Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Good morning. It's Friday. It's been a productive week at Southern Agriculture. Thank the committee for their hard work. We're gonna spend some time this morning, Vermont Housing and Conservation Coalition, and they're gonna tell us what they want us to hear. Good morning, the floor is Thank

[Abby White (Co-Chair, Vermont Housing & Conservation Coalition; Vermont Land Trust)]: so much. Abby White, one of the co chairs of the Vermont Housing and Conservation Coalition and also with the Vermont Land Trust. Trust. Just as a note, we had one change in a witness. Guy Dulay is not able to join us today, but we do have another guy, a Guy McGuire from South Harrow Bankrupt who's gonna speak in his place. So again, Abby White, and just really pleased to be here. For those of you who don't know, Vermont Housing Conservation Coalition is a coalition around 50 organizations in the housing, permanently affordable housing sector, land conservation, and land preservation. We're one of the oldest coalitions in the state, almost forty years, and we advocate for robust investments in both housing and conservation. Those investments flow through VHCV. We're here to talk today about what the impact of those investments are and have been, particularly focused on agriculture. So this year, the Governor has fully funded BHCB in his proposed budget. That amount is $37,600,000 So we are asking you all to support that budget, recommend, and do so when it comes time for you all to recommend budget items in the Senate. So that's who we are. Today, I'm really delighted to be joined by five Vermonters, all whom have been touched by VHCb dollars, and they have their own life experiences to share with you. So first we'll hear from Guy Maguire of the South Hero Land Trust. And then Kathleen Swanson, resident of South Hero, who will be on Zoom. They're gonna be talking about the same project that's in South Hero. Mark Guttel with A Kinder Way Berry Farm in West Pollet. Sam Smith is a farm business director with the Intervale Center. And then finally, Rosalie Williams, who's a live long farmer based in Bakersfield. So with that, I will see the floor to them.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Thank you very much.

[Abby White (Co-Chair, Vermont Housing & Conservation Coalition; Vermont Land Trust)]: Thank you. So

[Guy Maguire (Executive Director, South Hero Land Trust)]: I'm the other guy. Sorry. We don't have the regular guy.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: No problem. Don't. Not joking.

[Mark (Owner, A Kinder Way Berry Farm, West Pawlet)]: You and his dad.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Had God you told us we wouldn't have known. Yeah.

[Guy Maguire (Executive Director, South Hero Land Trust)]: Well, thanks for having me. So my name is Sky McGuire. I'm the executive director of South Land Trust. We're a very small land trust, and we do land conservation of farmland and natural areas in South Quiro, as well as we do education work, getting kids out on farms. We do farm viability work because for us, land conservation is just one of the tools. Because the ultimate goal as a community based land trust is the health of the community. And we wouldn't do land conservation if it didn't support our local community and the community throughout the islands. We started in 1997 with a project to conserve Allen Home Farm, which is the state's oldest commercial apple orchard. And we worked with Vermont Land Trust for that, and we've worked with Vermont Land Trust and other conservation groups for all of our projects since then. Conservation really brings groups together because there are so many co benefits, since then we've conserved about 2,000 acres of land, built a couple mile trails, conserved about a mile of shoreline. And we are so fortunate in South Carolina to have so many awesome farms. There's Allen Home Farm, which I mentioned is the oldest commercial apple orchard. There's also Snow Farm, which is the oldest Vermont vineyard and winery. There's multi generational farms at Hackers Orchard and Island Acres Farm. And also a new generation of farmers at places like Health Bureau Farm and Picasso Meats. The thing that all these farms have in common is that they're all conserved. The benefits of conservation has enabled those farms to continue farming, and it provides so many things. I mean, I I could go on and on about why having small farms in our town and in the island is so important. It supports our economies. I mean, there's local jobs. We're talking food. These farmers sell as much as they can, and they donate their rent to local food shells, so there's a food security element too as well. These farms are gathering spaces. In rural towns like South Europe, there's not very many public spaces, and so the farms are those places where you meet folks that are from here or not from here, and they provide a really important role for the community. Also farmers protect water quality. Farmers protect the land. They take care of land. These are the people who steward our farmland. They steward the soil. They take care of the water, air, soil, and they do that work every day. Our most recent projects have been working with Vermont Land Trust and the Swanson and Gulet families to conserve 195 acres at the Gulet Farm, and we couldn't have done the project without DHCP funding. We were able to use that funding and match it with the local fundraising campaign, as well as bring in federal money through the NRCS funding programs. And so that's a really important thing to stress, which I'm sure you all probably know, but that the funding doesn't just pay for everything. It's like almost like seed money that helps us access this other funds to bring into Vermont, to be able to do these really important projects to protect farms. And it was, I think Kathleen will speak in a moment, she'll tell more of a story, it was 2020 that nine acres of land they were farming was up for sale, and it was like an end game scenario where it was like, if we can't keep farming this land, we might not be able to keep farming. Was a third generation farm that was, like, not sure they could keep going. And so they reached out to the Swanson's who were really interested, who lived next door. They reached out to us. They reached out to Al at Vermont Land Trust and said, you can we do some sort of conservation? Because we have farmers on our board, they talk to these folks, give them the pros and cons. What does it mean to conserve your farm? What was our experience with it? Will this work for you? We were really fortunate to be able to come together and make it happen. They're the only vegetable operation in South Europe. They have a really thriving farm stand. It's got over 100 people a day come visit during the height of summer. They're also gathering space. They have events on their farm. So the the the value of having the Gulet Farm in South Hero is incredibly important, both for the people of South Hero as as well as the whole state of Vermont. This story plays out everywhere in Vermont. There's these farms that are being conserved and they're able to keep farming, half that farm down to the next generation. It's it's it's all made possible by the BHCB funding. So, as someone who works in a small town, who lives in a small town, like, to see the effects of this work every day, I just want to know that happening everywhere, thanks to that funding. So I want to thank you for your support, you know, conservation funding. Also, I mentioned our office is right across to this, the street from the Bayview Senior Housing Center. That's another conservation project, but it's a housing project. What's so cool about Vermont is that we fund Spokane we work together to conserve farmland where we need to conserve it and provide housing where we need to have housing. It's so special that we have that. That's something that should be cherished and should be supportive. So, thank you for your support of that work.

[Sam Smith (Farm Business Director, Intervale Center)]: Question? So, the other guys.

[Mark (Owner, A Kinder Way Berry Farm, West Pawlet)]: Yeah. Is

[Sam Smith (Farm Business Director, Intervale Center)]: the housing workforce housing or general housing?

[Guy Maguire (Executive Director, South Hero Land Trust)]: This product that part's familiar with senior housing, which has been a huge need in the islands for people to be able to grow old in in place with housing values being going up and up and up. It was hard for people to be able to grow old where they grew up and where they where they live. And and and so I think it was the first I don't someone here will probably correct me. The first, like, senior housing project in, like, decades and decades in the islands.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: I think Chandra Ma played a pretty big part of that Yeah. Putting it together. I remember seeing the slides on that. So, a very great

[Guy Maguire (Executive Director, South Hero Land Trust)]: Right, should mention that was Cathedral Square, and that was Cider, which is a local group that they had dreamed that like thirty years ago. And you know, these products aren't easy, they're incredibly important.

[Senator Robert Plunkett (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Yep. Do you have a number of how many, you know, like, one of the land trusts, I had a conversation with Abby earlier, and you say you'd like to see that it passes down to generation, we have, land trusts been in practice now for, I don't know, how long, but have we seen, give us a number of how many has actually passed from one generation to the next to continue farming? Is there a stat on that or?

[Guy Maguire (Executive Director, South Hero Land Trust)]: There's something, you know, I don't know, would defer to the folks at DHCC and PLT for larger stats. Can say anecdotally in South Europe, conserving Island Acres farm helped them pass down the farm to the next generation, and they're currently in the process of working on the next generation. Hackett's Orchard now is in the third generation farming, and that sense conservation. Cool. Devin Hackett has taken that on. Snow Farm Vineyard is now also in the third generation, so Nick and Alex and Julie and all those folks who work here have now grown up and have kids of their own, and they're working in the family business. Allen Home Farm is, you know, in whatever the ninth or tenth generation farm. They they keep they keep going. So many of the South Bureau farms have been able to pass down anything. It's it doesn't solve all problems.

[Senator Robert Plunkett (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: No. No.

[Guy Maguire (Executive Director, South Hero Land Trust)]: There's a lot of other support in, the the the HCV Farm and Forest Viability Program is also a huge part of that. They help work with farmers on farm succession planning so that you can deal with all the complications of taxes and stuff, and that's well, that's up there with way above my head. We've folks in the room that do that work.

[Al Karnatz (Vermont Land Trust, Farmland Projects Director)]: No, Steve. I was just gonna we can get you some numbers

[Senator Robert Plunkett (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: because a

[Al Karnatz (Vermont Land Trust, Farmland Projects Director)]: lot of times, you know, it

[Guy Maguire (Executive Director, South Hero Land Trust)]: may not be I'm sorry.

[Al Karnatz (Vermont Land Trust, Farmland Projects Director)]: I'm Al Carnett from Commodest

[Mark (Owner, A Kinder Way Berry Farm, West Pawlet)]: Land Trust. Thank you. Thank you

[Al Karnatz (Vermont Land Trust, Farmland Projects Director)]: for having us. I do the farmland projects and work with both guys on the project in South Hero, but we can get you some numbers on that. I know anecdotally, the projects that I work with, at least a third have some kind of transfer involved, whether it's generational or new farms. Actually, that number has crept up over the years. In many cases, it's half of our projects now have some kind of generational thing,

[Senator Robert Plunkett (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: but we could try to work

[Al Karnatz (Vermont Land Trust, Farmland Projects Director)]: some numbers up for you

[Mark (Owner, A Kinder Way Berry Farm, West Pawlet)]: for sure.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: I'm gonna bring in what was part of this conversation, Kathleen Swanson. Kathleen, are you ready?

[Kathleen Swanson (South Hero landowner; partner in Goulette Farm conservation)]: I am. Can you hear me? I've unmuted myself right?

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Yeah you're all.

