 I'm Bobby Starr, Senator from Essex Orleans County, and we have with us this morning the Ag Committee, and I'd like to start with our Vice Chairman, Senator Pearson. We could introduce ourselves, and then we'll go to Anson and go around the room. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Chris Pearson from Chittenden District. Glad to be back. This is the first time since I've been in the Senate that I get to be on a committee two sessions in a row, so I'm glad to be mostly up to speed. Look forward to working with you. You were that bad before. I thought, see, I like your work, so you made it twice. Just kidding. I'm Anthony Polina from Washington County. Glad to be back on the committee. Senator Bryant Collamore representing the Rutland District. This is my third term on Senate. Cory Parent, I represent Franklin County. I'm the new member on the committee, but I spent last biennium on Senate natural resources, and then prior to that I spent two terms in the House, but never on an Ag Committee. And so, Secretary Tabbitt, would you like to take over from here? Sure. Thank you, Senator Starr and committee members. Welcome, Senator Parrot, to the committee. It's an honor to be with you. We look forward to a productive and safe session. Of course, we stand ready to help you with your work, crafting policies that improve the lives of our monitors. In a moment, I'd like to introduce some of our directors. They will be your key contacts for a variety of issues, whether it's protecting animal health, making sure our food is safe, protecting our waterways, or improving the agriculture economy from farm to table. They're there. They'll get you the information that you need to make your decisions, and of course, lean on them. They're solid managers who understand their fields of expertise. Over the last four years, we've worked closely with all of you on the best approach to each issue, with common sense, facts, and an attitude of how do we get to yes, and I think that's important. That's worked for all of us. How do we get yes for the people of Vermont? A few highlights I'd like to share with you since we last left you in our virtual world. Across the agency, we've been focused on the current pandemic. We're doing our best to keep everyone safe and healthy. Our agriculture community has stood tall working nonstop to feed all of us, and we are so thankful for their work, whether it's on the farm, in the orchard, the slaughterhouse, or in the processing plants, or in our stores. Agriculture remained open and is open as we weave our way through this pandemic. We're also working nonstop to improve the economy. We have just completed a historic program that provided nearly $26 million in grants, $26 million in grants, sending out dollars to hundreds of businesses so they could pay their bills through this pandemic. Your work, which allowed us to do our work, was critical, and we thank you. You helped Vermonters. A few highlights, just a little more details on that. The outreach was incredible on this. The agency provided direct technical assistance via phone or e-mail to approximately 6,500 businesses and partners about the various applications. We produced 12-weekly newsletter e-blasts with much of the content related to the grants receiving more than nearly 39,000 opens by those recipients, so they're reading it. Again, we want to thank our partners in this. The agency collaborated with BHUB and the Farm Viability Network. Those advisors helped with the applications, gave advice, and they assisted more than 520 working-lands businesses, including nearly 400 businesses that received support through the grant applications. We couldn't have done it without their help. They helped farmers night and day to get through the applications and get as much money to the field as possible. We think, and we've done the data on this, the grants of 1,136 businesses received nearly $26,000 toward mitigating the business impacts experienced due to this pandemic. We are in the process of gathering additional data and the industry needs and impacts of the grants, and we'll share a more detailed report in the coming weeks with you probably later January or February. Abby Willard, our director of agriculture development is working on that report to get more details to your work. We know our work is not done here. We know there's still some needs and there's some gaps. We have to examine meat processing. Our slaughterhouses have not stopped working and have been in overtime since this began in March. They do need some support with labor and also infrastructure. So stay tuned on that. The latest federal CARES program does offer dollars for small and medium-sized facilities, but it's too early to tell where Vermont is going to fit in in that. But those would be coming from USDA and we'll keep posted on that as soon as the new administration is in place down in Washington with that. But that's encouraging. Part of this latest round of CARES dollars did include for small and medium-sized facilities. Over the summer, I've had discussions with the governor about the future of agriculture. Governor Scott has instructed me and all of us at the agency to look deeper. And over the coming weeks, you'll hear more from us on long-term strategies to grow our agriculture economy. We know it's critical to Vermont's future. So stay tuned. We'll be back with more details on that. Some of the other things just quickly I want to highlight that are going on with us. The agency has launched the Northeast Dairy Business Innovation Center. This came after the agency's dairy summit. I think many of you attended that in Orleans County and Jay in April of 2019. We sought funding and were successful with a $6.5 million grant from USDA. Our thanks to the delegation and Senator Leahy, who are partners with us knowing we need to improve the dairy economy. The center is one of three centers around the country. The center provides our farmers with technical assistance, contracts and grants, supporting cow, goat and sheep dairy businesses as they look to improve their bottom line. Our dairy farmers are always adapting and changing to the markets. And the center focused at the agency is focused on new strategies. We also look at ways to improve the environment. Our farmers are on the front lines and invested millions over the last few years on conservation projects that are protecting our new waterways from runoff. We will launch soon a new program with the help of USDA and RCS. In short, it's called pay for performance. The $7 million grant awarded to the agency will give monetary incentives to go above and beyond Vermont's stringent environmental regulations. We are excited to launch this project this year with Vermont farmers and partners. The Vermont land trust is also focused on this strategy and researchers at UVM are encouraged by this innovative approach. Those are a couple of pockets I just wanted to highlight with you, Senator. We do have some directors on the line. A couple of them would like to be first because they got some other appointments. And if it's okay, I'd like to introduce them. Sure. Sure. Sounds like you're played as pretty full. Yeah, it's full, but we're looking to the future. And I think we have some real opportunities to look beyond this pandemic to maybe solve some of those problems that we've been trying to solve over the last few years. So we're going to treat it as an opportunity here. I want to turn it over to Cary. I know Cary has to get to another appointment, but Cary's with our farm division. Cary, why don't you introduce yourself and just give us a little snapshot of what you're up to. Very good. Good morning, senators. Welcome back to Montpelier. I see you've got our room full here today. I don't know how we all fit in Senate Ag. Well, that's one advantage of doing it virtually. We all fit the same room. Yep, no, we would be virtually impossible without it. Cary Giger, the director of the Public Health Ag Resource Management Division. Most of you are familiar with the programs that I touch, and Senator Perron, if you would like to go over them offline, we can, and I can give you a deeper dive. But the Farm Division houses the pesticide feed seed fertilizer, hemp, apiary, nursery, entomology. We do seed potatoes, the phytosanitary certificate. So Christmas trees and other Vermont live plants or plants that need to be inspected can leave the state or country depending on what they need. We do worker protection training. So basically the folks that work on farms where they use pesticides need to be trained. There's ginseng. There's the Vector Surveillance Program that looks for mosquitoes and ticks in partnership with the Health Department. Also, the Pesticide Monitoring Program. It's an environmental surveillance program that's checking the surface and groundwater around the state for pesticide contamination. And we also manage Ag Hazardous Waste as well. One of the other topics that we were in your community last year to talk about was the Pesticide Advisory Council. The legislation that my division was into talk with you last year was was the Pesticide Advisory Council, Chloropyrifos, Aprazine, Glyphosate. And the Ag Residuals Management or Chicken and Com Post bill. So if any of those are likely to come back, we'll be happy to chat with you when that time comes. Thank you, Cary. You're welcome. Are there any questions from the committee members of Cary or would you wait until the end? Yeah, go ahead and answer. All right, Laura DiPiccio from our Water Quality Division, our director is with us and Laura want to just give a little high level outline of what's happening in water quality. So Laura. Yeah, good morning. Everyone hear me OK? Yeah. Great. All right. Yeah, so as a reminder, and I know we've met with Senator Cory Parent and other committees, but as a reminder in water quality, I'm the director of the division and Ryan Tatch is here on the call and he's the deputy director. And so you'll generally see the two of us, but there's certainly a body of people behind us doing a great deal of engine work. And so our focus in the division is focus on nonpoint source pollution. DC at the agency of natural resources regulates point source pollution at the state level. So in agriculture, that's sort of an interesting space. And we have an MOU between us and them. And you'll see some reports in the coming weeks to outline sort of our enforcement, their enforcement, and how we operate together. So that's certainly a space we can talk in the future a little bit more about. And certainly it's not a lot smoother. There's a lot more cases in the last years since we've last seen each other. I guess we saw each other in the interim. But more cases have been referred to A&R and also to the Attorney General's Office. So there is a body of work there, which really results from the fact that over the last couple of years, we've had a lot more inspectors at the agency of agriculture. So there's a lot more booths on the ground. And I will say that, although the level of enforcement is up, for certain, our focus in the