 So we'll get started and Alan, would you like to introduce Gary? Yeah, and actually Jake, would you mind pulling up the slide just so if anybody's joining us late they know what we're doing for the next hour and 15 minutes. So we'll be ending at 12 but we're going to shift over to talking about some specific briefs. So, and I'll let Jake do the tea up but we'll be talking about apples meat processing marketing and food security. And then we should have a good another half an hour for Q&A after that. And then followed will wrap it up with both Abby Willard from the agency and myself to close out by the time you're ready for your lunch. So Jake, do you want to go ahead and tee off the brief presentations again. Yep. Yeah, I want to quickly say that the conversation questions that you all had for Heather is just a good example of these briefs and these presentations are meant to kind of peak your interest and there's obviously a lot more to discuss. And so more reason to invite these people in to provide further testimony and and also connect you with with others in the industry who can provide more depth and insight so it's really great to just see that exchange and see the interest there. And so we're going to kind of continue along the way with a product. You know we talked about Heather talked about grains and Terry's here to talk about, you know, industry that's been in Vermont for quite some time and really is one of those flagship industries. He's going to be here talking about apples and and then from from there we're going to switch over kind of talking more about some issues with meat processing so mentioned there's you know there's a prior to recommend priority strategy related to me processing which Randy will give some more context for then we'll we'll switch over to marketing which there's a number of priority strategies related to marketing that are really, really critical and so Rose Wilson and Lauren Missiria from Lauren from the agency of agriculture will be talking about the dynamics of marketing, the bake sort of the basic dynamics and then how they apply. Lauren will be talking about metro markets. And then lastly, Becca Warren and Fay Mac will be talking about food security. The other thing I just want to say before I do hand it over to Terry is that we had planned to feature the racial equity brief, which is now complete. Unfortunately, the scheduling did not work for today with the contributing authors but we really we, we'd love to work with the committees on on getting that brief presented to you or, you know, helping to organize a presentation with with those contributing authors at another time, you know, obviously that's that's an issue that is important all of the time and so this should not be the only opportunity that we have to talk about it and present that brief to you all so just wanted to make sure that you were aware of that as well. So, with that, I'm going to hand over to Terry, and he's going to be talking about apples and this really continues that theme of, you know, priority strategies for needing to do industry development support our associations and a number of other things so Terry, go ahead. Thank you. Thumbs up if everyone can hear me. Anyone can hear me. Okay, excellent. So yeah, I'm Terry Bradshaw I've presented to this committee in a few different ways over the years so it's good to see folks again including my old neighbor John O'Brien in the Vermont sense of, you know, 10 miles being neighbors. So yeah, Terry Bradshaw I'm the assistant I'm an assistant professor in the plant and soil science department at UVM. I also I wear many hats and I've worn many hats over the years, particularly in particular in reference to the Apple industry. I'm the president of our state association for about five years at a time when, when I took it over, really the association was in charge of putting on the annual meeting at the American Legion Hall and making sure that there was a plate of food and the bill was paid. This was 2009 to when, you know, a lot of things changed at the agency resources were starting to get short resources were shortening up in UVM extension, and also I found that role a little bit more significant than it had been as a volunteer role. I do have a small extension appointment and I'll talk about that a little bit when we talk about the brief. So I'll start off just talking about apples. In terms of how they, how they lay large in Vermont or maybe at one time laid large. There was a time not long ago within certainly my my lifetime when milk, maple and apples roughly in that order although maple and apples maybe could kind of trade for each other at a certain time were the three primary products that had any real, meaning outside of the state, not necessarily outside the country, although there were international exports of apples. You know, wholesale products that were produced in the state of Vermont that were in quantity enough to move and really have a pretty strong market presence. In 1999, the legislature declared the Macintosh apple the state fruit and throughout the middle, I'd say the glory years of the apple industry, say from the 1950s to the 1980s. It was not difficult for a farmer, often in Addison County or in the lower Connecticut Valley to make a living off of 10 maybe probably more realistically 20 acres of apples. Put them on a truck, get paid and put their kids through college. That's changed and it changed about it took it took some time really like I said the glory days started to end in the 80s, and there's a number of different factors that have led to that. I think all of us know that there are still apples grown and they're still one of our major agricultural products. But the days of them being a major wholesale product or I'll flip it around and say the days of people outside the state recognizing Vermont as a place where lots of apples come from are starting to change. We saw some changes in the availability of produce coming in from other countries, particularly the southern hemisphere in the 80s, early 90s. We had a real shake up in the industry that affected the entire apple industry, when the growth regulator all our was banned in the 80s, and Macintosh, which was our primary apple and still is our primary primary apple used was frequently treated with the fruit from dropping on the ground. And so that's in the way that campaign rolled out really impacted fruit prices immediately for about a one or two marketing seasons, but also cause a lot of growers to really try to figure out how to reduce crop in a new era. At the same time we've seen major shifts in how apples are produced and anybody who's been by some of the orchards in shawram. Cornwall has got some good ones over to Marnie Hodges orchard can see how apples now when you think of a large sprawling tree that you