[Kathleen Swanson (South Hero landowner; partner in Goulette Farm conservation)]: Good. So Kathleen Swanson, I've lived in South Hero for almost forty years now and my husband and I and my family live off Davis Hill which abuts the Goulette's property. In 2022 abutting properties came on the market, one ninety acre parcel that Guy had been farming leasing but the price went up for sale. There were slated to be eight houses to be built there and it was just too rich, using a guy goulette term, for him to buy it. So my husband and I did some creative financing. We bought it very quickly within forty eight hours and began working very quickly with the land trusts and the goulettes. Meanwhile a 30 acre parcel that runs along Route 314 also came on the market after being in probate for a long time because of the death of the farmer. So and we bought that and meanwhile there was a lot of trust and leap of faith on both of our families. We didn't know how it was going to turn out with VHCb, it's a very competitive process. So in the meantime Guy and Lori Goulette bought 37 acres from us so that he had a larger land base which made his proposal conservation project more competitive, let's say. But we didn't know how it was going to turn out. So there was a lot of white knuckling during the four and a half years that we went through this. But none of it would happen without the VHCb money. There was a lot of investment in this property and this land base now that Guy has is going to allow him to have a sustainable, contiguous property, which in the hay business is very important. And he also, his farm, they have a transition plan. His stepson works with him every day and so eventually he will take it over. And the other thing that's so important about the Goulette project for me personally, I was a founding board member of the South Airland Trust and as you know farming is very difficult and there's good years and bad years, but this operation is a financially solid operation which it will be in the future thanks to this conservation project. So we couldn't have done it without it. And the other part that I love about this project is we put together back the pieces of what was an original farm. So that 120 acres that the Swansons bought is now being put back together, which was a generational farm on Route 2 and now it goes from that farm to the goulettes. So it put all the pieces back together of what was a very fragmented farm property. And that's it for now.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Well thank you for that.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Want to

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: say a couple of things got touched upon that this committee's working hard on, and one of them is we are just starting a very huge conversation about doing all we can do to protect prime ag land and state of Vermont. It should be something that sounds fairly simple. As we can see from the testimony just at the very beginning, you folks take that very serious. We have a lot of other folks in the state that aren't taking it very serious, and so we're trying to put a spotlight on that. We're going to be very rabid about that. We're talking about commercial developments, a lot of people do a favor. We're talking about solar fields, we're talking about housing, we're talking about a lot of important things that need to happen in the state of Vermont. Renewable energy is something that we all believe in, but we need to make sure that we can serve our farmland because we can see the future. All we have to do is look further outside of the state of Vermont and look into the areas that wish that they would have had these conversations a lot earlier in the process. We certainly applaud with that and would ask that as you see us move forward to lend your voice to what we're trying to do. The second thing is, and it was again in testimony, we do know the real hard battles that farmers have to try to stay in production, whether they're milking cows, goats, sheep, grown vegetables, selling hay, liberating livestock, that they have to diversify. They have been doing a lot about having events come, people come into their farms and try the product that they're producing. We're having a little bit of a battle about on farm structures getting into A and R and local zoning and all of that stuff. We're trying to solve that problem as well, and we would ask that you folks join that battle with us as we look for that because we understand that, as you've said Kathleen, that it's hard. It's hard for these folks to make it, and they need to diversify in such a way, and this type of regulation is just added stress, and it takes away from building community. As we go in there, we would ask as you stay mindful of what we're trying to do as well. Let's continue on. Who'd like to be next?

[Abby White (Co-Chair, Vermont Housing & Conservation Coalition; Vermont Land Trust)]: I think we have Sam.

[Mark (Owner, A Kinder Way Berry Farm, West Pawlet)]: You Oh,

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: is it me?

[Rosalie Williams (Farmer, Bakersfield)]: Oh, we have Mark. Oh, yeah. Great.

[Mark (Owner, A Kinder Way Berry Farm, West Pawlet)]: I didn't wanna be rude. I didn't wanna talk him. Do I gotta sit in the chair? Yeah. Yeah. Alright. Yeah.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: It's the hot seat. Yeah. You're the third guy.

[Rosalie Williams (Farmer, Bakersfield)]: Yeah. I'm

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: the third

[Mark (Owner, A Kinder Way Berry Farm, West Pawlet)]: guy. I'll take that. Listen. I'm not as cool as those guys. But. Well, I

[Guy Maguire (Executive Director, South Hero Land Trust)]: think you're a great guy.

[Mark (Owner, A Kinder Way Berry Farm, West Pawlet)]: You know, first of all, thank you. I am I am deeply honored to be in this building. It means a lot to me. I'm a little tired, will tell you. I'm in law enforcement. I was worked all night, and it didn't go well, and Donald has kept me pumped with coffee the entire ride here from West Paulette, so if I ramble, just tell me to shut up. I'm done, and I'll leave. Totally.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: But then again Thank you for your service. Absolutely. I I I believe it. You know, I'm

[Mark (Owner, A Kinder Way Berry Farm, West Pawlet)]: on both sides. I I'm I'm a farmer and and a cop that believes in the housing shortage that we're having as well. I I'm I'm deeply embedded in mental health and housing. So back to the farming. I'll start with the I guess it's been, what, three years, Donald? Plus. So three years plus. My wife and I dreamt of being farmers. That's all we wanted to be. We wanted to have a farm that could actually have a a production value so we could pass it on to our kids. And, you know, I had a restaurant cop, I don't make the wrong money. So we we we had roadblock after roadblock after roadblock. We saw a blueberry farm that came up on on the market that had been in business for forty five years, leaving berries. Huge family history. Unfortunately, with the price point, family couldn't continue. We I I know Kathleen said, you know, came up with some financing options. We we found the way. We paid way too much for this farm. Way too much. I mean, we we we took everything we had, and and we were we were definitely out of our element. But we had one thing that we were focused on, and that was the Vermont Land Trust and the Housing Authority. I'd heard about it, I believed in it. This farm, we were the fourth offer. The three offers in front of us were all commercial offers. This was owned residential, agricultural, industrial, and commercial. It was gonna go it was gonna be a storage complex. Right? A 100 acres of prime, beautiful soil, seven acres of 5,000 high bush berries, blueberries that have been there for forty years and still producing. But again, price point. I'm very stubborn as you can imagine and I call that realtor every day for thirty days. Mhmm. And I said, know, my name's Mark with Kinder Way. Just want you to know that. I tell her the same thing every day. Hoping I I knew in in reality, what am I gonna go against? A developer? I can't. Right? I'm limited on funds. We we had one offer and that was it. I don't know how it happened, but thirty days later she called me, said are you still interested? I said we'll take it. And she said don't you wanna see the farm? I said no, but I secretly have been there every day for thirty days. I trolled there every night

[Al Karnatz (Vermont Land Trust, Farmland Projects Director)]: I from did. And I

[Mark (Owner, A Kinder Way Berry Farm, West Pawlet)]: and I said, well, yeah, this is this is what you know, I I I felt that this was this was not just important for my family, but for the the agricultural community. Right? Farming's important. I grew up corn and beans in Illinois. You know, turned 17, couldn't wait

[Al Karnatz (Vermont Land Trust, Farmland Projects Director)]: to get away from the farm.

[Mark (Owner, A Kinder Way Berry Farm, West Pawlet)]: Met my wife, and of course, was a farm girl and brought me right back, right? So it's it's in me, and and it's important. I wanted my kids to grow up the way I did, right? So I'm trying to jump around so I don't drag you guys on. So we bought the farm, purchased it for way too much money. I had $4,000 a month mortgage payment, which I don't know how I made. I tell people for two and a half years while with this process, I ate ramen and blueberries. Right? The whole family did. That was how we

[Senator Robert Plunkett (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Plunkett blueberries. Plunkett blueberries, you know? But we

[Mark (Owner, A Kinder Way Berry Farm, West Pawlet)]: were focused on the end result, and that was creating something that we could pass on to our kids, but also also providing an example that this that this can work for other families younger than myself. I'm I'm up there. Right? And so first blueberry season, I was in the stand. I had no idea how to about blueberries, but man, I, you know, I I was excited. And I met Donald Campbell day one. And he came up and he introduced himself and I said, I've been looking for you. Yeah. And we started our plan and it it was a rocky road as you can imagine. This process is not easy, especially for someone who's paying $4,000 a month I thought it was gonna be magic. We were gonna I made this deal, and I can afford to be a farmer. Two and a half years later, hard two and a half years later, we were down. I get a little emotional. We were done. I couldn't afford it. I couldn't afford to farm. We had we had we had saved enough, we thought, for this process, and it took a little longer. We had some bumps. And, I was we had nothing left in the tank, literally, financially. And Donald called me and said we're closing.

[Senator Robert Plunkett (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: He gave me a date.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: It was the greatest day

[Mark (Owner, A Kinder Way Berry Farm, West Pawlet)]: of my life. We closed on that farm. I went from $4,000 a month to $850 a month. And I can't thank this community enough, the LT, the housing board. Not only did they save my my family and my farm, but they showed me that we could do this. We could do this to other farms and to other families. It it's it's so important to our culture in Vermont, agriculture. Right? I'm a blueberry farmer. I I I had a dairy twenty years ago. Right? I I it's it's in our blood, but again, we've gotta make it affordable for people like myself who can we talk about generational. Right? We need to be able to pass that on, and to do that, it has to be affordable. Even if we pass it on to our kids, it costs a ton of money. Right? So we've gotta make it easier, and and this process will make it easier. And I I have I have kids 31, 20, 18, and eight. And I want all of

[Senator Brian Collamore (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: them to have an opportunity

[Mark (Owner, A Kinder Way Berry Farm, West Pawlet)]: to to farm and to create a life for themselves and have their kids and their kids. You know, over the past two and a half years, three seasons of blueberries, I've had hundreds of people come to me in the stand and thank you. Not only for for continuing to farm, but to conserve the land. I I I hung that sign on the side of my farm stand.

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

[Mark (Owner, A Kinder Way Berry Farm, West Pawlet)]: It was it it was like raising a flag, honestly. This means so much to the farming community, and that's why I'm here today. I'm I'm I'm again, I'm deeply honored, but I want you guys to know how much us as farmers appreciate the funds. Because it sounds like we're just focused on the funds, but those funds made it possible to be a farmer, and for my kids to be a farmer, and their kids, and their kids. And I want generations of these people that are picking blueberries that were here when they were a kid forty five years ago, and now they're bringing their grandkids to pick the saved berries. I want them to continue with their kids, and that's why I'm here today. Again, I don't wanna take all your time. I know I ramble, but I'm I'm I'm deeply honored. This building means something to me. Fifteen years ago, I was in this building, never thought I'd be in this building again, and and it's an honor, and I I want you all to know that. And I thank you if you wouldn't do everything.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Oh, thank you. How did it how's the weather impacted you over the last few years? We've had some weather incidents in

[Mark (Owner, A Kinder Way Berry Farm, West Pawlet)]: Weather's been crazy, right, and and fruit. So we we've got bug issues. We don't spray. We're organic. Right. So we've had Drosophila come in my first year, wiped us out. We had a very mild, warm, but not hot, moist summer, which was we thought was beautiful. Was great for the berries, but we didn't know anything about spotting in Drosophila. Well, now we do. You know? And it wiped us out. We have 60,000 pounds of blueberries we can we can harvest every year. I don't do that. Right? Finding people to pick. It's extremely everything has to be handpicked. Right? So we have berries that don't all come ripe at the same time. People are like, oh, she got a machine. Doing well. It doesn't work that way. It's all hand picked. Picking is difficult. My wife, was, last year, was, diagnosed with Lyme. She had facial paralysis. We gave him medication. She couldn't come outside. She was socially she was she was having a hard time. You know, we're a very personable business when people come out for you pick berries and she wasn't around for the season. So, the no fly last year, but we couldn't get them picked. Know, 30,000, 40,000 pounds went to the ground. We fed a lot of birds and bears. That's part of the gig, right? But that's farming. Farming, have loss, we have gains, we have bumper crops, we have bugs, we have weather. This year, I'm I love the cold winters. Yeah. And I love the snowpack. It's gonna help with the with the moisture and with the with the bugs.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Right.