agency has not changed. Our goal is compliance and our efforts we always start with. And it's in statute to describe that our first goal is to notify a farmer what their problem is and give them a chance to fix it. And so we continue to operate in that space. And then when they do not make that next step, then it elevates from there. But our focus is not to try and fill our coffers, but to rather get the money on the ground into the project and focus there. So I think we've done a really, really good job of doing that. But certainly the volume is up. You will see this year, we're going to come through and do two rule revisions that are going to happen likely while you're in session. One of them will be the RAPs. And that is because a couple of years ago, I think it's been two years now at this point, you gave the authority to us to regulate those people who write nutrient management plans. And so we work through that process and we're ready to put that through and put that into place. We will have some some other details within the RAPs. Nothing that hasn't already, nothing too extreme. We're not looking to overhaul the RAPs, but rather clarify how we operate within them because some of the challenges we've lived with since the last revision. So we'll give you a rundown on that as well. Happy to do that at the same time because we talked to the same constituents. We're also going to do the BMP rule. So you all probably remember, there's the BMP program that helps firms with capital improvements on, you know, it's the traditional. If you need a barnyard improvement or something to that effect, that program has been in place for over 20 years, but it actually has rules and they haven't been revised since 1996. They still say department on them. Department of Agriculture, for instance. So we're going to revise those. That was something we were audited a couple of years ago now, and that was a fly that the auditor had said that the rules needed to be revised to update and in line with statute because we have been given priorities, for instance, of like what watershed areas we need to make sure funding goes and things like that. So we'll be doing that as well. And then currently we're in the process of hiring five positions. So it's been we had some some losses and some movement within our division and so we're in the process of hiring three new inspectors and an engineer for the Middlebury area. And then we just hired someone in the Montpelier group, which helped write that seven million dollar grant that Anson was describing as a paper phosphorus performance. So we're really grateful to have Sonya Hallett join our team in the Montpelier office. So definitely a lot there. And then in this last year, granted, our budget isn't this big, but, you know, sometimes projects come through that were already contracted from a year or two prior. Our staff put out and dealt with nine point four million dollars last year in all the various conservation programs that we have with farmers. So there's a small number of people that work in Montpelier and they are quite the engine to be able to move a significant amount of resources. And then the engineering staff is really cranking. We've got finally got a good consistent staff on deck that is able to do some of these major construction projects on farms. And what we saw in COVID is that it did not derail the construction and design interest from farmers to these projects. So people have been going and it's been great. And as you can imagine, the people who do the contract work were very eager to get going once the release of work was opened up. So things kept moving. So we'll see what the next year leads us because obviously there's been that most of those projects were well into the pipeline when COVID hits. And so now we've gotten a year later into COVID. And so we'll have a better understanding of the longer term impacts are starting to build up. But so far, so good and nothing has slowed down. The last thing I'll just say for for you, a discussion I want to engage in with this year is we are getting a lot more federal money and a great example of the seven million dollar grant. And the way that federal grants are starting to operate is they're trying to put more of the work on the states, which is absolutely fine. But it also puts on us that responsibility to protect that farmer data. And so with the data that is a state and a public entity, we want to be able to share. And then the data that we're collecting under grants such as this, these privacy and records request lines where we have a liability to be able to manage this data because we cannot release it becomes more challenging. And so, you know, a conversation about that is one of the things you'll see is a report that is going to come out of the Clean Water Investment Report. All the agriculture is just rocking it out of the park as far as agricultural phosphorus reduction. And all that body of data and the ability to report that to you is because we're able to pull it from all the different partners that work with farmers. And so we built a database that captures all of this. It's the first in the country that's ever done this where it captures multiple agency databases information. But when it comes to records requests, whose information is it and what is the responsibility? So I think a conversation so that we understand what our rights and responsibilities are is really important. So hope to have that conversation with you and to the future. So that's all. Thanks. Yeah, thank you, Laura. One question I was wondering about how how have our agricultural people been doing in regards to compliance with our water quality rules and regs? Are they are they doing pretty well or fair or poor? How's that all going? I think there's different buckets. You could probably put everybody in, right? Those that we have come across that hadn't done anything historically and so the lift is pretty big. Those tend to be the smaller size farms. And then the medium farms, I would say they're sort of broken into two categories, those that didn't really engage as much and those that have more focused on growth in the sense that they've got more newer infrastructure and have engaged with the programs through that process. And the large farms for the most part, you know, they're all engaged, they have been for years. But I will say when it comes to compliance and across the board, what you will see because of the volume of inspection that we do, we do have to inspect large farms more and medium farms more. The volume of enforcement does tend to reside into the larger farms just because they're there more. Small farms certainly have some issues and are certainly starting to tip up because we are gathering more and more inspections on them. But I guess what I would just say overall in general is farms are responsive to the process. And I think that the piece is putting them together and having the clean water fund and the ability to help partners help farmers navigate all of these systems has been really, really important. So I think things are good. I would not say that there are challenges, right? There's always a stick in the mud that has to have a little bit more of a nudge to get through the process. But for the most part, farmers want to do the right thing. And they've done a lot of great stuff. And what about I assume from your what you said that you're talking about dairy. What about the non-dairy farms, you know, like sheep and goats and even vegetable farms they could have runoffs? Are they being assisted and and helped along the way? So those are typically the smaller sized farms, right? Either certified small farm or smaller. A lot of them tend to be underneath even the certified small farm. So we don't have to routinely inspect those folks. But we do get complaints about them. And so when we go out and do the complaints, we we offer the same services we would offer any size farm. So I will say it is not the majority of our work, right? Dairy is definitely the focus for the most part, just based on the statutory charges we have. But certainly we are there. We're able to regulate them if they need, which is really at that size, it tends to be an education outreach and see if we can get to compliance and typically those workouts. The tougher spaces are still sort of the backyard like operations that just don't see themselves in the same vein of agricultural farming as others. Well, there are other questions from the committee. If not, thanks a lot, Laura, and look forward to working with you as we move forward. Thank you. Me too. Maybe if we could maybe, Senator, could turn to Ryan Patch. Is Ryan on? He's a deputy director of water quality and he might give us just an overview of our new program on our performance program. Ryan, you there? Yep, I am. All right. If it's all right with you, Chair Starr, I'll just share a brief update on a Vermont Pay for Postures program. So, yeah, last year came before the committee to share an update on the Ping for Ecosystem Services Working Group. Last year, the legislature was able to reauthorize that group, changing the name, the focus more on ecosystem services and soil health and adding an additional year to complete this work. You know, this process was a farmer driven effort to look at agriculture as more than just the, you know, provision of food and fiber, right? When you manage agricultural crop land well, you can derive a lot of different benefits that can affect climate change in positive ways through both mitigation, adaptation and resilience for both agricultural systems as well as, you know, downstream landowners when you have a well functioning floodplain as an example. And so this holistic scope of work is something that was derailed by COVID-19 and the pandemic, but there was a lot of independent work that was ongoing both from the agency of agriculture, which I'm going to share a brief update on, but also as Secretary Tebbitt shared, other organizations have been engaged in getting national research grants to further explore the intersections between soil health, water quality and the opportunities for a whole host of ecosystem service benefits. And so there's updates to be shared in that space as well. And then the Payment for Ecosystem Services Working Group is being reconvened in February to continue the work of the organization or the working group and to further dig into some of these questions. One of the updates that the agency will be sharing both with the working group and then also to share here with the committee as well is the new $7 million NRCS USDA grant, the $7 million award, which is a Pay for Performance grant. This is a very exciting opportunity and it provides an opportunity to augment existing programming that Laura shared with regards to some of the BMP and other agronomic practices, practice payment programs that the agency has. Folks will be reminded of most of the financial assistance programs focused on paying for practice. You implement an acre of cover crop, there's a financial assistance rate that covers a portion of the