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: we did 6,598. Number of device infections failed, three zero five. Number of enforcement actions, 73. Maple. So number of consumer complaints resolved, one, we are now up to 30, which when we say license, registration, permit here, we're talking about the packer, like the large folks that are collecting all the Sinectin, all that we have laid out. We had 28 before we're up to 30. We've completed 16 inspections. Our plan is to do those inspections every other year, so we're right on target for getting staff. Percent past retail inspections 66, number of retail enforcement actions 28. And then we put this one in here because we need to have every program, but this is cool country of origin labeling. Really, this is complete based. Somebody called us and that's a you know, wants us to look into if, like, the country of origin is correct on the label of something. And Tucker, our director of food safety and consumer protection, will go out and do a review, and percentage of a signed review is completed as 20%. So he has gone out and reviewed all of the the complaints that we've gotten, which are not a lot, the way. That's not, like, a huge point of contention for people. Okay. So then we move into produce safety inspections specifically, which lives in the food safety, consumer protection division versus the produce safety kind of education is an act of. So a number of produce firms verified in inventory, 717. As you know, that matches Wind Wam. We all just learned that. Number number of inspections, 15. Number of consumer complaints resolved, and then you didn't have any in fiscal year twenty six or '25. Excuse me. Number of enforcement actions, five, and percent past inspection, 47%. Plant industry, previously farm. So I I will review the objective because it's new for them, and they spent a lot of time on that. Plant industry is the cultivation and protection of crops, ornamental plants, and landscapes. The plant industry division regulates pesticides, protects against the spread plant pests and diseases that harm the environment, registers producers and distributors of plant fertilizer, regulates seed distributors, and registers and inspects EPRs. So EPR registration and inspection program, we looked at the percent inspected with regulated disease and bound to zero. And these are in the calendar year, by the way. Beneficial products registration, percent in compliance on first sample analysis for Vermont manufacturers, 65. In the certified applicator registrations, percent passing ABM on first try, 66%. Then we have in feed products registration, the percent in compliance on first sample analysis for Vermont manufacturers, 77%. Mosquito control, the number of mosquitoes collected and identified was 89,179 last calendar year. In the plant nursery inspections, the percent inspected that received stock sales was 10%. I think that's pretty good. Pesticide use compliance, percent of inspections resulting in enforcement, 57%. Then you move down to the lab, bail. So the number of completed analytical tests for clients provided by bail in 2025, number is up to 35,489 from 32,925 last year. The number of unique Vermont based projects who rely unveiled analytical services for essential environmental monitoring, consumer protection, animal health and regulatory compliance, which is not just us, but also the Agency of Natural Resources is 90. Then we move on to water quality. These performance measures have not changed. We've been using these for several years now. So the number of regulatory farm visits is up to three seventy five. The number of non regulatory technical assistance visits is up to 2,000. Acres of production area inspected went down slightly, but not really a notable change from the previous year. Percentage of compliant productions areas by acres, 70%. Number of educational events, we did a 186 in 2025. And the value of bond farm income in each of investments. So all the granting programs that we run-in that division valued $8,209,672

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: And

[Nicole Muelke (Operations Director, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: then we get into our carry forward slides. If there's a specific line that you wanna talk about, how do you do that? Really, the overarching theme on these slides is that all of the funding that we have here is obligated into, like, executed agreements at this point. We're just kind of working through the multiyear project. But I wanna look to Amy. Is there any specific notes that we have on some of the lines? There's

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: I think the message is there's nothing to sweep. It goes It's probably appropriation process. You said there's nothing to sweep. The economy has been clean.

[Russ Ingalls (Chair, Vermont Senate Committee on Agriculture)]: Well, you're lucky we don't have a repo. So yeah.

[Nicole Muelke (Operations Director, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: We we're

[Russ Ingalls (Chair, Vermont Senate Committee on Agriculture)]: in committees, it's not a blanket where there are a repo committee. So I

[Nicole Muelke (Operations Director, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: will note that we do have a a note in here that there's 27,975 that's funds set aside for the Pay Act, but the rest of this is really all granting programs where the funds are sitting in executed agreements that they're multi year.

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: They're pictures. Yeah. They always end with a pretty picture.

[Russ Ingalls (Chair, Vermont Senate Committee on Agriculture)]: Seems that the

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: organic milk market has kind of readied itself a little bit. It has, I've and been checking the last month, but the theme was they were searching for milk, so here we go. It seems like gone through another cycle. So as you know, the organic community, they're under contracts, so they have a contract, so they don't have the ups and downs of the federal system. But there is, you know, costs I think are still there. Know, whether the costs of, you know, production of, you know, feed, the drought, particularly drought, some of our grass based operations probably are heavily impacted by that and the feed and so forth. We have a contract. The processes will tell us that a couple of major processes are searching for organic milk.