[Mark (Owner, A Kinder Way Berry Farm, West Pawlet)]: Right? So but again, we're mother nature wins every time. It's up to us as as farmers to adapt to to the weather and that's what I wanna teach my kids too, right? Is resilience, adaptability. The process is difficult two and a half years, right, to see the funds. But I think what it showed me and and my kids is if you work hard at something and you believe in it, it will happen.

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

[Mark (Owner, A Kinder Way Berry Farm, West Pawlet)]: You know, and resilience. I think every farmer in this room knows

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: what I'm talking about when I

[Mark (Owner, A Kinder Way Berry Farm, West Pawlet)]: talk about resilience, you know,

[Senator Robert Plunkett (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: and adaptability. So you just put, land trust the whole farm or was there housing?

[Sam Smith (Farm Business Director, Intervale Center)]: I, here's

[Mark (Owner, A Kinder Way Berry Farm, West Pawlet)]: what I told Donald. I said, I want everything you got. Throw it at me. I wanna, I wanna, I wanna be the most concerned place you can imagine. Right? And I was thinking financial. I'm not gonna lie. Right. Right? But again, that's my mentality is I'm working with this organization who wants to give me money to farm. Right? What do you and I kept telling Donald, what do you need? What do you need from me? How can I help you? How many acres are you? So we're a total of a 101, and we've got seven acres of blueberries. We've also got three acres of strawberries, and then now we've just added I'm working we're working with the NRCS. I just finished my first 100 foot high tunnel for raspberries. We're about to start another one. And then we've got a whole vegetable area, market garden. We haven't sold vegetables. It's more for our consumption. And then we I'm very involved in in in our our local food groups or local food banks. Again, you know, my day job or night job, whatever you call it, really embedded in the community, and farming goes hand in hand. We talked about how when you have a surplus, you donate it.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: 100% we do the same thing. Right?

[Mark (Owner, A Kinder Way Berry Farm, West Pawlet)]: We're in the pharmacy program, FARM, M, and Rutland, fantastic program. These programs are important, but they're all focused on food, as human beings we need food, and we need to focus more on food. I think these programs help with that.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: We'll give gifts. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and welcome. Greatness to you. Thank you. Is it all you pick, do you take some of it to the Rutland Farmers Market?

[Mark (Owner, A Kinder Way Berry Farm, West Pawlet)]: We do you pick? I try and do Rutland Farmers Market, Dorset Farmers Market, and Manchester. We we do have a couple middle grade co op,

[Sam Bellavance (Founder, Sunset Lake CBD; Farmer, South Hero)]: you know.

[Mark (Owner, A Kinder Way Berry Farm, West Pawlet)]: Right? We have a couple of of wholesales. The trouble we have is picking. So you you pick is is golden. Right, Brian?

[Senator Brian Collamore (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Like it is it is it

[Mark (Owner, A Kinder Way Berry Farm, West Pawlet)]: is where it's supposed to be. Right? People come out and not only do they get the food, saves me in labor. Right? But they get the experience. And and that, as you can see, I like to talk and I like to sell. But I'm not just selling blueberries, I'm selling a lifestyle. And I'm trying to sell Vermont and agriculture because we need more farmers. We need more food. We need more food in our state than we keep in our state. And not grow some, ship it out, and then we ship it back in and buy it from somewhere else. I think if we band together and we promote agriculture again, we can really, really create something to

[Senator Brian Collamore (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: be an example of the country. So you mentioned your four kids. I'm interested in hearing a little bit more about the succession plans. Did you sit down with a land trust and figure I mean, I don't know how you divvy up four. Well, can tell you take the number one.

[Mark (Owner, A Kinder Way Berry Farm, West Pawlet)]: I can tell you that the most interested prospect I have is my is my eight year old. Eight. Yeah. Wow. He's my little farmer, man. Know? And, you know, I got so my 30 year old lives in Colorado. Okay. Loves to visit, but he's a mechanic. He has his own business. My 18 year old is an athlete. He just got accepted at Austin University for football and baseball. He's he's ready to go to college and flew the fly the coup. My daughter works for Head Start program in Rowland. Yep. She has a place in Granville. Kind of interesting, but her boyfriend's not. But again, we got Noah. Right? My he's my little left hand. I mean, he's everywhere. Yeah. And he's out there picking blueberries, and he's he runs the stand. My little guy, you know? He's a he's a talker like his dad, and he's the kid, you know. And and I'll tell you, if I could divvy up four, I'd divvy up for four, but it's gonna be Noah. I I feel it, you know. He's got the he's got the drive, but he's also got the passion, and he gets it. He loves getting dirty, but he loves food, and he understands the the direct connection to our to our land that we have that's concerned and the food we're growing that we can consume. So so I think, Brian, it's gonna be easy. Right? I think I think Noah's gonna be the guy, you know? But the good news is no matter what happens to me, I know even my kids say, you know what, dad? We love you, but we've seen you struggle. We're not gonna do it. That farm, because of the housing coalition and the mental interest, will always be a farm. We'll always be a blueberry farm. And I would welcome any family in, and it's affordable for them. Not like I I had to I had to rob Peter and Paul to get there. Right? Yeah. I had no business doing what I did, but I believed in in this process. And I would I would love to cut that out for another family, you know, even if it's not my family. Doesn't matter. I want someone to have the opportunity to continue this this tradition. Yeah. And that and that that, again, that's always in my mind. So what's the housing coalition part of that associated with your Funding. Just the funding. Yeah, the funding. Yeah, and I'm gonna tell you right now, without funding, wouldn't be there. I wouldn't be a farmer. I would still have three cop jobs that probably could buy. I'd be miserable, and I would feel like I'm not contributing to my community.

[Senator Robert Plunkett (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Well, the copies were

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: good to that.

[Mark (Owner, A Kinder Way Berry Farm, West Pawlet)]: Right? Yeah. Absolutely, man.

[Senator Robert Plunkett (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Alright. Well, I associated that, there might have been some housing involved, that you took some of the land and made housing, but No. It's not. It's No.

[Mark (Owner, A Kinder Way Berry Farm, West Pawlet)]: We didn't. And and and that was really important to me. And and I didn't go to battle against the developers, but my view was this this has been a farm for forty five years, a productive farm and a and a community farm with UPIC for forty five years. We can't take that away. We can't take that away. Yeah. And that's why I fought so hard to to conserve it. That's why I told Donald, you hit me. You I'll conserve the whole whole state if I could.

[Sam Smith (Farm Business Director, Intervale Center)]: Thank you, mister chair. You said you had, workforce issues. Yep. The whole state issue.

[Mark (Owner, A Kinder Way Berry Farm, West Pawlet)]: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, we're we're with having such a labor intensive problem, and I I thought we were we were advertising some pretty good wages as well. But it's hard. You know? Again, we've gotta educate our our young people to work again. I hate to say that, right? Even my own kid, my 18 year old son, who's an athlete, very capable of physical activity, needed a job and would not work for me. I can't figure that out. Right? So we've gotta do better at education, I I believe, you know, and get back to the way I grew up. I grew up with your your work hard. You have an ethic a good work ethic. You get rewarded for it, and you and you you you exist. So I think we get back to the basics, and I spent a lot of my time in my farm's name talking about that. With young people that come in and and pick, hey, you know, I'm hiring. Right? And we get people back into agriculture. The only way we're gonna do that is make it attractive. Right? So we can make it attractive financially, but also rewards of of doing the right thing and contributing to your community. That's what I'm focusing on right now. So I think the labor part of it, I think it I'm hoping it will change. You know what? I'm hoping we can bring some people in that can see the the the fruits of it. No no pun intended. Uh-huh. Right? But But, know, again, that's my goal.

[Senator Robert Plunkett (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Because I believe it can happen.

[Mark (Owner, A Kinder Way Berry Farm, West Pawlet)]: Because we've gotta do better in this state. We are an agricultural state. We're not just a tourism state. That's, I have that discussion a lot. We're agricultural tourism, but we're an agricultural state, and we can't forget that.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: You sound good.

[Mark (Owner, A Kinder Way Berry Farm, West Pawlet)]: Yeah. Sorry. I know, Randall. You did a great job.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: You're a

[Al Karnatz (Vermont Land Trust, Farmland Projects Director)]: great personality. If

[Mark (Owner, A Kinder Way Berry Farm, West Pawlet)]: I'm Brian, was a tall member. I had the Cafe. Yes. Yeah. And and you and I met before, and I I support you, Brian, and I appreciate you. You've always been kind to my family. Well, we

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: love the we love the story. That is that's a story we like to hear. Yeah. So, yeah, we could listen to

[Sam Smith (Farm Business Director, Intervale Center)]: that all day. Well, thank you. And and, again, thank

[Mark (Owner, A Kinder Way Berry Farm, West Pawlet)]: you for the time. This this is a great honor for me. And again, thank you for what you all do.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: It's very Well, there's one thing this committee does do. When we get busy, we really do, and I've said to the committee over and over and over again, let's not forget the people that we are serving and need to come in and tell their story to us. To be fair, we have a lot of work to do. We really, really do. This is our work as well.

[Sam Smith (Farm Business Director, Intervale Center)]: Well, call on us This as

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: is our work as well.

[Mark (Owner, A Kinder Way Berry Farm, West Pawlet)]: It takes a village.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: We need to hear with what we do, so thank you.

[Mark (Owner, A Kinder Way Berry Farm, West Pawlet)]: Thank you. Yeah. Because I wouldn't be here without you. I want you all to

[Senator Brian Collamore (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: have me either. Thank you.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Who's next?

[Senator Robert Plunkett (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Welcome. Hello, guys.

[Sam Smith (Farm Business Director, Intervale Center)]: Good morning, Chair, members of the Senate, Ag Committee. Thanks for having me back here again.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: I think I've been weird about every year for the last five or six. That's okay.