cost of implementing that practice. And we, as Laura shared, the report will be out on Friday, the 15th of January to Clean Water Investment Report, and there'll be a lot of great details there about how these programs are successful and cost effective. This Pay for Performance grant is an opportunity to, as I said, hopefully augment that and lots of details to share in there, but essentially the goal is to take a look at a whole farm and take a look at their management and through modeling software, the software is called Farm Prep, compare the farm's current management to the historic base management as represented in the TMDL for phosphorus in the Lake Champlain Basin. And once a farm makes phosphorus reductions past the threshold, they'll be eligible for a payment on a per pound of phosphorus basis. We've learned through the working group, the Payment for Ecosystem Services Working Group, that some of the programs the agency has offered in the past, there's barriers to a farm participating in a lot of time and effort to even become eligible in some cases. And so an incentive payment for a farmer just applying for the program, running their farm through the program and understanding where they fall on the spectrum of whether they're exceeding the threshold or they still need to do some work, will have an incentive payment tied to it, regardless of the farm's performance. And then a farm can learn what they may need to do to become eligible for a payment through this program. Seven million dollar grant, at least $4.9 million of that will be payments to farmers for pounds of phosphorus reduced. And this will help leverage and augment the already strong efforts farms they've been making in making phosphorus reductions, which will be reflected in the Clean Water Investment Report. So very exciting model. There's a lot of interest nationally from other states. Maryland and Ohio have reached out trying to learn more about what we're doing and what structure we're using to put this in place. And so we're very excited to be working to implement this. We also have another research grant from the state NRCS Vermont to do research on specifically farm prep and the pay for phosphorus concept this first year in 2021. So lots of exciting work happening there and happy to share and continue the conversation around payment for ecosystem services. And it should be said that this pay for phosphorus grant is much more narrow than the scope of the working group. And so in no way fully answers the goal or structure that the working group is looking for. So still lots of discussions there especially around climate change and opportunities for agricultural mitigation of CO2 emissions from agriculture. So very exciting body of work and happy to share further details if the committee is interested. So thanks very much. Yeah. Thank you, Ryan. Ryan, the ecosystems, the whole thing, ag, forestry, you know, all of our open spaces and rural spaces. I know I wanna get into that quite a little bit this year if we can to improve all this. How well would you say are people accepting this plan pretty well or have you gotten to that point yet where people can sign up or volunteer or however you do it? Yeah, we've had a lot of interest from local farmers in this, we've held some outreach meetings and are doing our outreach through ag review and other avenues. This concept I think is one that when you share it with those that are non-farmers as well, there's understanding of a transaction, a payment for a particular outcome as being a potential efficient way and cost effective way to derive and get some enhanced public goods. And so yes, it seems like maybe for some a complicated program but we're very hopeful that the, we're just gonna be working with 10 to 12 farms in 2021, hopefully a diverse snapshot of small through large farms for every part of the state. This is gonna be a statewide program so while we are paying for performance and paying for phosphorus, it'll be phosphorus reductions in any watershed. And so making sure that we have outreach statewide is one of our goals right now. It should be said that the grant award was announced in November of 2020 and we're still working with USDA to get the grant signed. And so the funding is not exactly in hand right now but we are out ahead to do that outreach for which I've had a good response and significant interest from farms of many different sizes and sectors, different types of farming. It should be said the eligibility is focused on Cropland and Hayland. Yeah, is that, is there something like John Roberts in that group he's working with or are pushing forward on so that, I know there's some larger farms mixture of all types in that group. Yes, the Champlain Valley Farmers Coalition, Farmers Watershed Alliance, the Connecticut River Farmers Watershed Alliance we're absolutely engaging with those. I'll let them speak whether this program meets the mark for them but we've definitely been engaging and they're gonna be key collaborators. There's going to be a, what are we calling it, advisory group pulling in the farmers to make sure that the program has developed and it works for those that will be participating in it. Again, in the ecosystem services space, the vision and the services that a lot of those farmers were interested in being recognized for is broader than just phosphorus. And so this program doesn't get at soil carbon. It doesn't get at functioning flood plains. It doesn't get at organic matter improvements in the soil as an example. And it isn't focusing on the associated forest lands that farms manage as well. So there's a lot of opportunity to continue to expand the scope but for the purposes of trying to stand up a structure for quantifying reductions and having payments, we chose to focus narrowly on phosphorus for the agency's grant and the Vermont pay for performance system. But there's lots of opportunities to quantify other ecosystem service benefits from farms. This is just one where the mechanisms were in place to attempt to quantify and compensate farmers for phosphorus. Yeah, thank you, Ryan. Are there any Anthony? Ryan, I just wanted this, you said a lot there and I appreciate it. I just wanted to get it clear. I mean, $7 million grant we're talking about, right? For pay for performance. Did you say that 4 million of it would go to farmers particularly? 4.9 million direct payments for phosphorus reductions to farms. So where were the rest of the money go? The balance is going for IT development. There is a modeling tool and database which is essential for the efficient calculations of base loads as well as predicted reductions. There is field verification for contractors that are gonna be needed to validate that what's entered in the program is indeed what's happening on the ground and then technical assistance for both input and another contract for those organizations that will be supporting farms to navigate and move through the program and troubleshoot input and inputting information into the database and then also providing recommendations on how to potentially meet the standards to increase stewardship levels and then a grant administration for the agency as well and USDA NRCS also takes a portion of that for their administrative requirements within the program. And is this the same one where you said that there would be about 12 farmers participating? So that's a separate scope of work. We are hoping to get over 100 farms by the end of the five year grant program. This first year in 2021, we have say 12 farms as our target for this first year to complete the research phase of the implementation of this program. So starting small with a conservation innovation grant from USDA Vermont, NRCS Vermont and then expansion to 50 farms is the goal for 2022. Signups would be in the late fall of calendar year 21. And I know sometimes farmers talk to me about the difficulty in applying for these kinds of programs. And you mentioned that they're just, it's a complicated process and whatnot. So I presume we're doing everything we can to help farmers through the application process, the grant process. That's correct. Yes, Senator, that's part of what the additional balance of funding goes to is to provide technical assistance providers to support their getting their information into the program and also for which the incentive payment is an encouragement. Once a farm's data is entered into the program, there's a per acre payment up to a $4,000 cap, recognizing the time it takes for them to navigate potentially the system. And so that's what that data entry payment incentive is attempting to address is the obstacle to applying and how complicated the program can be. So both providing TA through the program and then also an incentive for the farmer to apply because they could do all this work and not be eligible. But hopefully if they're not eligible, they can work on a plan to improve their management so that they can receive payment for phosphorus in the next year of the program. Thanks. Yeah, Chris. Just quickly, Ryan, with the grant that informs the tools and the measurements and stuff, can we assume that a lot of that is something we would be able to use in an ongoing fashion beyond the life of this grant? So long prep is an existing tool that is available for folks to check out today. And after this pay for phosphorus grant, if the program is successful, we'd be hoped to be able to continue it past the five-year grant. Any other questions from the committee for Ryan? If not, who's our next presenter? Deputy Eastman, if Deputy Eastman wants to say hi, Deputy Eastman has been with us for four years and she will be probably one of your key contacts throughout the legislative session, a former lawmaker from the house. But if you just want to say hi, Allison. Good morning all and welcome back. Happy to see everybody and congratulations on your reelection. We look forward to working with you and I have to say, listening to Ryan about the payment for ecosystem services. Every one of the directors that you hear from, there's so much exciting work going on. And just proud of the amount of money that our team was able to get out for CRF funds. We couldn't have done it without our technical service providers in the field. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention our partnerships with VEDA, also VHCB, Farm Viability, UVM Extension. And I look at the partnership that we had with our legislators in crafting that legislation. It was a pretty impressive to move out just short of $26 million. So excited to continue the great work and thank you for all you do. Welcome back and please don't hesitate to reach out if there's anything we can assist you with. Good to see you again. Who's up next? Well, I'm gonna turn it over to, we're talking about the CARES dollars and the key components of getting that money out the door was the Agriculture Development Division. So I wanna turn it over to Abby Willard. At some point, Abby would probably like to come back to you and do a real deep dive on that experience and what worked and maybe with some of the gaps. But I'm gonna turn it over to Abby Willard, Director of the Agriculture Development Division, Abby. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning, Abby. Good morning. How are you doing, Senator? Good. Good. Well, it's nice to meet everyone. Senator Parent, we haven't met before. So nice to meet you. Welcome to the Senator committee. Thanks, nice to meet you too. And other senators, nice to have you back. I'm happy to talk a little bit about VCAP but maybe I'll start with just giving a little bit of background about the Ag Development Division. So I'm Abby Willard, Director of the Ag Development Division at the agency. We primarily work on market development, business, viability and provide financial support and business technical assistance to a variety of ag businesses and food and working lands businesses. We are a non-regulatory division as I think most, if not all of you realize, but we play a really important role in support to our regulatory division. So whether that's helping with marketing or messaging to the industry or connecting with partners. So our role is really focused on promoting Vermont agriculture and our food and ag businesses to kind of Vermonters, but also as far reaching as international markets and consumers. So we're always leading some sort of international trade mission to various countries and places to try to spread the word and popularity of Vermont products. We connect to Vermont businesses to different markets. So that may be in state markets, but oftentimes it's really looking at regional and national and even at times international market opportunities for our ag and food businesses. We are playing a role at times in what we call increasing agricultural literacy. So just building a conversation and a comfort around speaking about agriculture and the benefits that that has to our economy and to our communities and to each of us as Vermonters. And so there's a variety of education that happens there through various programs that we lead or just different partnerships that we engage in. And then lastly, really exploring opportunities for elevating an individual sector or moving a particular issue or opportunity forward. So oftentimes those can be the conversations that we have in your virtual or in-person committee room is talking about how do we help this sector or how do we change or move or advance this particular initiative? So we're a small division, we're 15 staff. So we are responsible for a variety of different programs. And our work most recently has been spent in a couple of ways that I thought I would share. So we spent a lot of time on VCAP. There were 33 staff at the Agency of Agriculture. So not all within the Ag Development Division that was, I would say, primarily led by efforts of Diane Boffeld and myself over the past 10 months. So 33 staff from within our agency, many of the folks at the director and section chief level. So many on this call were instrumental in those 6,500 customer service interactions, and that's $26 million that went out the door. So again, we had five different programs. So there was the dairy program, there was the ag and working lands, there was funding for farmers markets, funding for a farm to school, and then for agricultural fairs. So we can share some more data on that. And if you have questions about that, I think Diane and I and others are working on pulling together both an impact report as well as some data analysis from the Salesforce platform where all the applications came in. I will also say there's a variety of industry trend data that we also have that I could give a few highlights on, which I think is really interesting and something that we probably could do a longer conversation around. But the key highlights being from surveys that we led and have partnered on 44% of businesses experienced some sort of loss due to the pandemic in sales. Two thirds of the ag businesses that again that responded to surveys demonstrated that they had business and market channel changes as a result of the pandemic. Of those businesses that didn't change their markets or had more difficulty in making a pivot during the pandemic alluded to four different things that they lack. One being the skills to do something different or to pivot their business, the lack of infrastructure to be able to reach a new customer or engage in their production in a different way, the lack of labor to make an addition to their business model or a shift in their business and the financial assistance to change their business model. So acknowledging that $26 million that we were able to contribute as well as the various other CRF funds that came through agency of commerce or Forest Parks and Recreation as well as other federal programs that kind of collectively worked to meet the need of our ag community were incredibly valuable to kind of see agriculture continue to move forward over the past 10 months. Another kind of simultaneous effort that we've been engaged in over the same period of time which has been slightly appropriately timed I believe has been the finalization of the new 10 year ag and food system strategic plan. So initiated by the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund but done in partnership with our agency over the past year and you'll have an opportunity on February 11th to get a review and a joint testimony on that plan. That plan is an impressive piece of work and it now includes a vision for the next 10 years for agriculture, a sense of what the priority goals as well as recommendations for moving agriculture forward in the state and then specifically looking at individual sectors, market channels and underlying issues impacting agriculture and kind of the current condition and where the industry and those that contributed to the plan the opportunities for moving forward. So lots of discussion I think around that plan in our future and really look to that as a vision and a plan for the future of agriculture in Vermont. Secretary Talbott's mentioned the Dairy Business Innovation Center there was just a press release that kind of announced that effort this week. Every other week through the next couple of months there'll be a new funding opportunity or some RFP released out of that center that will have market or innovation or industry support for the dairy community. Again, it will not just be focused in Vermont so it's designed to be for the Northeast but having the hub here at the Agency of Agriculture in Vermont is a significant benefit to our dairy economy and our dairy producers. So it'll be really exciting to see these various efforts that get announced every other week for the next couple of months. Really excited to have that staff that center fully staffed and activities underway. Working Lands Enterprise Initiative is something that you're very familiar with and we do every year. You also will have an opportunity to get the impact report and conversation around that initiative on January 27th. So there's an event that has already been scheduled to talk about the working lands investments over the past year. So that continues to be one of our largest annual and general fund appropriated funding opportunities or grant programs as we call them to support ag food and working lands businesses. So collectively on average a year the working, or excuse me, the Ag Development Division puts out about $3 million in grants in a variety of funding opportunities to our ag community and working lands being the largest generally. And then that's in addition to other federal resources that we bring in to do more of our marketing work and individual sector assistance. So we have a federal funds that supports the maple industry and then we often have some sort of dairy promotion and marketing assistance work for various sectors. The marketing work is something that has become really apparent as a priority during this pandemic. So really supporting businesses to make some shifts and looking at e-commerce and digital marketing opportunities knowing that two thirds of businesses had to make some sort of market shift in the past 10 months is pretty significant. And we have asked some great survey questions and have some interesting results about based on the market channels that businesses are now supporting if they think that they would go back to their old markets and then input and feedback from businesses is that they don't anticipate that. They expect to be able to continue to move forward in the markets that they're serving which means e-commerce, digital marketing and direct to consumer marketing have an incredible opportunity for future growth and sustained kind of market influence, I guess. So thinking about how we support virtual events and engage businesses and understanding digital marketing opportunities continues to be something that we focus on and direct a lot of our attention and services to. You're aware of our produce program as well as our farm to school program both of those have had some interesting adjustments as everyone can talk to as a result of COVID but we continue to serve those industries both on an educational side as well as a regulatory side for the produce community and really focus on agricultural literacy component and procurement of local food for our farm to school. So happy to talk about any of those programs that we primarily run at another time. Quick last comment I'll make is just like so what are we focused on currently? I would say we're focused on the launch of this new ag and food system strategic plan and the messaging around that and then the implications of having a new future of ag plan for the next 10 years, so through 2030. As Secretary Talbot mentioned, Diane and I and a team are really working on looking at both an impact report and some data analysis on our VCAP investments. So we will hopefully do some kind of parallel comparison to some of the other federal funds that came through to agriculture whether that's the PPP program or CFAP or a few others but generally we can speak through how our $25.6 million benefited and impacted businesses. So hopefully by the first week in February we'll have all that data to be able to share and happy to come back. Continuing to work on different slaughter infrastructure and industry expansion opportunities. So the Food Safety Consumer Protection Division and Dr. McNamara and Julie Bovair can talk about that in greater detail as they work on that every day but really looking at that sector as a kind of ongoing pinch point in the food system as well as the dairy innovation side. So dairy was hit really hard, particularly our cheese makers and cheese industry which again, Dr. Haas or EB Flurry can speak more to as they work with that population on a daily basis but those are examples of ways that we're connecting with our regulatory programs and doing a variety of different partnership projects and marketing efforts. I think that's it. I think there's lots of great data to share about what we're learning about the ag community as a result of kind of surviving through this pandemic. Well, thank you, Abby. I