[Russ Ingalls (Chair, Vermont Senate Committee on Agriculture)]: I heard through the grapevine producer, we just got $31 per 100 versus 60, you know, whatever it was, know, conventional, so.

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: And the challenge is there are some that, you know, may want to convert, but it's a process that takes a while for conversion. And then the cost of animals on both sides of the equation, whether it's conventional market or animal animals are very high. Yeah. And I think that has been a motivation for some people exiting the the business is the animals go up pretty hard, high, was the time is another pharma wanted to take a month to take a month. It's been an interesting dynamic But we had a lot of organic milk for a while, run off the pandemic, and now we've gone back to searching for more of it. They, I believe they've offered some incentives to some farmers to either put on more animals or try to use production. And thus the supply and demand point out.

[Russ Ingalls (Chair, Vermont Senate Committee on Agriculture)]: Yeah. Is there anything that you wish we would do different as

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: far as as a committee is moving forward? Are we, you know, being responsive to the agency? Is there anything that we should be doing different? Yeah, you know, I think we're, you know, it's just a really challenging time for all sectors of agriculture, you know, in all of our mongers, affordability is a big issue, you know, cost of energy, the cost of supplies, etcetera. A lot of that is out of our control because of markets, but I just say, you know, we're in a position we don't want to ask our community to do more than they're already doing, And that could be something on the regulatory side. They're gonna ask me to do one more thing, or we this may be not the time or the place. We've got a plan going forward. That I think that's our message, and, you know, if we can lighten the load on those fees for about 131 farmers, I think that will be significant. And I think we'll continue to work on customer service, and we don't know what Christmas tree monsters are bringing. You know, we still think we were in talked about the the drought and the impact of that, and now it's something to keep our eye on, you know, and and whether we do have that 'twenty three and 'twenty four agreement that should be coming this year. Think we've been in here too many times saying that, but it's been a challenge just negotiating with USDA on that, but we're getting very, very close. The goal is to lead on that, and hopefully, so those dollars will be coming to the agency. Yes. You had it as

[Russ Ingalls (Chair, Vermont Senate Committee on Agriculture)]: a deficit in there, 3,500,000.0, but it's not 3,500,000.0 that you've got, but we're still 3,500,000.0 behind. It's 3,500,000.0 that you haven't got yet where you heard it's coming? The

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: deficit? That's

[Nicole Muelke (Operations Director, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: So, it's two different things. One is that we had some of the, I'm gonna call them smaller cuts to federal programs last March. This is $31,750,000 that is supposed to come to Vermont for disaster recovery from 2023 and 2024 weather events. It was appropriated in the continuing resolution of December 2024. But since the administration changeover, we've been going back and forth with USDA, and there has been a couple of delays, including a government shutdown. So we are close to executing that agreement and bringing that money here. Okay. And the $3,500,000 was dairy business innovation. Right. It wasn't really a cut. That was just lowering the amount that we're putting out as contracts. Right. Most of it's going out as grants.

[Russ Ingalls (Chair, Vermont Senate Committee on Agriculture)]: Okay. But think but there was a delay, and that money's coming forward from the federal government? Is that now that it is

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: round The last round, there was a delay. Right. It was delayed. But now that we're back on.

[Russ Ingalls (Chair, Vermont Senate Committee on Agriculture)]: So that 3,500,000.0 that showed us a deficit in here will be zero.

[Nicole Muelke (Operations Director, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Well, so the 3,500,000.0, we're showing it as a decrease in the number of contracts because we're using grants instead. So it was actually, like, net neutral. We didn't lose money, but there was a delay in DBIC giving us the next round of funds. Normally, I think we hear in October, November, and I actually just signed and accepted the funding about a week ago. Sure.

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Yeah.

[Russ Ingalls (Chair, Vermont Senate Committee on Agriculture)]: Well, cool. Committee, we're going to be leaning on you guys, as you know, because most of all the language came from you folks or the vast majority of it. We've got basically 17 bills with between the miscellaneous and a couple of things on there. We'll be leaning on you guys for your expertise and knowledge, and we're gonna try to put attention to all of them and get the language that will be acceptable to all parties. We have a lot of work to do, and and we look forward to working with you folks and help us get it done.

[Anson Tebbetts (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you for your hard work. Yep.

[Russ Ingalls (Chair, Vermont Senate Committee on Agriculture)]: Anything else? Nope. We do have Michael O'Grady who wants to come in just for a little bit and tell us about the two new bills that we have and how that will work as far as the pass it to the miscellaneous or whatever. But I wanna thank you, folks. Thank you. Thank clean you. Very clean report. And, yes, we're here. Michael's walking in. See you. It is possible for me to hand it straight to my phone or they have to go through the process. This is okay. Just me? Okay. I guess You

[Nicole Muelke (Operations Director, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: can we're going. I'll just carry him out. I think so.