could, you know, sleep in the shade under those those really don't exist in terms of the larger industry, but yet they're all over Vermont. And I say that, because I want to highlight that we've had a tough time adapting to, or I should say investing in the changes that are happening in the industry so apple trees have gotten smaller we're now planting about 1000 trees per acre 1200 trees per acre so they look like tomato bushes grown on wires. It's a very highly efficient system in terms of labor efficiency in terms of yield per acre in terms of fruit quality. I mentioned that the old trees you could you could sleep in the shade under them. Well shade means that there's no sunlight getting through and no sunlight means poor photosynthesis and small green fruit. So these changes in the industry which started in Europe in the 1980s and spread throughout the US are really expensive to adopt. And we've had because these came around starting the 1990s and really since the 2000s. We haven't really had our industry hasn't really had the capital cash flow to adopt that so we're kind of behind where we're oftentimes managing large trees that are difficult to manage labor wise relatively lower yield per acre but that's not always true. And then along with that so we've changed our trees. We're seeing a real change in what consumers are looking for for a quality fruit. So if you talk to a millennial or younger Macintosh is usually not what they're thinking of when they think of the top quality apple. Honeycrisp maybe and we certainly have Honeycrisp is roughly if you put all of Macintosh's daughters Empire Cortland McCow and whatnot in the same bucket with Macintosh. I would say Honeycrisp is next what's grown in Vermont. It's a very difficult apple to grow. And so it causes a lot of headache and it has a lot of post harvest issues. And that's another piece that's made things kind of difficult is throughout the 20th century we had the shawram cooperative Apple Packing Association or the shawram co op. And that has that one out of business around around 2000 so we haven't had the central facilities for people to aggregate as Heather was talking about before the break. So we've seen some changes we do have I want to mention some bright spots we have about the same number of growers, even though we have half the acreage we had 20 years ago. And that's because we are seeing a number of small producers pick your own you know retail type farm stand operations to where we have the same number but we have dramatically less production. Cider is increasingly a product that apples are going into, but, and I mean fermented cider. But that requires at least on the large scale, a robust wholesale industry where a grower can make 80% of his fruit sell 80% of his fruit for $24 so we can afford to sell 20% of his fruit for $6, which is kind of the price point that it takes to to put it into cider. So I leave with that I again I realized I kind of painted that the bleak picture apples grow fabulously well in this state. And there's a number of policy things that that the brief highlights that I think could help things long and I think they're always going to be around but the days of seeing, you know the 200 acre orchards and Vermont are starting to wane. And I'll, I'll take questions from there. Yeah. Thank you, Terry. We should go on to the other speaker and then take all the questions at the end. Excellent. Thanks. Thanks. Yeah, thanks Terry and hopefully you can hang with us to the q amp a portion around 11 will probably get to that around 1130. Thank you so much, Terry and so now we'll we'll go to Randy quenville, who's going to be talking about meat processing, and obviously a lot of sort of a lot, a lot's been happening in that industry through coven, and a lot was happening before. And so Randy's going to, you know, touch upon kind of the areas of need the areas of opportunity and some of the recommendations that are laid out in the brief. And so Randy, it's all yours. All right, I'm here. Hey, hey everybody. Nice to see you all again. I am the former chief of meat inspection for Vermont but since I've gone it's still been doing some stuff with other plants trying to get going under inspection so I worked on this brief. And, you know, as we know this is kind of the meat processing beef but it also talks about slaughter as well. So you know as we know and as I've always said it's critical to support the slaughter processing industries to make those expected meat and poultry products available for the Vermont consumers and and beyond Vermont as well. So, so again as as there's a big shift of trying to increase the processing. That being said the slaughter inspection is really key to any of the growth. So if you have the inspected carcasses to start with, you know product and can be sent for further processing, or it can go directly to retail. You know the processing inspections critical to get to the wholesale markets and further processing but there's also that retail exemption so through retail exemptions and through through meat inspection approval there's there's abilities for farmers to market directly to individuals and do some further processing. So all of these things they kind of circle back to the need for you know essential information the access to the facilities, the access to trained employees, water quality information. So all of those are discussed in the in the recommendations in the report. So it all kind of circles back to having the support of all these items that are listed in the brief. I think, from what I've seen I mean I think they'd be good to have a concerted effort, either by either active element or the position recommended at UVM extension for ascertaining the needs, and what the current slaughter facilities can do so do they have the ability to do more or the desire to provide, you know slaughter only services, so that the notes those carcasses can go to processing and we already know that they're they're slaughtering at capacity with all that they're able to process. So what do they need to know do they do they have enough help to add extra slaughter, as that takes workers away from processing. Do they have a means to ship carcasses do carcasses need to pick them up and bring them for, you know places for further processing I mean usually sides can be broken down into quarters and ship without inspection anything more than that would have to be done during inspection so so that puts more more pressure on the processing facilities. So I guess I like say as a recap, you know for anybody that needs inspection requirements gets 40 hours a week inspection time at no cost. There are some approved hours that they need to work under so sometimes that's hard with farming and processing because you have to have those hours under inspection. So state expansion