know I think all the committee has been invited to the press conference on the strategic plan on February 8th and so hopefully I think that's on a Monday but I hope some of us can attend and we'll be talking a lot more about that. One of the issues that the president pro tem has laid out for us in ag is to work a lot on food security, making sure that we've got people properly trained and in our lands so that we can guarantee some food for our citizens and we'll talk about the slaughter stuff in a little bit, probably more with Dr. Haas but one of the issues that came up, well, and it's probably in front of you guys right now at the ag agency is people can't get their animals in to get slaughtered and packaged and taken care of and some of them I've heard as late as 22. Now, if you wanna get an appointment, it's gotta be in the year of 22. And so, I think committee will be taking a hard look at how we can help our slaughter facilities to update and improve the output for food security. You didn't mention, I don't think you did much about the farmer markets and how well did they do with their limited space and spacing out and all that? Can you just give us a quick overview of how that all went? Yeah, so let me just say broadly, I believe one of the great benefits if we were to find the silver lining of COVID-19 was the ability for Vermont's ag community to feed Vermonters. And we saw an unbelievable support for interest in and commitment to ensuring that neighbors and community members were fed during this pandemic, kind of both response and ongoing recovery efforts. And the number of volunteers and donations and kind of good citizen kind of common good benefit that Vermonters gave to one another was incredible. And the agricultural community continued to sort of step up and be a source of food and resources and security for our state. And I'm so grateful for all those businesses, even those that demonstrated incredible economic loss and loss of revenue that still made an effort to support Vermonters was pretty special. One of the impact reports that we'll share is specifically on farmer's markets. So based upon the resources that they received and the losses that they claimed and sort of what impact that had on the industry but we definitely saw and I don't have in front of me the data though I can, I'll look it up, the increase in sales that farmer's markets experienced even with fewer vendors and in certain circumstances fewer weeks that they were available to vend. The amount of interest in direct to consumer relationships so either customers going to the farm or participating in a CSA or ending a farmer's markets what was incredible. I think we've heard that CSA participation increased by 200% and so farms were sold out and operating at capacity early on in the pandemic. So the timing for that was interesting and I think helpful in some regards. But I think farmer's markets were one of those examples of an industry that wasn't deemed essential and they were really frustrated by that. They wanted to be considered a grocery store but they continued to provide food and they were really accommodating of the COVID and public health limitations. They maintained a 12 foot distancing, they wore masks and had sanitizers and put out extra tables to be able to ensure safe commerce in those outdoor markets. And as a result, consumers continued to come to markets and develop relationships with those farmers either to be picked up at the farm or curbside pickup at markets. So I think they were incredibly resilient and committed to continuing to serve people. The Montpelier farmer's markets still meeting outdoors. Thank you. Yeah, and many markets and numerous markets have made that commitment to still do outdoor markets. Any other questions from committee members? Thank you, Abby, Anson. Yes, one of our support systems is the lab in Randolph Vale and they support every division in the agency. Also they support everything from water quality to dairy to entomology and they have a partnership with the DEC as well. So I want to introduce Dr. Rebecca Harvey. She gave us a little overview of what's happening at the lab. The lab has stayed open in person. All the agency workers have been there throughout the pandemic and it's on the campus at BTC. So if Rebecca's available, I'm gonna turn it over to Rebecca. Sure, yeah, thanks, Anson. And thanks for the invite to join you all today. It's my first time meeting many of you, if not all of you. As Anson said, I'm the director of the Vermont Agriculture and Environmental Laboratory down here in Randolph Center. And I think it's appropriate to say that we really provide a lot of support for all of the other programs that you've heard about so far today. So we run the gamut of agricultural tests and environmental tests here. We provide testing to support the milk and dairy industry here in Vermont to make sure products are of high quality and are safe. We provide testing to support the animal health industry, which you'll hear more about with Dr. Haas. We also provide guarantee analyses to the farm division, so all of their feed, seed, fertilizer testing, pesticide analysis. We support the meat industry and providing testing to ensure that meat is of high quality. And we also support the agency's industrial hemp testing program. In addition to that, we provide environmental testing, mostly for the Department of Environmental Conservation. So anything related to phosphorus, many of those samples, if not all of them, are coming through our laboratory. We also provide air quality testing to support EPA programs that are run through DEC. And new to this year, we're also providing bacteria testing for private and public wells. So I'm drinking water testing as well. So really our role here is to support the agency and the agency of natural resources in their monitoring efforts. And how many people do you have at the lab? Yeah, so we actually have 14 analysts here in the biology and chemistry labs. We've been here full time throughout the pandemic. We actually, we do have two vacancies right now that we're working to fill, but in the whole facility, we also have laboratories that are staffed by the weights and measures lab, which Kristen Haas directs. Also, the DEC has a couple of laboratory spaces here. So a lot of the other laboratories, much of their work is considered field-based. So during peace times, when there is no pandemic, there might be upwards of 20 to 30 people here on any given day. But in terms of analysts, highly skilled trained analysts who are working for our agency and our laboratory, we have a full-time staff of 14 plus two seasonal temps that we generally hire in that allow us to process tens of thousands of environmental samples each summer. Yeah. That must have made a boom. Randolph Center's employment with having a lab there and the college, does the college do some work with you folks? Do the students ever get to get any training within the lab or any of that? Yeah, we certainly had a significant amount of turnover when we relocated down here. And one reason why I was excited to take on the role as director is because I have a connection with academia. I came from the field of academia before coming to the state. And I'm really excited to see kind of how those partnerships flesh out with us and VTC. Unfortunately, because it's only been about two years since we've been here, half of which we've been plagued with this pandemic. We haven't had many opportunities. We have a great working relationship with VTC, with their biology chair, their science chair. We have hired seasonal temps from VTC, which has been fantastic. I really hope that one of them who we've worked with in the past applies to one of our vacancies because she was great. So it's kind of yet to be seen. Dr. Haas might speak more to the animal pathology lab that we have here in the facility, but VTC has a animal vet program, a vet tech program. And we're hoping that we might be able to establish some sort of partnership where they might be able to use our pathology lab for some of their necropsy experiments. So a lot of ideas kind of floating around, but we haven't had the opportunity to really specify anything at this point. Well, more time will probably work better for the results, yes. Any questions from the committee members? If not, thank you very much, Rebecca. Thank you. Anson. Sure, we've got Dr. Haas who's with us. Dr. Haas in charge of our consumer division, also our state veterinarian, and she can give us a little update on some of the things that are happening in her world. Dr. Haas, yeah. Sure, thank you, Anson. I am going to attempt to share my screen. I have a couple of slides I would love to share with you. And while I'm doing that here, I also just want to take the opportunity. We had Dr. Kathy McNamara on the line. She had to jump off for a conflicting appointment. And but still on the line with us is our meat inspection program section chief, Julie Bavaire. And so if there are questions that come up about meat inspection that require a slightly more deep dive than what I'm able to do, then Julie can cover. And I think you'll be, I know you'll be hearing from EB2 about what the little bit deeper dive into dairy. But in the meantime, let me just try one more time here. And if my screen share plan doesn't work, then I'm just going to wing it without. Let's see, does that show up for you folks? Slide on the screen. Yep, okay, perfect. Then we're going to go with that. Just for an oversight of the Food Safety and Consumer Protection Division for most of you, this will be a rehash or a review. And for Senator Parent, welcome to the committee and look forward to working with you as well as all the members. And this will give you an overview of what the Food Safety and Consumer Protection Division comprises. So as Anson said, my name is Kristen Hawes. I'm the director for the division and the state veterinarian for the agency. And the Food Safety and Consumer Protection Division is a 38-person division. So it is a large one. And we are focused on, in a nutshell, the two buckets that you see here. Ensuring safe food. So there was discussion already, I know on food security, that's something that we're very invested in. So ensuring safe food and also fair markets for you and all Vermonters that engage in these activities on our soil. So we like to say, if you eat or if you buy stuff in Vermont, and where are your people? We're some of your people. So working behind the scenes to make sure that you can do that efficiently and affordably and safely. I think that one thing that is worth noting, one of the things worth noting about our division is that it's a varied group of employees. It comprises scientists, technical experts, specialists and generalists. And we are a mature bunch, I will say. Many of our employees are eligible for retirement. And so we have a lot of institutional knowledge within the division, but also have identified a need in the recent past to engage in some strategic planning. So we recently completed a strategic plan in July, I believe of 2020 