[Sam Smith (Farm Business Director, Intervale Center)]: Thank you for the opportunity to testify today and for your leadership in supporting Vermont's farmers working lands and food systems. My name is Sam Smith. I'm the Farm Business Director at the Interrail Center. For the past thirteen years, I've provided business planning support to farmers and food businesses across the state, helping them build strong, viable operations that can withstand economic pressures, climate impacts, and changing markets. I'm here today to respectfully ask that you fund the VHCb at its full statutory share of $37,600,000 in FY twenty seven as supported in the Governor's budget. I believe VHCb is Vermont's most effective tool in strengthening farm viability, conserving working lands, and advancing resiliency in the food system. What makes VHCb uniquely effective is its integrated approach, pairing land conservation and capital access with individualized technical assistance that helps farmers build profitable, adaptable businesses. Conserving farmland is essential, but conservation alone does not ensure that land remains actively farmed, economically viable, or resilient in the face of climate change and market volatility. For more than twenty years, the Intervale Center has partnered with VHCV's Farm and Forest Viability Program. We currently have four full time business planners working with over 130 farms a year. The stability of VACB funding has allowed us to hire and train skilled farm business specialists who provide comprehensive support, including financial analysis, bookkeeping, and marketing support. The farms we work with represent every sector of Vermont agriculture: dairy, vegetables, livestock, diversified operations, and beginning farmers, and they exist in every region of the state. Today's farmers are operating in an increasingly complex environment. They face rising input costs, tight margins, workforce challenges, land access barriers, and growing climate uncertainty. From flooding to drought, early frosts, high winds causing increasingly unpredictable growing seasons. To succeed, farmers must run sophisticated businesses while stewarding the land and feeding their communities. DHCV supported technical assistance gives farmers the tools to manage these pressures, helping them plan for risk, invest wisely, and build resilient operations that can endure. I would like to share one example of the type of work that VHCD enables. A few years ago, I began working with a young grain farmer who was farming on leased land in Southern New Hampshire. Tyler Murray had identified a property in Westhaven that he wanted to purchase had begun discussions with the owner and the Vermont Land Trust about conservation. Over the next two years, Tyler and I worked together to develop a business plan, secure financing, and early this past summer, he closed on the property. He now has land security, room to grow his grain operations, and has gotten pretty good at developing his farm cash flow projections, which was a real stretch for I know the future will hold countless challenges for him, but I am confident that he has the skills to weather them. Financially strong farms are more likely to recover from extreme weather events, invest in soil health and conservation practices, diversify crops and markets, and maintain consistent food production for Vermont communities. Farm viability is directly tied to Vermont's ability to feed itself. Funding DHCV ensures that conserved land remains working land and that farmers have the business capacity to stay profitable and resilient over time. DHCV also remains one of the state's strongest leverage mechanisms. Public funding routinely attracts substantial federal, private, and philanthropic dollars, multiplying the impact of state investments and bringing outside resources into Vermont's agricultural economy. Underfunding VHCV reduces not only programming, but also the total dollars flowing into the working lands and farm businesses. The statutory funding level of $37,600,000 for FY '27 reflects Vermont's long standing commitment to conserving working lands, supporting farm viability, and strengthening food system resiliency. It ensures that the programs already delivering strong results can continue helping farmers navigate today's challenges and build for the future. In my thirteen years of doing this work, I've seen firsthand how the difference between farms surviving or thriving often comes down to whether a farmer has access to skilled business support. On behalf of the Intermeil Center, the hundreds of farmers that we have served through VHCb supported programs, and the rural communities that depend on strong agricultural economy, I respectfully urge you to support VHCb at its full statutory share FY '27. Thank you for your time and for your continued commitment to Vermont's farmers and working with us. Well, thank you.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: In a just a brief description of the Intervale? Tell us what you do.

[Sam Smith (Farm Business Director, Intervale Center)]: So the Intervale as a whole is a nonprofit. We're a land based nonprofit. We operate on about three fifty acres in what was the last working dairy farm in Vermont.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: We

[Sam Smith (Farm Business Director, Intervale Center)]: currently have seven working farms on our property who have long term secure land tenure through leases, and those range from a half acre herb farm up to a 50 acre, it's the largest member owned CSA in the state, vegetable CSA. We have a conservation nursery that does a lot of growing native trees and then planting them primarily in riparian buffers on farms. We do a lot

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: of food access work. We have

[Sam Smith (Farm Business Director, Intervale Center)]: a food hub and a gleaning program. We have a fair share where we have a no cost food distribution to up to 400 families a year, and then we also engage the public in terms of education around our food system, and then we have our programming, is funded somewhat through the Farm Viability Program. They provide the stable, long term funding that has allowed us to leverage philanthropic support. And so we go out and provide this direct one on one technical assistance with farmers across the state, all different types of farmers.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: So I have three other full time business planners that do that as well. Yeah, nice.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: How about the drought? It was really wet

[Sam Smith (Farm Business Director, Intervale Center)]: in the spring. We have talked to you about flooding before. Yeah, was here for the Farm Security Fund. It's been a wild year. Will say the impacts of the drought were really inconsistent across the state, and it depended a lot on the type of farming you're doing and where you were. I've been, well, as you know, the dairies, and specifically the dairies sort of in the central portion of the state through Addison County were really profoundly impacted. I mean, think right now the milk price and some of the other factors that are

[Senator Robert Plunkett (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: going on in the dairy markets are gonna be bad.

[Sam Smith (Farm Business Director, Intervale Center)]: Yes, it's already bad. But then, you know, some of the farms that we work with, especially like the vegetable farms, because they've sort of seen the writing on the wall, have started to really think about mitigation practices, if they had irrigation, they actually had- some of the vegetable farmers had really great years, like

[Senator Robert Plunkett (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: How about that on the Innovel?

[Sam Smith (Farm Business Director, Intervale Center)]: The Innovel, did okay because they've always, we have really sandy soils, they've relied on irrigation, and so, yeah, much better than the two prior years of catastrophic flooding. The water cooking away, man. Yeah.

[Senator Robert Plunkett (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Yeah. Too much water. Yeah.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Had a vineyard gentleman yesterday who I think felt almost guilty because he had a record breaking year that it was so dry,

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: but

[Senator Brian Collamore (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: it was good for what he did.

[Sam Smith (Farm Business Director, Intervale Center)]: Yeah, he's one of my clients. Oh, okay. One of my farm clients. Yeah, you know, the vineyards, actually, another one of the vineyards I work with down in the Middlebury area, the folks that bought Lincoln Peak, they bought it last year, and their yield was down a little bit.

[Sam Bellavance (Founder, Sunset Lake CBD; Farmer, South Hero)]: I think it was

[Sam Smith (Farm Business Director, Intervale Center)]: probably down about 10%, but the quality was much higher. So they, you know, for them, a wet year for vineyards is really, really challenging. Yeah. But yeah, they had, yeah, he, Dave, I think it was David Keck, and he, yeah. There's that, he lost this entire crop. He probably talked about Yeah, yeah, Yeah, so, you know, all of our farmers are facing it one way or other. And it was my understanding that the farmers that had to deal with the drought were not the farmers that had to deal with the flooding prior to I think for the most part, yeah. I think some of the Aspen County farmers with Lowland What's Aspen County? Like, yeah.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: That's why I

[Sam Smith (Farm Business Director, Intervale Center)]: work, man. The dairies, if they have really wet year and they're out on the Plain Plains, they have a really hard time getting corn in and out, and the folks that have a sort of diversification of growing areas have a much better time of weathering both drought and wet periods, and so.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Well, gonna move on. That's right. We want to thank you very much for attending all.

[Sam Smith (Farm Business Director, Intervale Center)]: It's good to see you back soon.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Yeah.

[Rosalie Williams (Farmer, Bakersfield)]: Jose, Rosalie. Thank you for that. Rosalie? Didn't do it.

[Sam Smith (Farm Business Director, Intervale Center)]: Got a chair. Got a clean up.

[Rosalie Williams (Farmer, Bakersfield)]: Welcome. Thank you.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: You're very welcome.

[Rosalie Williams (Farmer, Bakersfield)]: I'm very honored to be here today.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: We're honored to have you.

[Rosalie Williams (Farmer, Bakersfield)]: I'm very excited. This is my first time being here.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: So may I help?

[Rosalie Williams (Farmer, Bakersfield)]: My name is Rosalie Williams and I used to be an organic dairy farmer for thirty some odd years. The farm that I have now was given to me by a dear friend that my grandmother actually delivered him and his brother in the house that on the farm. And anyway, through the years I've been really wanting to continue the farm, but we had some horrible situations that happened. And because of Vermont Land Trust and Vermont Housing, I was able to save it so I could pass it down to my family like I've always wanted to. My original farm I grew up on in Bakersfield, been in Bakersfield for sixty nine years. I just, farming has always been in my blood. I grew up with oxen and horses. So anyway, sorry, I'm rambling on here. It's fun. The floor is yours. I just, my kids, I have two daughters, I had a son, he died in the military, and he always said, Mom, can you imagine what you could do with this fire? So, of the wishes that I always wanted to do was to continue to farm. The farm where I am now, actually, I had to sell my cows because I had a horrible fire and burnt my home and electrocuted when the lightning strike went, did a power surge and killed almost half of my herders. I didn't have insurance on them, so I didn't have the funds to do it.

[Sam Smith (Farm Business Director, Intervale Center)]: You did not.

[Rosalie Williams (Farmer, Bakersfield)]: I did not have insurance. Couldn't afford both. Being a small farmer, I had about 80 plus head, so it kind of forced me to diversify my farm, is something I always wanted to do anyway. Eventually I was going to start breeding my dairy herd into I've always been partial to Angus cattle, which is what I'm doing now. So, the gentleman who actually gave me my farm, we had an agreement between us. His name was Eli Joyle Junior. He's the gentleman that my grandmother delivered. And the promise was to keep it a farm no matter what. And I said, Junior, what if I can't farm anymore? He said, I don't care if you raise chickens. He says, Don't ever sell it to a dweller or anything. And through the years, my farm is a beautiful, scenic farm. It shows, I believe, 6,800 acres of panoramic view of the mountains all the way around me. Less than two, three acres, have Colt Hollow, which is, I call it my mountain because I grew up there, in Spakersfield. People always wanted to purchase my farm. How many acres are you? Two forty eight. One day I had somebody come up to me and say, because I was getting in a situation where I was possibly looking at a tax sale. And I said, I don't care what happens, this farm will not be sold to a developer. And I've had a couple that offered me some serious money for my farm. My kids, I know that they will actually come up, step up to the plate because that's, they grew up there. So, when I was approached, when I asked about Remote Land Trust, I said I had approached them many years ago, but at that time they weren't interested in my farm, the other farm that I had. But this time around, I felt very fortunate to say, I want to conserve this land. It's just beautiful farmland and it deserves to stay that way. And I kept my promise to Mr. Doyle. That's what makes me feel really, really honored is because I found out at the closing that Mr. Joyll had actually, him and his brother back in 2004, wanted to try to get him to remodel and trust. And so I kind of kept his dream and not kind of, I did keep his dream and his wishes. When I look out across the house and I see that huge field out there, say, God, I could have put 50 houses in there. I would have made a lot more money. No. No. Because that's not worth it do. Because of the Montland Trust or Monthouse of Coalition, I actually lived the dream that I wanted to do. Oh. And Mr. Joy's wish. It just makes me feel really good to know that there's an organization out there that's willing to work with farmers to keep it agriculture or I guess housing. Sorry. Just, I, it helped me financially. And in fact, I told Tucker that I didn't do it for the money. I did it because I wanted to conserve. And I had no idea how to do it until somebody said it to me. I said, Wow. And being a farmer, being sheltered in East Bakersfield my whole life, you didn't hear about certain things. Then NRCS started getting involved in projects and it opened my eyes and I started telling other farmers and before you know it, I mean, I've got neighbors now that are conserving their land. So, yeah, I feel good about it. And I hope that you folks do support, you know, budget or whatever. I don't know what the right words are, but You

[Senator Brian Collamore (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: sound all the right words.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: How many beef animals are you running now?