and are working on implementing that now. I know that Linda has shared that on your, shared the executive summary of that plan on your website. If you care to look more into that, but just by way of a summary, we did reconfigure the food safety and consumer protection division a little bit as part of that. And here you can see the basically the buckets of areas of expertise and focuses of work that we prioritize. So food safety is certainly a big one. You can see the commodities here that we have regulatory authority over. And I would also just point out that we do consider animal health as part of that food safety spectrum. When we look at from farm to fork, animal health in a live animal form is important to and informs the subsequent food safety of the products that we eat. So we consider that a part of that spectrum as well. Many of you are familiar with our weights and measures team. Rebecca mentioned the weights and measures laboratory that is in Randolph. That's a very productive laboratory that has continued to maintain NIST national institute of standards and technology certification through the pandemic and before. So we provide services not only to Vermont businesses and individuals, but also to neighboring states businesses and many of them bring their products, their devices and heavy duty weights and other things over to the lab for calibration and inspection. Our animal health section has undergone a little bit of change since we last saw you. Dr. Shelley Mellenbacher who was our assistant state veterinarian for the past eight years, moved on into a position with USDA. So we're looking forward to welcoming a new assistant state vet. We're gonna call her the other Dr. Levine. Her name is Kate Levine and she is starting with us actually on Tuesday. So we'll try and keep her separate from the health commissioner who is in a lot of the headlines these days but looking forward to welcoming Kate and hopefully introducing her to all of you. So animal health is another important piece that we do hear. Abby already spoke to you about the Ag Development Division and I think one thing that I want to highlight is that we have worked hard to continue to expand our produce safety efforts and under the produce safety rule that was implemented as part of the Food Safety Modernization Act about five years ago. So this past year we just completed our first year of true regulatory inspections and those inspections and the regulation and enforcement is handled through our division but we work in partnership with the Agricultural Development Division to implement that program within the agency. So that's been an exciting transition that continues to evolve and the program development is ongoing. With this graphic you can see again the sections in the buckets that we focus on. I think what I would draw your attention to is at the top here, the mix of education and regulation and I'm proud and I think I speak for our whole division and hopefully the agency in saying that I'm very proud of the mix that we're able to utilize with those two tools that we focus on to help constituents and businesses within Vermont. Our division is a regulatory division but we spend a tremendous amount of time rightly so and I think well-appropriated in helping startup businesses get off the ground and get running and also troubleshooting and working with business owners and constituents to make sure that their businesses remain compliant and that enables them to one, assure a safe and healthy product for all of us but also to access markets outside of the state of Vermont. So very proud of that nice mix that we have with our staff and the expertise that we're able to pass on. So you can see the other again sections in buckets. One of the restructuring pieces that we did with our division over the past year is we plucked the ag products work out of the now weights and measures section and kind of segregated those two things since they are so different. And we now have an ag products section that covers maple and produce and also handles the country of origin labeling audits that go on in retail locations. So I think this graphic really sums up what our division does as a whole and there's a lot to say in that one picture. The other I'll end just with at least with this part with covering some of our values. I think these are important in this day and age with everything that we've been through. So these terms that you see on the screen here outline how our team likes to work and while it was a concerted effort to involve all of our staff in developing these values for our strategic plan, I would venture to say that these are, in all likelihood, the values that the agency as a whole strives to highlight and to use as well. So we've had during COVID, we've had the opportunity to really engage in some efforts to also expand businesses and their abilities to increase their markets. And I think one of the best examples of that that I would like to highlight for you all and Julie can perhaps speak more about it, but we've had the ability to facilitate market expansion within the meat sector and meat and poultry sector. And so just within the last several months, our meat inspection program has meet the criteria with FSIS, the Food Safety Inspection Service to take on a new cooperative agreement and a new meat program. And it's the Cooperative Interstate Shipment Program. This allows state inspected product that has passed through state inspection at our state facilities to be marketed and sold outside of the state of Vermont. And so this is the first time in, I would say, modern Vermont history that this has been allowed to be done. And it's to the credit of our meat inspection program that this has been accomplished. So we look forward to bringing on businesses that might take interest in taking advantage of that program. That's kind of the overview of our division, a couple of things just to pick up on from the conversation so far. Rebecca mentioned the Pathology Lab. I am very excited to work with Rebecca and our new Assistant State Veterinarian to explore options for use of that lab. Right now it is, I'll acknowledge, it's not being utilized to its full potential. So we do need to explore ways to get better use out of that space. And that might come from VTC. It could also come from local and statewide veterinarians for lab purposes and other things. And then we'll look at ways to internally expand its use as well. You mentioned food security earlier in the conversation. And I would say that one thing that we have seen and we've recognized the need to focus on within our animal health section is along with more people wanting to raise their own animals for food production to feed their families and perhaps their neighbors. There also has been an increased need to make sure that we maintain traceability of those animals and the products that they produce. And the way that we're working toward doing that is trying to make available to producers across the state radio, excuse me, electronic ID and supporting infrastructure to better trace their production animals. So we have an allotment of about 4,000 RFID tags, radio frequency ID tags, that we are giving out for free to producers of all sorts with a focus on bovine animals. And we'll continue to do that and get those materials out to folks and work with them to get them up to speed to transition to that functionality should they choose to choose to do so. The way in which we hope to interact with you all during this session is a couple of things come to mind. One is we are working on putting together a food safety and consumer protection division newsletter just to get the word out a little bit better about the work that we do. Hope to be able to include you all, if you're willing as recipients of that newsletter, it'll probably be quarterly to start. And then secondly, we do have some proposals in the agency's housekeeping bill this year that we'll look forward to talking further with you about. So with that, that's the summary. Happy to answer questions or turn it over to Senator Yu or to Anson. Yeah. Thank you. Have you received many complaints or concerns in regards to time slots at slaughter facilities? We do hear concerns about that. Yes, that's a valid, that's a valid concern. I think is Julie, yeah, Julie is still on. Julie, not to put you on the spot, but I will because you're at the receiving end of a lot of those conversations. So Julie, could you comment on the specifics with that? Sure. Hi everybody. This is Julie Bovell there. This is my first time with you all. So it's nice to meet you and looking forward to a good year. Yeah, so there is a problem with them, slaughter slots and it still will become a problem until we can get more people out there who want to open up some slaughter facilities. Currently we are working with two, just two right now, but getting them on board has been a little hard. One is brand new starting from scratch, trying to get building supplies, electrician plumbers, it's kind of set them back a little bit because of COVID, trying just getting all the supplies together. The other one, however, is a plant that was shut down for a while. This is back out in Wilmington, Vermont. So another outfit came over and they actually leased it, then wound up buying it. And so they're able to get it up and running. They're currently under a custom exempt, but I just heard from them a couple of weeks ago and they're moving forward to USDA inspection. So we're hoping that's gonna come through pretty quickly, so that'll be a good facility for people down the Southern part of Vermont to have another choice to be able to go. But I think for now we're gonna continue to hear this until our slaughter facilities get up and running or they can get caught up a bit more. One of the things that we're coming across is they can keep up with the slaughter, but they can't keep up with the processing. So we've got coolers full of curks and just trying to keep up with that part of it. We're trying to work with other sectors. A lot of our possible custom exempt facilities trying to get them on board under inspection. But again, it's timing. It's getting them to be able to sit down and write a house up plan, a food safety plan that we can go and approve. Approving their facility can be done fairly quickly because we already have because they're already under custom exempt. So we're just hoping that this will be another avenue for these people. And then it will take the pressure more off of the slaughter facilities. So then they could take on more people. They could have more time and more capacity to be able to have more carcasses and be able to move them out a bit faster. Trying to take a carcass and putting them into individual cuts is very time consuming. So, and that right now is what most people want. We've seen a huge increase in people who have freezers trying to sell meat locally and having a prepack license. They need to have those carcasses cut down to individual cuts to be able to sell. And Brian, Senator Gullmore. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. Julie, I'm just curious to maybe you mentioned and I missed it. Where are the two slaughter facilities? You mentioned down south, but where are they? So we have one, the one that I spoke about that just bought an old building is in Wilmington, which is kind of, it's kind of out of the way, but it's, you know, in that area, there's a lot of people that are a lot of need for it. So, and I think they're going to do very well. The other one that we're looking to have, which is being built from scratch is in Ulberg. So that's way up on the other side of the state. So yeah, two different areas. Yeah, we've had a lot of people ask about starting up slaughterhouses. We've given them the education, the regulatory assistance, but they're just not there yet. Hoping maybe the spring, they'll come back to us. Maybe they'll have something a little bit more concrete that they can work with. Thank you. And what about does VTC, do they still train me the processing? Do they have a training program at VTC? I know Abby and I spoke about this. We had a few meetings with the people at VTC and the Department of Labor. So Abby, if you want to jump in on that, I believe that was your sister. That was. Yeah. So yeah, if I may, Senator, VTC does still have the desire and on occasion has run a meat cutting program. The meat cutter apprenticeship program at VTC has not run, at least since the pandemic and prior to due to a lack of a slaughter facility that they could host a training at. So, and that's generally just due to slaughter facilities being so busy that they haven't had the ability to designate their space for a training opportunity. So one of the CRF requests that we had proposed was to purchase for Vermont Tech to purchase equipment to be able to on campus create a training facility with all the meat processing and cutting equipment. That was not supported, but we're hopeful that through other federal mechanisms we can support and help them kind of achieve such a goal. Department of Labor has been engaged, as Julie mentioned, trying to think about if there's on job training opportunities at meat processing facilities to help get them to a place where they can start working with a skilled workforce and do the on job training at their own plant if they wanted to add more staff or add a new shift. So it's still a need. I think we know two things. We know there's a workforce need, sorry. I could see where a private slaughter facility, though that would, if they were trying to get out meat in a hurry, you know, as good fast as they can, I could see where a training program would slow that process down a great deal. And it would be much better if we could have the equipment at VTC bring the slaughtered animals in and train them. So then when they do get to the slaughter facility, they'd be ready to go to work for cutting and processing. But that is, I guess, something that we need to think about and work on. Yeah. Thank you. Are there any other questions from the committee in regards to Kristen's testimony? If not, we'll move on. I think we're getting towards the end center. We had a couple of more to go of E.B. Florey from our dairy division. E.B. wanted to say hi, and E.B. was instrumental in getting cares dollars out to our processors, but also our dairy farmers. So maybe E.B., if you wanted to say hello. Yeah. Thank you, Anton. And nice to see everyone again. And nice to meet you, Senator Parent. I'm E.B. Florey. I'm the dairy section chief at the Vermont Agency of Ag. And I oversee the dairy regulations, both for our grade A farms processors, and then also our raw milk producers. So anything regulation wise in maintaining the federal pasteurized milk ordinance standards so that our Vermont milk and our dairy products are eligible to be sold in state and out of state and internationally is what my team is tasked with. And we work with all sorts of processors and farms of all shapes and sizes. Some of them with just three to six animals that have success meeting the regulatory standards and have viable businesses up to extremely large processors and very, very large dairy farms. Through the CARES Act funding, we did have a handful of dairy farmers decide that they wanted to bottle some of their own milk. And each one of these individuals is actually done really well. So it's exciting to see that the CARES Act funding went to helping them diversify their family businesses. And two of the farms now are already adding additional pasteurizers and working with our team because the demand is high from the community. So that's been one positive thing. Despite us continuing to lose dairy farms of different shapes and sizes, we do have people dedicated trying to pivot and find ways to keep the family business going and we're working with them as much as possible to help guide them and give them all the technical assistance we can so they can hopefully avoid mishaps and costly mistakes. Yeah. E.B., have you been keeping up on the issue of DFA being allowed to keep the Franklin mass plant and that whole situation to make sure that our farmers are getting a fair shake in the milk pricing business because they're gonna, I don't know if it's within your, within your division, but yeah, the way I look at that, DFA is gonna control about 80% of our milk sales in the future by being allowed to keep that Franklin plant in Massachusetts. Is there anything on that that you've been tracking? I've mainly, Senator Starr just been keeping up with the news briefs that are coming out from it and my understanding is that the Justice Department had told them they needed to sell that plant and if there wasn't a buyer of that plant, they could keep it and that's what's played out. So we don't have an active role as the agency to dictate this in bankruptcy court and the purchases they're making. So this is really the Justice Department deciding whether or not them having that plant would make them a monopoly or not. So I understand your concerns, but as far as what I've read, DFA is gonna proceed through with keeping that plant. Well, I don't mind them keeping it or running it, but I wanna make sure that our, we ship a tremendous amount of milk into that dairy plant from up here in my district and probably from all over Vermont. And I wanna make sure that our farmers are gonna be treated well if independent producers used to send to that plant and wanna make sure that independent farmers either can ship, continue to ship there or that they have to be paid a fair price for their milk and their membership into DFA. But if nobody's watching that, it's not good. But anyway. We only have three independent farms in Vermont and they do all ship to that plant. All of the rest of our farms are members of cooperatives or they are their own processor and a farmstead. So it's just these three farms. We don't really have control over what their negotiations are in price between DFA and I've not been privy to any of the negotiations or dollar amounts. So, Anson or Steve, do you have anything you wanna add to that? No, we've been, your right Senator, that is a critical plant for the Northeast and the Justice Department has determined where it's kind of land and we're monitoring that situation. We're also watching closely with these independence making sure that they have their market and their secure market. And we realize that it's important that we stay on top and we've had discussions both with the farmers and also within the agency about making sure that we protect that market for those independence out there that are a little bit at risk here. So we're trying to protect them. Well, I would have thought the courts would have had something in their stipulations that if they did keep and are allowed to maintain the Franklin plant that they would have to keep these independence as producers. But I don't know if it's probably too late for anything like that or not, but the AG and you guys should be keeping a very close eye on that. If there are no other questions, and we'll deal with this hopefully in the near future because it's getting to a critical point. Who's up next, Dan? I think Senator Palina. Yeah, I just have a quick question that I think I should know the answer to, but I want to be reminded, E.B. of how much money we spent or sent to the dairy industry, how much care funds went to the dairy industry ultimately? Diane, wasn't it just to dairy farmers alone? Wasn't it 18 close to 18 million? Dairy farmers and dairy processors is just over 18 million. So less than we had thought we would. Yes, with the caps that were in place, but the demand as we pull all this information together for our reporting for you early in February, we'll show you what the demand was versus what went out and the demand was well over 50 million. All we sent out was 18 million. Let's see, thanks. That might be a good time to transition to Diane. Many of you know Diane. She's got great historical knowledge at the agency, also across the industry in Vermont with agriculture. So Diane, why don't you say hi? Diane will be your key point when we get into budget discussions as well, but Diane's all yours. Good morning, everybody. Welcome, Senator Parent. Nice to see you. I think we've met before, but looking forward to working with you more closely on the Senate Ag Committee and welcome back to all the committee members. Yes, my role with the agency is to oversee the things that impact the whole agency as well as a couple of land use regulatory programs, budget, human resources, all the projects that come out of the governor's office that impact the whole agency are my responsibility. And the budget, we're working to get that together and look forward to providing that information to you all once the governor does his speech, which we're all looking forward to hearing that. So we're pulling the budget together. Also the two land use programs we're very excited to hear that the governor is supportive of a little change, some changes to active 50, but one that involves agriculture, looking at the accessory on farm businesses. The agency of agriculture has a role in active 50 with the primary agricultural soils and defining the impact and mitigating for that impact on primary ag soils. But also we know that there has been an increase in agricultural businesses taking on something else on the farm. It may be milk to cheese, cider or apples to pie, those kinds of things, but it's really starting to expand into bringing people to the farm, the seed maid, weddings, events, cross country skiing, all those kinds of things where people are coming to the farm. And it is a fine line between that, those commercial activities that may or may not be farming where that falls with active 50. So within the governor's recommendation there's a request to look at the accessory on farm businesses and provide some exemptions to those businesses until they hit a threshold of improvements. They've had to build another building or put in a parking lot or something that is a trigger, but when they're just getting started, not having them get caught up in the active 50 world, many