[Rosalie Williams (Farmer, Bakersfield)]: Right now, I've got 10.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Here you go.

[Rosalie Williams (Farmer, Bakersfield)]: But I started milking with two.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Oh yeah.

[Rosalie Williams (Farmer, Bakersfield)]: And 105 calves, which I know by hand. Yeah.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Troy, did you increase your goal to start producing milk again?

[Rosalie Williams (Farmer, Bakersfield)]: No, If my family wants to, that's fine. I got a whole brand new barn and a brand

[Al Karnatz (Vermont Land Trust, Farmland Projects Director)]: new

[Rosalie Williams (Farmer, Bakersfield)]: house. Everything electrical and everything, the barn has been done over but not too many farmers can afford even the old farms. Got a young farmer right now that would like to start a farm milking but they can't afford it. Right. I feel bad because it's part of me that wants to say, Just come and do it. But I know that would be the right thing to do, but that is how I would feel. I'd say, Hey, just come and do it. That's something they had to love for. And I did hear somebody say earlier that their kids were interested, some of their kids were not interested in farming. When I was a kid growing up, I hated

[James Pepper (Chair, Vermont Cannabis Control Board)]: farming. Amen.

[Rosalie Williams (Farmer, Bakersfield)]: I missed one day school. I missed one day of school in twelve years. I got an award for it. Graduation in 1974. Fifty two years or so. And now I love it. I grew up loving it. Yeah, when my aunt ran farm, it was a woman's job back then. I wasn't in the house baking cookies and stuff. I was out actually working the land with my oxen. I always had oxen. I had purebred devons. Yeah, that's how I did everything. From planting three acres of potatoes to sugaring 3,000, 4,000 taps of sugar woods to going to church on Sunday. Anyway, it's just amazing that there's, like I said, this organization that helped me to realize I can do anything. And I've, I, I am, I do speak with a lot of younger people. I work with teenagers and stuff, thousands of them. And actually, I they think it's amazing what I've done as a female. So they just say can do anything and that's what I truly believe in. If you got somebody that can support you, it's even better than like I said, I didn't do it for the money. But yes, it helped me. I don't have to worry about having a tax sale next year because I'm two years behind in tax season. Questions?

[Senator Brian Collamore (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Questions? No.

[Mark (Owner, A Kinder Way Berry Farm, West Pawlet)]: How long have you been at

[Senator Robert Plunkett (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: the time with happened

[Rosalie Williams (Farmer, Bakersfield)]: with the Lantras NAD? How long ago? Yeah. A year maybe?

[Senator Robert Plunkett (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: A year, so it's a year into it.

[Rosalie Williams (Farmer, Bakersfield)]: Okay. Well,

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: very inspiring. Thank you and Greed. Thank you for your story. Thank you for what you do. Did we get everybody?

[Rosalie Williams (Farmer, Bakersfield)]: We did. Think so. Well, I did forget something. We did find some wetlands on my property, and we're working with conservation and as we asked to actually plant trees. There's a couple acres of that. I wouldn't have been able to do that all the way.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Well thank you very much. I want to thank all of you folks. We're honored to be of service to all of you and appreciate all that you do. We are here to work for you, and that's what we do every day. So thank you very much. I appreciate you coming in. We're gonna move on to our next subject, but you guys have

[Rosalie Williams (Farmer, Bakersfield)]: I got it. Good

[Senator Robert Plunkett (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: job. 37 points. 37 was the break here. Okay. I went to a little step buying actual property and and.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: It's up to whatever they decide again. We lose Steve.

[Guy Maguire (Executive Director, South Hero Land Trust)]: I can do this one

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: here. Yeah.

[Mark (Owner, A Kinder Way Berry Farm, West Pawlet)]: I'll I'll be.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: I'm not here.

[Senator Robert Plunkett (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Hey, Steven.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Steven. Steven

[Senator Robert Plunkett (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: broke. Steven Steven broke. Oh, we're here. Under 100. So it's a lot. Not

[Al Karnatz (Vermont Land Trust, Farmland Projects Director)]: for me, anybody. It's my son.

[Sam Bellavance (Founder, Sunset Lake CBD; Farmer, South Hero)]: Wonder if it's a 130.

[Senator Robert Plunkett (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: But I think I see. No. No.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: I'm fine. Honestly, it's the first day. Just

[Senator Robert Plunkett (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Turn around

[Guy Maguire (Executive Director, South Hero Land Trust)]: the basement.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Way I can run. It's slut display. I know we just did a little bit of a switch over. Senator Major should be right back. But So we're gonna talk about some subjects that are going on. We are very fortunate to have a room full of people that are making a lot of those big decisions. Have been very fortunate and a lot of different thought processes on this. We want to be a big community partner with the cannabis control board. We want to help everybody that's farming hemp to be able to navigate the tap waters that we have going on. We've also been very honest with everyone that we are not part of the regulatory process of the hemp. We will support the Cannabis Control Board in any way that they need us to support them. Our role here is to help farmers produce, to be able to deduct, to be able to do everything that it is possibly could be happened to be a farmer in the hemp industry and to help the Cannabis Control Board in any way that they've asked us to help them to get to that point. With that being said, I've missed a lot, but who would like to lead it off?

[James Pepper (Chair, Vermont Cannabis Control Board)]: I think I will. Okay. If you don't mind. Yeah. Thanks for that introduction. For the record, my name is James Heffernan, I'm the chair of the campus floorboard. And I mean, we're here because of there's a lot of federal confusion and shifting sands, and a lot of hemp farmers and hemp processors are getting caught in the middle of all of it, and, know, sharing those, you visited a couple of these farmers, you've seen their operations, you've seen how these plants go from, you know, being in the grounds to the products, and right now, there really is very minimal oversight over any of that, and what I find very heartening is

[Mark (Owner, A Kinder Way Berry Farm, West Pawlet)]: the very farmers that are

[James Pepper (Chair, Vermont Cannabis Control Board)]: in the middle of this are asking for a regulatory home. Doing things right, they're holding themselves to good manufacturing practices, they're requesting to a certain extent that their products be age dated if they have THC in them. They're doing things the right way, but with the shipping sands and the pilot program going away, they need someone to just, they need to kind of register with some agents, their banks, insurance companies, and know who they are, they know that they're above board. So I've been working on a proposal that the 30,000 foot view of it is it takes as much of what's in Title VI currently, the existing hemp statutes, and moves it over to Title VII, where the CCB statutes are, the cannabis statutes are. And I think what that does, it has some updates just because the market has evolved so dramatically since the passage of the Farm Bill in 2018, and the rules that were adopted for hemp were from 2020, So it didn't necessarily contemplate some of the kind of evolution of this market. So there are some divergences or updates to the language. But for the most part, what it does is preserves the existing processes, rules, infrastructure that was built and that, you know, we have a model in Vermont, just shift that model from one agency to the other. I think the benefit of that is that the industry understands it. And when it comes to any of those kind of divergences that I talked about between the existing statute, that would happen through rule making, but we have the foundation of the rule that the Agency of Agriculture developed in 2020, and the rule making process, the inclusive process involves a lot of industry input, public safety input, public health input, and ultimately legislative approval. So I don't feel like it's necessarily the best idea to get into the line by line. I can certainly, I have the proposal, I've shared it, I've shared

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: it with you. Yeah, we have it with you. Does the committee have any questions that they want to dive down into? I think the hardest part with the committee is going to be is to understand our charge. You know, what are you asking us to do? What do you want us to do? And I know, you know, we've had some very, very broad discussions. We've had, I mean, Steve's had, you and I've had, and we've had, you know, I've visited and I've done, but, to bring the committee on board with what you want us to do. I think you've done that a little bit with what it is, but I'm gonna send it to the committee. Do you have any questions that you wanna be asking right now? Do we wanna continue on?

[Sam Smith (Farm Business Director, Intervale Center)]: Just so I'm clear, your your constituents are in compliance, so to they're they're they're asking for this because it would help them, better get loans, get get, other

[James Pepper (Chair, Vermont Cannabis Control Board)]: official documents that That's they should right. And it will also differentiate the legitimate businesses from the ones that are really just exploiting loopholes to make high potency products that, you know, should be called cannabis products or You called hemp know, this this is allow these businesses to essentially just be operate above board, you know, because right now, you know, no one's registering, no one's licensed. You know, in a bank, you if you wanna open a bank account, they wanna know who you are and what you do, really. I don't

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: have that.

[Sam Smith (Farm Business Director, Intervale Center)]: Very rarely do entities come and say, Hey, we want government regulation. Yes,

[James Pepper (Chair, Vermont Cannabis Control Board)]: I know. I'll leave it to the people that are in the room that are existing in this gray area right now to actually ask for that. My job is to just say,

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: This is

[James Pepper (Chair, Vermont Cannabis Control Board)]: how we can do it responsibly. I

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: think that's the way it's all been. Mean, James and I have been talking for a long time about this, and Sam, and I went and saw, hear and some of the compelling stories. Again, there are some people here that I think Not in here, but there are some people within the industry that have wanted to be cannabis producers but yet fall under the hemp rules. That's something that I don't think that's a part of what we want to try to do here. We want to just get them to protect this part of it. I think it would be helpful to have some other folks tell us what they'd like us to do.

[James Pepper (Chair, Vermont Cannabis Control Board)]: Yeah, I don't have much more to add. I mean, I'm happy when the time comes to walk through this proposal line by line if you'd like to, or have your Legion Council do it.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Probably have him have an Legion Council do it. Let's hear the rest of the folks in the room, so that we can get an understanding of, again, what our charge is, and so that we stay in our lane. That's right.

[James Pepper (Chair, Vermont Cannabis Control Board)]: Thank you, folks. Thank you. Good insight.

[Sam Smith (Farm Business Director, Intervale Center)]: So someone did bring samples.

[Sam Bellavance (Founder, Sunset Lake CBD; Farmer, South Hero)]: My parents were gonna be talking about this, at least give you some examples here, and we can get more into that. But my name is Sam Elevance. I'm a farmer in South Huron, Vermont. My family has dairy farm, and I started growing hemp in 2018, and I'm the founder of SunCell Lake CBD. So I put together a couple of slides here, and again, forgive me. I'm mostly focusing on farming, presenting to senators. So I'm trying to make this as clear as possible here. Thank you. But I wanna just tell a little bit of of the story so, you know, what's the issue we're facing? I mean, why

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: are we Very helpful, Steven.