of these small businesses get started, they get going, they're starting to grow, and then they find out past tense, they should have had an active 50 permit. And that can really, if they've gone out for a bank loan or anything like that, it can really upset the apple cart for these small businesses. So really looking forward to a robust discussion of that with your committee and others this coming year. The agency also works on section 248, the energy siting. It's a little different standard of the impacts to primary ag soil. We're supposed to make sure there's no undo adverse impact, which is illegal standing about making sure they try to not have as much impact on primary ag soil. So solar is the main one we've been working with. Some anaerobic digesters and how that for farms as well as now just food waste and or municipal sewer sludge, anaerobic digesters for that. So a couple of areas that the agency works on and the overall for the agency, we very much were deep in on the CARES Act grants and put a lot of work into it. A great team, a really good job done, as Abby said, impacted. We had 33 different people out of 138 working on just CARES grants pretty much from June through December. So that was a deep dive, pulled people away from their regular days, the regular jobs to get that money out the door, just to put it into context, our annual budget is 28 million and we put over just over 26 million out the door. So almost as much as our annual budget went out the door. So we thank you for your work on that. Very glad to get into more detail on all of these subjects, if you wish. And I look forward to working with you during the session. Thank you, Diane. And I'm sure that all the things that you mentioned you know, whether it's citing of energy programs on farm land and fields or on farm businesses where especially composting on farms we're gonna need to deal with that, especially chicken and all chickens and all those good things. But anyways, thanks. And are there questions from any of the committee for Diane? No, we're good to go. So, Anton, what was that? I think our final guest is Steve Collier. Steve joined the agency. He's been with us just about a year and thank goodness he was with us over the last few months because he really helped interpret some of the CARES dollars and what could be spent on them and how they can get them out the door. And I know you work closely with you folks on helping to write legislation. So it's great to have Steve with us. And Steve, why don't you say hi? Sure, thanks, Mr. Secretary. And last and least, I guess. It's great to see all of you again and Senator Parent, it's very nice to meet you and appreciate you all having us. My role as general counsel with the agency which I guess effectively is to try to keep people out of trouble, which is pretty ironic because my mother always said I was a horrible troublemaker. So I don't know if I can do it or not, but I try. I would really like to echo what a lot of folks have already said in thanking you so much for working to get this CARES money into the hands of people that we needed it. I did start a year ago. So at the beginning of the last session and I don't think any of us really anticipated how 2020 would unfold, but it's been a great privilege for all of us, I think, to work to get hands into the money of the so many Vermonters who needed it or money, sorry, into the hands of so many Vermonters who needed it. And you, your committee was absolutely instrumental in helping to construct programs that we were able to administer. If you hadn't worked so collaboratively with us and constructing those and funding those, we would not have been able to have the success that we did and to be able to help all the Vermonters that we were able to help. So we really all appreciate that cooperative relationship. It was terrific. And we look forward to trying to do some more good work this year. So thanks very much. Yeah, thank you, Steve. I know I had a little interaction with you and Anson and the crew down there. And I really appreciated your thoughts and ideas and the way you presented them, being very easy to work with. And so I think you've been a great addition to the AG department or agency as well as to the people of the state of Vermont that they try to help every day. So thanks for all your hard work. Well, thank you, Senator. I appreciate it. Any other comments or questions from the committee members? I guess not. Anson? Yeah, I think so. I meant Chris has got a question. Sure. For the secretary and the whole team, I think we have done it, but it's worth doing again, just to pass along our thanks. It's not easy being a state employee at the best of times and then to have your jobs upended in this sort of crisis. To be successful takes everybody pulling in the right direction in the same direction. Please do pass along our gratitude to you, Mr. Secretary and the whole team for doing just a great job under challenging conditions. Thank you very much, Senator. And I know as an agency, I think we're closer. And I think what we've learned, one of the things we've learned, we're closer to our constituents than we've ever been, which is great. And we're learning, we're listening to them. We know their needs more than we ever have now because of this exchange that we've done working through this program. So I know we're kind of at the windshield right now, but now I think as we go forward over the next few months we'll look past the windshield and past the hood and what can we do to really take this rare opportunity to advance the economy and particularly the agriculture economy. And I think we're poised to do that. I think we've got the data, we've got information now. We just got to put the puzzle together and I know you'll help us with that. So we're pretty excited where we're going. We know there's need out there. We know people are struggling and we just got to get through that. You're talking about food insecurity and there are some in the latest cares package that's coming up through Washington. There are a number of nutritional programs that are there, one for dairy to produce dairy and then they would go to the food banks. There's also more SNAP benefits. So we continue to work on that. So that will be the USDA. And just the final thought on this latest cares package, it looks like we will not have the flexibility that we may have had during the last round. So there won't be some discretionary money that the agency of agriculture may be able to use to do granting programs. This latest package is pretty prescribed and where it's gonna go. A lot of the programs out of USDA through agriculture are direct payments either to farmers or the prescribed programs already defined down there. For example, a meat processing. There's an element in there that says smaller medium-sized meat processing. They're gonna be granting programs, which I think we need to really take advantage of and really get in there and do that. But it won't be like, the agency is gonna have another granting program. It doesn't look that it will be that same type of model of lots of money for rental housing, arrearages, et cetera. A lot of it with healthcare, vaccine, some of that stuff, but it doesn't look like we're gonna have as much discretionary money in this round dedicated to agriculture. I just wanted to throw that out there as we try to figure out what's coming up the pipeline from Washington. Yeah, thank you, Wansson. And a question I have and I've read that about the feds are gonna manage their own through FSA and their own agencies. Do they have technical people that help our farmers or farmers in rural areas? Do they have technical people to help them through that application process? Or is that something that we should think about gearing up a little bit for? Yeah, it's hard. Yeah, go ahead, Diane. The USDA offices, yes. The farm service agency, every county has, or that's not true anymore. The majority of counties in Vermont have offices and from my family members who took part in the CFAP program, they were on the phone and could provide their information by phone and get their applications in. So they were very accommodating, very helpful at USDA Farm Service Agency. They do have people doing that work, having those conversations with farmers and helping them with those applications. So yes, they do. We did, the agency certainly did help get information out with USDA to say, come in, call the office, come to the office. They were open, you could go there if need be. Yep, Abby, you had come. Yeah, thank you, Senator. I agreed with what Diane shared. It does seem from the little bit that we know and have heard from SBA is that most of the ag support will be through PPP funding. They did make some changes to those dollars that will hopefully make it more accessible for smaller ag businesses, but it's still based upon payroll reduction in loss. So I think we have a lot to learn. SBA also has staff that can direct and support businesses that have questions. But I will say, we worked very closely with Farm Viability during our Vermont COVID-19 ag assistance program. And the, forget what they call their program, their rapid response work that they did was incredibly valuable. And Anson gave the statistic of about 400 businesses that applied for and received our VCAP grants, received support from Farm Viability. And in our conversation with them, they will not be able to continue that level of work without additional funding. So I just, I'm not advocating for that, but just being clear that they are not in a position. I think there was technical assistance that our agency provided and that that rapid response program provided that may look different in this next round of stimulus funds given where the dollars are focused. Yeah, and I don't know if it's accurate or not, but I heard that Washington's already talking about putting together another COVID response bill. And that one may be totally different than this one that we just got. So anyways, I think with Senator Leahy in charge of appropriations in the future, possibly, and there's a good opportunity that something good will come out of Washington that will help our small businesses. And the PPP program was fine for the big guys to help their payrolls and all that, but small firms, a lot of times live right out of the checkbook and they don't have a payroll account that they can wean on or go back to to try to get help from. So anyways, are there any other comments from the committee? If not, I wanna thank you all very much for your hard work all summer and fall and appreciate your time today and very much look forward to working with you throughout the winter months. It's nice, it's too bad we can't get together, but we never could anyways in that little closet that we worked in and this seems to work pretty well. And so anytime that you folks wanna certainly get in where we can all meet like on Zoom, it works pretty darn good, yeah. So thanks a lot and we look forward to, I'll see some of you in the morning, but look forward to working with you during the session.