[Sam Bellavance (Founder, Sunset Lake CBD; Farmer, South Hero)]: Why are we calling for this? And I'm keeping it all big picture. Sure. So in 2014, the Agency of Agriculture started a hemp pilot program. And from 2014 to 2021, we saw this boom in hemp growing at Vermont. Everyone from, you know, myself to Rick Nelson, who's now in the house, was growing hemp on his farm. So you have lots of dairy farmers, such as myself, growing hemp, veggie farmers growing hemp, and we had this consistent growing industry because we had a clear supply chain and a clear regulatory framework from the time the plant was put in the soil to when it was processed to when it was a finished product, and having that clear framework made it really easy to grow and scale your business. So by 2021 at our farm, we had 15 employees. We were growing 30 acres a pound, which we turned into a 100 liters of intermediate, just the raw CBD oil, and we turned that into $2,000,000 of CBD products. If you talk to any dairy farmer, $2,000,000 for 30 acres, that's pretty dang good. We wish you could get that for corn. So this was really seeming like this bright future for Vermont agriculture. If you go to the next page, what happened in 2022? In 2022, we had the ending of Vermont's hemp pilot program, and you can see here from this USDA data, we went from eight eighty six acres of hemp in 2021 to nine acres of hemp in 2023. Five of those nine are me. So in 2022, when the hemp program ended at the Agency of Agriculture, we put the cultivation of hemp under the jurisdiction of the USDA, which is a federal agency. We put the regulation of finished CBD products like these under the Cannabis Control Board, but there was no clarity on that oil, that intermediate, that necessary step to get from point a to point b. It's like if there was no regulation on sap. There's regulation on syrup on trees, but there's nothing, you have to go through that full supply chain. Even if you're not an expert on hemp, all of

[Guy Maguire (Executive Director, South Hero Land Trust)]: you know in

[Sam Bellavance (Founder, Sunset Lake CBD; Farmer, South Hero)]: agriculture, stability and supply chain clarity is key. If producers don't know what's gonna happen to their product, they won't produce it, and that's what happened to Vermont's hemp industry. It fell apart because the supply chain was not clear. Unfortunately, tragically, ironically, at the same time period, the national market for hemp products moved. So now by 2025, there is a national hemp market of $28,000,000,000. And Vermont, despite having incredible farmers, despite having very innovative producers making great products, we really haven't been able to capture that, because our supply chain here is so disjointed. We have a federal agency, an ambiguous processing language, and then a cannabis agency. So, while that's been booming, we've seen more and more of out of state hemp products, including the, you know, dangerous, toxidating products we've talked about. Those have been coming into the state. So instead of being a leader and a producer, we become an importer of products, a lot of which, frankly, we don't want in the state.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: And doesn't correct me, Sam, if I'm wrong, because it does get to another point that I'll make. Doesn't it bring it in that product, that oils that are there? It's almost violating federal law by transporting that across lines to bring it into the state, even though at the end of the day that your goal is to take that because there's too much THC in it. And your goal at the end of day is to dump that down so that your product goes out so that

[Senator Brian Collamore (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: it isn't infused with THC.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: But are we kind of in a gray area right there bringing that product in across the line?

[Sam Bellavance (Founder, Sunset Lake CBD; Farmer, South Hero)]: It it is in a gray area, and I think you need to be really careful with how that's handled. I think having an agency like the Cannabis Control Board draw really clear regulations for how this product will be handled, when could it be imported, when shouldn't it be imported, When, what can it be used for? Can it be used to make this product versus this product? And right now, none of that exists. It's all ambiguous.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: And committee, just to let you know where my thought process has been all along on this, my whole goal, I shouldn't say my whole goal, one of my goals into this is to get this production of hemp back into Vermont, a lot like what the acreage is there, and not have to import that product coming across, be in that gray area, letting Sam go make deals, whether with himself or other neighboring farms, to say, Listen, if you grow it, I'll harvest it. There might need to be at some point in time a ramp up time to get to that point, but my goal is, when it's all said and done, is to try to have almost all the product that these Vermont farmers need, these Vermont producers need, be grown in Vermont and create more opportunity and to create better markets. That's kind of where we're at. Continue on, and if anybody's got any questions on that, shortly, jump in.

[Sam Bellavance (Founder, Sunset Lake CBD; Farmer, South Hero)]: No. Thank you for your comments, and I appreciate your sentiment and your work on this issue. You know, what I see here ultimately is the path forward, and, like like you said, it's rare for some of the industries, you know, hey, regulators. You know, have more oversight here. Centralizing the control of the process from hemp farming to that processing of oil to the finished product under one state agency, because I need to know who is in control of the supply chain. These questions need to be answered. It was the agency of ag. If it's the cannabis control board, now that's fine. But we just need one agency who can control that supply chain. So that's part of what this bill does, and I think it's a great start here. I'll be done here in a minute here. Fine. So outside of just, you know, centralizing authority to the cannabis control board, we really need to make up with lost time from the past few years. It's not enough just to centralize that authority of the control board. We need to give them a mandate to actually promote the cultivation and the production of these products. That's what the agency of agriculture had, and that's why we had such a boom in hemp. So I think a lot of this bill is calling for rulemaking. I think if we have Vermont farmers, such as myself, CBD producers, agency of agriculture staff, make sure we're at the table too, to help the Cannabis Control Board during that rulemaking. And then lastly, have some specific recommendations for this bill. I won't read all of those off now, but we have them here. For the record, ultimately, it is getting to that vision of if we're gonna pass a piece of legislation, the end goal has to be supporting hemp farmers and supporting access to these products. I think it's important to note too, there was recently an executive order from the White House stating that it was their intent to promote access to full spectrum CBD products for Americans. So this is something that there is support for at the federal level, not only from the executive, but from our congressional delegation, and I think it'd be great for the Vermont legislature to hold that as well.

[Senator Robert Plunkett (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Wow, sounds like elephant is reunited.

[Sam Bellavance (Founder, Sunset Lake CBD; Farmer, South Hero)]: Yeah. And lastly, this picture of me on my tracker is good as I could help myself. Outro. Yeah.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Bullet point two on that last recommendation. Yep. If you remove all reference to the THC limit, I'm trying to come up with a way to clearly define what their differences are. Sure.

[Sam Bellavance (Founder, Sunset Lake CBD; Farmer, South Hero)]: Yeah, and I don't necessarily want to remove all limits. I think I would remove that specific point four language, and I would replace it with what we have in an emergency rule from the Cannabis Control Board. Our Cannabis Control Board has done a very good job of dicing out, here's a CBD product, here's Sam's HEPA lotion, and here is an intoxicating gummy pretending to be hemp. So that emergency rule, it sets it at one point five milligrams, twenty to one CBD to THC ratio. That's done an excellent job of weeding out the bad actors in this industry. So I would say if we are gonna have a number in this pill, I would have that number, or I would have no numbers at all. My fear is that a producer, we have one number in statute, and then we have another number in rule, and I don't know, am I making my products to rule or to the statute? It gets at that lack of clarity is kind of the overall problem there.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Okay.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: I know what the numbers mean anyway, Is to be it similar to what we do with alcohol where we've passed into statute, I guess it's statute, right, an amount of blood alcohol content. If you're driving and it's point zero eight, you're legally over the limit. I don't know how we came up with that number. I don't know if that number means anything to anybody. Well, does if you get pulled over and you're above it. I know that. Beyond that, I don't know, and you get to a certain point where, I mean, you're in danger of killing yourself if you have too much alcohol in your system. So I don't know what the numbers mean, and I don't know how they arrive at. How do they decide that you're intoxicated if you go beyond a certain order?

[Sam Bellavance (Founder, Sunset Lake CBD; Farmer, South Hero)]: Well, I think that our board arrived at that number through looking at lots of research from different health agencies, from speaking with members of law enforcement, from arriving at a reasonable conclusion based on what other states are doing. At the end of the day, you are just picking a number, but I don't think that was done without a lot of thorough scientific basis behind it. What I like, that rule that the board put in place in 2023, my business can operate successfully based on that. And my biggest fear is that a new cannabis control board down the line, okay, do they change that rule? Does that change, I'm making products, I have a production facility, I have equipment, I can't have that number go up and down all the time. You know this from dairy, you're investing in a milk bottle. Things need to be stable in order to recoup that investment, so stability is key.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: And the same thing with some regard to maple. Exactly. We know we rate maple with different Well, and I

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: think that number is very important to this committee as well. These folks, because I've spent some time with them, have heard me said over and over, and you guys might have heard a little bit about it as well, although we haven't spent a lot of time with it. I've said, know, listen, hemp to me is not an intoxicant and marijuana is. I think it's very important to understand where that number is in this committee because, again, I have said over and over and over time, there comes a time when we're going to support the farmer why that product's in the field, but once it gets to be different or once it gets to be processed, especially if it's cannabis or marijuana, it's going to go down the regulatory authority, not us. That number is very important to us so that we can focus on that and make a rule. I think it's very important that we come to that agreeable number, which we have.

[Sam Bellavance (Founder, Sunset Lake CBD; Farmer, South Hero)]: Yeah, I think we have, and I think it's, like you said, it's rare for industry to say, Hey, our governing body passed a really good regulation. Let's get it codified. I think this is something we have an opportunity to do. Overall, stabilize the supply chain, make things predictable so producers such as myself, can get that requirement, if you have any other questions, happy to answer. Well,

[Senator Robert Plunkett (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: who's next? Very well done, bud.

[Sam Smith (Farm Business Director, Intervale Center)]: Thank you. You make a good lobbies.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Who's next? Yes, Steve. I can meet you.

[Steve Collier (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: That's an orphan, and I'm the least important person here.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Well, think you're very important because, again, the other trick is to, and I think the reason why we need to be very, very clear, and that seems to be the word, clarity as far as where we're at, is that we also need to make sure that the federal government is good with what we do, because we don't want to get into the point of having them with a $31.1100000000 dollars they want to give us saying you guys are blowing the lines of where you want to be. So we want to be we we got to be very careful with the the difference between hemp and marijuana.

[Steve Collier (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Morning. Steve Collier from the Agency of Agriculture. So we're here just to express our support for what the proposal would do. I mean, in reality, this was always intended back when the transition back when the cannabis control board was started regulating cannabis in the state. Hemp came first, cannabis came later, and it always made sense to us that once cannabis was regulated in the state, that cannabis would also encompass hemp. And that was that happened. We transferred positions to the cannabis control board. The idea was that people, a lot of people who were in the industry, would want to do perhaps both cannabis and hemp, and so there's just a lot of reasons why it made sense to consolidate, but we never really finished the job, And so from our perspective, this is finishing that transfer more formally, like specifically in statute, giving the cannabis control board the authority they need to be able to regulate them. And and the gap that the background is horribly complicated, I don't think it's necessary unless you want to get into all of that, but it is really important that the key distinction between hemp and cannabis, same plant, it's whether or not it's intoxicating, and more specifically, or not it complies federal law. When you comply with federal law, the advantage is you have a national market, and that is the big difference, and if people in Vermont are growing hemp, we'd like nothing more than to see exactly what Sam was referencing, more hemp production in the state, that's great for our farmers. We want them to have that opportunity, but that opens up a national market, whereas cannabis, you'd only get a domestic small state market. So it's vastly different in in potential, and so it's really important for the folks who are processing hemp within the federal standards, and, unfortunately, those change and become more cumbersome, more uncertain, and a lot of the things that Sam was talking about, uncertainty, is because of the disparate federal and state overnight. But hemp processors have been successful in Vermont. Hemp farmers could be successful in Vermont, we believe, and having a consistent regulatory overlay. And I think the importance here, to senator Baker's point, you don't often have industry coming in clamoring for regulation. But but here, if you're not able to prove that you're a legitimate business rather than potentially violating federal law, then it's, your access to resources can be quite different. So it is important that they have a home, and that they are regulated, and also so that they're regulated so they're actually producing hemp products, not cannabis, which is fine, but needs to be in a different vein. So from our perspective, it makes all the sense in the world to consolidate this. The cannabis plant is the same regardless of how much THC is in it, and so having the expertise and your regulatory authority and consistency building that program within one place makes a lot of sense. Not in the process intermediary question that you raised, Senator Ingalls, is that's a challenge, there is some gray area, and there needs to be a path in our in our estimation to to make to make that work so that current hemp processors can be can continue to work, but also to make sure that they're be complying with federal law so that they don't lose access to that federal market. So we're very supportive of this proposal. We hope that you all will be, too. The details, obviously, and implementation will always be more challenging, but the actual legal request to move this authority from us to CCB is pretty straightforward, I think.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Yes. So good to see you, Steve, as always. Time wise or timeline, was HEP was put in with ag in Title VI originally because at that point, we hadn't legalized marijuana, I assume. Once we did, Title VII kind of fits better, because it has to do with alcohol and tobacco and now cannabis. So in a sense, all we're doing is reaffirming, it's hard to explain this. I know

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: what I'm trying to say on

[Senator Brian Collamore (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: my mind. Me too. We have the same plant, but we bifurcated the products therein, and what we wanna do is put hemp back, kinda like separating it. Exactly right, in recognizing that it can be used

[Steve Collier (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: for different purposes. And even if trying to grow hemp, can mistakenly grow cannabis. And so there's a lot to it in terms of the regulation. It makes sense to have one home for it, but you're right, hemp first became legal in

[Sam Bellavance (Founder, Sunset Lake CBD; Farmer, South Hero)]: The United States, including in Vermont,

[Steve Collier (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: in 2014 Farm Bill. There was a pilot project. That pilot project was pretty permissive, so it was relatively easy for folks to operate within it. In the 2018 farm bill, the clamps were put down a bit, and so the most importantly, the level of THC was significantly lessened. It was made clear that you had to count not only the THC, delta-nine THC, but the THC A, which is also in the plant, not but not until you burn it. So once it became clear that you had to meet this point three delta-nine THC after it's called decarboxylation, then it became really difficult to meet the standards, and it's been harder ever since then, and now there's a new federal law that goes into effect this November that's still making it complicated. It's a challenging environment, but it's one that, in our estimation, the CHEM's control board is certainly best equipped And to

[Senator Brian Collamore (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: I'm fully in support of moving these provisions to a different I think

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: it would give

[Sam Smith (Farm Business Director, Intervale Center)]: farmers less worry

[Senator Brian Collamore (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: of being under a federal spotlight if it's hemp, and that's all we're talking about, and phew, now

[Al Karnatz (Vermont Land Trust, Farmland Projects Director)]: we don't have to worry kind of thing.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Is the wording of this it looks like and I'm used to when I see underlying words, go, oh, that's a new one, but it seems like it's just literally picking up the provisions that were in one title and moving it. I don't see any changes here.

[Steve Collier (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: I don't I I I don't know that that was red line, the version that you have, so it's mostly models what's in title six now, but I think there are some. There definitely are some changes. I don't know. And that and I think if if this is submitted to legislative council, I'm sure that they'll give you a a typical draft of how of how what would be new in title seven. Okay. And if you ask, it certainly council or us could contrast it in the title six as well. I mean

[Senator Brian Collamore (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: There's fees here, which I don't know Those

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: are different.

[Steve Collier (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Believe those are different than the projected fees based on CCV. Well, we had we had different fees, some some of which were, I think, in federal law and some of which were not.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Okay. And I didn't know if there was any additional requests from Cannabis Control Board for new positions because they're, do you know, I try to read it all the way through. They're not asking for new positions. Yeah.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Maybe I'm actually more complicated. You know, I'm kind of I maybe put the cart before the horse a little bit, so I thought that maybe the backstory a little bit about what we would do would be very important to you because it would be very dry for us to read down through here and not understand what we're trying to do. So what we'll do next is we will get Legis Council in here and look at it probably a little bit more complete bill form and just make sure that, because again, we have to understand it, we have to

[James Pepper (Chair, Vermont Cannabis Control Board)]: explain it, we have to

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: know what we're doing, and it's a subject matter that you guys haven't been exposed to. Me and the committee haven't been exposed to, but I thought a lot of backstory would be very valuable. And I also think it's a backstory that needs to be told that we we are. We are here to help as well. We want to help. We want help the cannabis control board. We're very honored to be their partners in this, and we just want to make sure that we do what's best for the hemp farming industry in

[Senator Robert Plunkett (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: the state of Vermont. Are we trying to slide this into the miscellaneous bill? Yes.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Yeah, it will be added to the miscellaneous bill. Anyone else? Yes?

[Al Karnatz (Vermont Land Trust, Farmland Projects Director)]: Just a point of clarification. Kyle Harris, Cannabis Control Board. Yeah, come on up. Sam had referenced an emergency rule that we did do to handle some of these issues, which had to do with that ratio, that one point five milligram per package limit that Sam referenced. That emergency rule has been incorporated into our board rules.

[Kyle Harris (Cannabis Control Board)]: If you're familiar with administrative legal jargon, administrative rules expire, so that rule is still in place, we incorporated the last time we opened our rules. Certainly appreciate Sam's wanting of this to be more affirmatively put in statute, though. Just wanted to make that point of clarification, and I think to some of your questions from a Title VI to Title VII perspective, when the hemp program was at the age of agriculture before, was with the Cannabis Control Board, and some of that language conveyed to the Cannabis Control Board. We, the Cannabis Control Board, we found out, because lots of redlining, so on and so forth, that we, the Cannabis Control Board, did not get the language to properly license processors of hemp, and so there's this business back and forth of trying to get that authority into Title VII, which is where a lot of the Cannabis Control Board's authority lies. USDA regulates up and to the point with which it's tested out of a farm field, and not of any products thereafter. We've just created this big vacuum of the products that you've seen that Pepper put on the screen when we were in here last time, and folks have figured out how to market these in ways that mimic a lot of what the cannabis markets around the country intend to do. So just a couple points of clarification for you.

[Senator Robert Plunkett (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Will this help for people that want to grow hemp to make fabric, or will that not affect, will it make it easier to farm because we had a big push

[Kyle Harris (Cannabis Control Board)]: last year? I believe so, and you know, there's differences in terms of, you know, the commodity hemp markets from a textile manufacturer perspective, and those that are trying to sell products like Sunset Lake and others that are intended more for a consumer.

[Sam Smith (Farm Business Director, Intervale Center)]: But if we scrape this lump, this

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Well, Jeff, you wanna add something to that?

[Jeffrey Pizzutillo (Executive Director, Vermont Growers Association)]: Yeah. I mean, think, for the record, Jeffrey Pistela from our growers association. I think when thinking about the industrial uses of hemp, which a great, great question, by the way, senator, it really comes down to how do we want to regulate this at the cannabinoid sort of chemical level, which is largely the premise for this conversation so far, CBD, THC, versus removing all of those compounds from the understanding of a regulatory and thinking about fiber textiles and the expensive processing equipment that needs to stand up those materials to get into the supply chain. So a much different conversation, but absolutely, think we should

[Kyle Harris (Cannabis Control Board)]: be having that one as well. So if there's one set, good point. The voting is certainly somewhere with this, but that question is an important one. You know, from a commodity perspective,

[Sam Bellavance (Founder, Sunset Lake CBD; Farmer, South Hero)]: that can do what a lot of other commodities do depending on

[Kyle Harris (Cannabis Control Board)]: the incentives. From what

[Senator Robert Plunkett (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: I understood last year was that, again, there's no regulation. So I wanted to start farming it into textiles, being able to go and say, Hey, it's legitimate in the state of Vermont now.

[Kyle Harris (Cannabis Control Board)]: I think so. I'm not sure that the business world has caught up to that attention yet from a scale perspective. There's a lot going on with hemp overseas and trying to turn it into things, and elsewhere around the country with turning it into a plastic, bioplastic, so on and so forth. I know that there's been a couple individuals that have at least approached me about trying to do hemp processing not for THC CBD usage, as

[Senator Robert Plunkett (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: They Joe alluded were in this committee last year with their products.

[Kyle Harris (Cannabis Control Board)]: Yeah, I think they were in the Northeast Cape, but I can't recall specifically, but I think this would be a good start to getting, to a place of clarity.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Yeah. Anybody in this room have any disagreements with this we're talking about? Everybody good? Everybody nodding their head in the right direction? Anybody else have anything else to say about that? Yep. Couple more remarks. Yes. Absolutely. I gotta say, for

[Jeffrey Pizzutillo (Executive Director, Vermont Growers Association)]: the record of Jefferson Stallow, Vermont Association, it is it is great to hear operating in the cannabis space, all of this alignment across these different agencies and different parties, so I appreciate that. So very briefly, by the way, Vermont Growers Association, we are the trade association, one of them for the adult use cannabis space. Repeat the exact words her name. Our used paying members represent the entire supply chain. We're very proud of that. So why are we weighing into this hemp discussion? We're weighing into this hemp discussion because first of all, we appreciate our hemp farmers and producers in the state, but also because there's a lot of shared regulatory and statutory overlap, and then the implications of the of that overlap between cannabis and hemp. So in its simplest form, as you've been hearing all this morning, hemp and cannabis are one of them. And so what we shared with you all over email the other day, which is our suggestions, which is largely in alignment with what you've been hearing so far, and that is a simply put one plant, one system. And I draw your attention to S-one 188 from 2022. That was the first ag bill back then, for those who were with us, that began to recognize adult use cannabis to some degree for adopting some of regulatory benefits of cannabis. In that bill, there's actually a trigger provision that says, should Washington DC, should our federal government deschedule or legalize to some extent, then this body shall the state of Vermont shall reassess the jurisdiction for both cannabis and hemp. And so that speaks to, I think, the intention of this body for many years, and that is to keep things as efficient and as unified as possible. So we're largely here to show support for what you all have said from the purview, from the perspective of the adult use cannabis. So I'm gonna share that, and that's really, really important. You know, the recommendations that we shared with all of you over email the other day were developed, with some local hemp farmers and hemp producers. So even though our members and we do focus on the adult use cannabis space, I do wanna let you know that we very meaningfully developed these recommendations that we shared with all of you, and and we hope that you take them seriously. And perhaps one sort of item that has not

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Here's come up the here's the this thought here. Sure. The clarity that we're trying to bring to this is where you've said that you do gravitate towards the adult use market. It does help you to not have intrusion into your space, right?

[Jeffrey Pizzutillo (Executive Director, Vermont Growers Association)]: Correct, and that's why we're deciding to voice our opinions, is because we do see this play on other states, and what we've been hearing from everyone here in this committee and across different agencies is that recognition of protecting what we do best here, which is high quality, specialized, small scale production of whatever it is, whether it's textiles or, you know, these CBD products. With that being said, one thing that we would just put into the discussion for consideration maybe is public places not in legislation, this particular bill, but that is to allow for adult use manufacturers the allowances to possess and process hemp derived products as well. Whether it's CBD, and we put that forward because right now we think that perhaps there aren't as many processors in the state to support the hemp farmers and bringing those products to market. We have manufacturers in the adult use space that are already set up to basically work with these plants. And so we would ask that you all would consider that that allowance for our our gold use manufacturers to be able to work with our hemp farmers as well in

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: the space. So just a little bit

[Jeffrey Pizzutillo (Executive Director, Vermont Growers Association)]: of a support mechanism there to put into the conversation. Say that a different way. So we have a really diverse and vibrant quilt across our state of product manufacturers, whether they're making edibles or making, like, concentrates themselves in the adult use cannabis space. They're successful, they're talented, a lot of them are artisanal. They make very, very high quality products that compete not just with other states, but globally as well. Like, you know, think about maple syrup, but our beer, our cannabis in our hemp is no different. Very, very high quality. It can be. We have adult use cannabis manufacturers right now working in the THC space. We think it would be advantageous for the hemp space to allow them to support the hemp farmers in, ensuring that their hemp products are able to

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: reach market. Okay. Yeah.

[Sam Bellavance (Founder, Sunset Lake CBD; Farmer, South Hero)]: I think I think I think what you're getting at, I mean, the equipment that's used to process hemp and turn it into CBD oil is the same equipment that's used to process cannabis and turn it into cannabis oil. It's very expensive. Mhmm. And I think what Jeffrey's getting at, we wanna have the ability of a hemp farmer to maybe contract out to a cannabis, Can you process my, product and turn it into oil just because this equipment can cost over a quarter million dollars. So the reality of, oh, I'm gonna have my hemp processing building and my cannabis, people aren't gonna build two separate buildings. It's the same thing. You wouldn't have one bottling plant for chocolate milk, one bottling plant for almonds. You have one plant that does separate production runs.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: I get that. That helps me, but really I think it gets down to, with my thought process, is that it really don't matter to me whether that's done like that. I wouldn't have a problem with that. I think it gets down to is hemp an intoxicant and marijuana is, or hemp is not an intoxicant and marijuana is. So if there was cross use of equipment and all that, I think it's just down to the final product of where it's at.

[James Pepper (Chair, Vermont Cannabis Control Board)]: That's where I would be. Appreciate that perspective. Well, I mean, I'd add on. James? The proposal leaves this question to rule making, but I certainly, the board recognizes that, you know, you have all this existing infrastructure on the cannabis side. To duplicate that in the state, you know, doesn't make a lot of sense, but we would need, just like TTB at the federal level has concerns when you start moving THC into beverage, like beverage lines, existing There needs to be a way to make sure that there, you know, is a clean break between when you're making hemp and when you're making hemp.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: And real crop contamination. And I think this is very, very important for everybody to understand for this, is that the way I want to guide this committee towards this is not to, I think the partnership that I've had with the Cannabis Control Board has been great and it's been an honor because I've said over to James over and over and over again, we are not going to be the regulatory part of this. We are here to help the growers. We are here, we are whatever, once it gets out of that field and goes elsewhere, we understand there's going to be another regulatory process and I'm going to be working very, very closely as to not be stepping on any toes. My whole goal is to make sure that farmers are going to be able to grow hemp and be able to make all the deductions that they can, and hopefully when it's all said and done, that all hemp products that are produced in this state are grown locally in Vermont. That's what I'm trying to get to without even making regulatory on that. But to make it a process forward so that there'd be no reason why that Sam couldn't go out and say, Hey, I can't grow this all myself. Would you be willing to grow 30 acres long? Or you folks, get contractor folks and be able to supply the product from Vermont farmers to the Vermont producer. That's where I want to be a lot of the regulatory stuff, than if James Pepper says to this committee, Hey, I need a little help with this. Can you do this for us? Or Steve, HVAC, hey listen, this is where we need some help with this right here. We are a partner in this and not trying to get into the regulatory part. If I could

[Kyle Harris (Cannabis Control Board)]: just put a finer point or compliment Pepper's comments, I think that's something that the board certainly could figure out with some strong standard operating procedures because unfortunately there is the ability to kind of invert hemp distillate into the cannabis market, which I think is something that we would want to minimize not happen if we can, but

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: want you guys to tell us that.

[Kyle Harris (Cannabis Control Board)]: But I think there's an opportunity for the statutory and regulatory kind of combination there to complement each other, that that's a consideration that this committee is looking at.

[Jeffrey Pizzutillo (Executive Director, Vermont Growers Association)]: Yes, we agree, and that's what we want as well. Not it's not a binary here, but really, part of this is in recognizing that the cannabis control board has become the go to agency when it comes to this unique plant that is a high value crop that that I think that, you know, and recognizing that and then leaning into the fact that they did a pretty good job in standing up the soil use market, and so we think that they can give us the same examples. If I may, was not with our coalition when we were here a couple weeks ago. If just take a minute to just raise a a a related land use matter for cannabis. There has been an update just maybe a minute or two, if if if that's appropriate. Right. So we do have this duck and hemp farmer in Essex that we're all aware of. His name is Jason Struthers.

[Sam Smith (Farm Business Director, Intervale Center)]: Yeah.

[Jeffrey Pizzutillo (Executive Director, Vermont Growers Association)]: Had a conversation with him the other day. Essex, revoked his adult use cannabis cultivation license. And what I'm asking of all of you, perhaps for consideration this year, whether it's in a miscellaneous, ag bill or even what's being delivered over, in Seneca right now, 278, and that is the recognizing that there's sensitivities around the federal landscape when it comes to cannabis, but an intent and an interest to treat it as ag as much as possible while it's still in the in the earth, right, growing, and and and that is contending with these cultivation districts and these setbacks that we feel were brought to this body, this state house, for the purposes of really putting a single individual out of business. And there's no other individuals that have been, harmed as this person has in Essex by those, those laws which we feel are overly burdensome. And, you know, we also feel sort of stepping back that necessarily was not the best use of the legislative branch, such that, bringing forward deliberations and discussion in this body really for the intent for a simple individual. That's the way that we see it, and we mean that as respectfully as possible. Yeah. Big topic, probably nothing that we're really ready to really dive down into for a

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: lot of reasons. One is that we don't really have all the stuff in front of us, but you did say something that I will share back, is that it is our intent in both the hemp and the cannabis world, understanding that there will be further regulation that are out of our controls and I want to be out of our control. I want it to go to the proper authorities, cannabis control board or wherever, that we would like to be in the, we would like to support anybody that puts their hands in the soil and throws a product, whether it's cannabis or carrots, and we'd like to get it to the point to where they could make all kinds of deductions that a farmer would make, again, and all of that. What's happened in Essex is it's a complicated, very complicated situation that's had a lot of ramifications throughout the agricultural world. I don't really want to get into whether the farmer's been purposely harmed or not, to be fair, not what I want to get into discussion about in

[Jeffrey Pizzutillo (Executive Director, Vermont Growers Association)]: this committee. I appreciate that, and I want to put aside the municipal exception discussion and just focusing on you know, those setbacks in school prediction districts. You know, it's it's in a way, we you know, we this body afforded, regulatory benefits to a a a group, to a class, and and then pulled them back. Right? That's what we see here.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: We'll always stay there for another discussion, but after Thank you, Chair. Okay, thank you. Anybody else? I want to thank, again, I want to thank all the partners. I think we have a clear view. We'll continue all of some of our work. I thought it was valuable for the committee to understand a little bit of a backwards process for us that we don't normally do, but I think the committee understands what we're trying

[Senator Brian Collamore (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: to do. Thank you all. Thank you.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: As I said, we'll continue on with this. Some clarification of the language. Everybody, you know, just if you don't understand whatever, know, I think got a pretty wide range and broad discussion about what they're trying to do. I think that it's controversial as it could sound. It isn't controversial. Thank you. It isn't controversial at the end of the day. I don't believe it is. I hope that we feel the same way. They're asking for our home. And I'm very honored to be working with other agencies and have them not feel threatened by us, just doing what we're trying to do just to protect our farmers. And supporting everybody. Right.

[Senator Robert Plunkett (Member, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Addison here saying, Yeah, we support the assessment of interest.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Right. Well there's been a lot of tender discussions that have gone on that have been ongoing for six or seven, probably even longer than that, but I've been involved with them for six, seven, seven, It ten months, took a lot to have everybody come into this room in this same mindset. I think everybody's comfortable with that. Our whole thing I tell you, our hardest thing to be fair is for us to understand this enough to report it on the floor. That's really, to be honest, is the hardest job that we should Well, you'll do a great job. Senator Major is looking forward to it. Are we all good?

[Sam Bellavance (Founder, Sunset Lake CBD; Farmer, South Hero)]: Yes, sir.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee)]: Okay, let's call it a day, and thank you guys for a great wonderful offer you got, Linda. Thank you guys for a very good week. We are in up to a lot of deep discussions, a lot of hard discussions. Nothing that we can't handle. We're not over our skis. We're not ahead of our skis. I think we're just doing a lot of good work for the state of Vermont and for agriculture. We're getting closer and closer every day to getting down through our bill and making it concrete. As you are very well aware, and I'll make sure that I'll say it out loud again, Linda sent out a letter to all of the affected parties one through three. They were gonna meet through this week and meet with us again on Friday. Hopefully we put some arrest to that. We're gonna continue on down through. I shared with Senator Major next week's agenda, and we're gonna just keep on plugging away. I think we're making great time, great progress. Again, we're into a lot of heavy stuff that I just want to make sure that you guys, know, very smart committee for sure. I just, I want to make sure that totally you understand what we're doing, what we're trying to accomplish, and so that when you get asked questions you're able to defend our positions or just say this is what we're doing. So we're doing a really nice job. So thank you. Thank you for a great week.