is usually sufficient to capture all the in state markets, but Vermont has also established a CIS a cooperative interstate shipment program. So even under utilizing state inspectors they can still do some interstate shipment of those inspected products. So federal inspection is also available, and Vermont still has a cross utilization program as well to help those smaller places get going and business so the support of the meat inspection program as well making sure that they have enough people, the ability to increase their coverage as needed because again as these small places start. If they don't have inspection then they can't get going. So, again, it seems as though more and more people are trying to get that processing going to alleviate the stress on those slaughter processing plants. And if we can get those the slaughter plants to be able to have enough qualified people to be able to to to do that work again that we find that there there seems to be a lack of trained people so you know supporting again through you know what what's listed in the brief. As far as training programs either through schools and universities, maybe connecting the training with a central incubator kitchen, you know the mad river food hub is not doing that type of work now but again if there is some sort of business that could do that. They were an integral part of several, you know, startup businesses that went on to build their own facilities, obtain inspection places like Joe soup screaming Ridge Farm, pie and pasta by that's table Vermont salumi. Those are all places that started that were able to get their starting figure out inspection, and then further, you know, build up their market before they made that big leap into into inspection and processing. So realistically that's kind of where we're at not a lot of changes from since I left. But those are again those are most of the recommendations that are in the report. There's still some other things that could be looked at to help expand different markets I mean if farmers can can incorporate meat and poultry into their operations to help some weather the changes between the different, you know the dependency on weather crops and all that stuff. So that's kind of where we're at that's what I think again it hasn't changed a lot but those are the things so and I'll be around here for the Q&A. Thanks for there. Thanks. Thank you. And I'm sure. Yeah, I'm sure there will be more, more questions on the slaughter processing brief. So that's great that you can stick around. And so now we are going to shift shift gears a little bit and and look at marketing. So we've talked a lot about, you know, very specific product areas of grains, apples, meat products. And, you know, there's there's still the issue of how do you get those products to market and how you get consumers to to kind of notice them and buy them. And so, you know, this is I think marketing is this area that is often misunderstood. And so hopefully we've got two excellent presenters to Rose Wilson is going to give us the kind of marketing one on one. And a couple of recommendations from that brief that help us to steer us in the right direction. And then Laura, Missy area is going to be touching upon, you know, the metro market area, which is a large area large sort of place that exists, but is often talked about as, you know, an area of opportunity. And so there's this connection here of roses marketing sort of marketing one on one how do you do it how do you do it well, and then Lauren's going to be talking about sort of how how can we do that well in the metro market areas to reach all the consumers that are out there in our region. So with that, I will now turn to Rose so Rose go ahead. Thanks for having us. So, with respect to marketing, I've been working doing business planning and market development with farms. Since I was at harpoon brewery in the early 2000s. So I've been doing this for quite a while. And what we've seen over time is that our local food market has gone from an emerging market where we had rapid growth to a maturing market. And what the maturing market means is that we have a larger playing field there's more people interested in local food, but the rate of adoption is slowing. And there's increased competition. So we're cannibalizing within our market. And we're also attracting the attention of large national brands who want a piece of the local market pie. And what that does is it changes the playing field in terms of where we used to have a lot of direct to consumer relationships and you knew who your farm was and you knew why you value local food. Now local food has gotten fancy the packaging has gotten fancy the marketing has gotten fancy. And while the pie is larger, each farms ability to access that pie is getting narrower. And so, if our farms don't begin to compete on a marketing level, equivalent to the competition, what happens is they're slowly going to get left by the wayside. So with a maturing market, it means that you have to spend more on marketing that you might not have had to spend before. And one of the things that we wanted to make sure the legislature is aware of is what we mean when we say marketing, because marketing, most people think of as advertising and promotion. But marketing actually represents a whole lot of aspects in addition to advertising and promotion. So it means what is your product is your product still relevant to your consumers narrative nowadays. So, before you might have had a carrot, but now people might want appealed carrot or an organic carrot. So you have to explore what is your product, and is my product still meeting my customers needs is my packaging still relevant. We went through an era where we had no packaging, then everybody needed fancy packaging. We went through an era where people are like, Oh my God, look at all the plastic going into the ocean. We need to rethink our packaging. There's two aspects to packaging. One is is your product getting to your consumers intact. And two, is it helping your product stand out on the shelf. And three, is it meeting your customers needs. So, we also mean pricing. When you look at your product, is it priced right will it sell on the shelf. And as we get larger competition coming in, we tend to find that there's price pressure. And so you have to increase what your value proposition is you have to really know what you stand for, you have to understand how your pricing fits into the landscape around you. And you also still have to be able to operate profitably within the pricing that you might need to be adopting. You also have placement. So, again, as the market has matured we've gone from direct consumer sales to an increasing amount of wholesale and regional sales and what does that mean to your ability to access those markets. So, you have to invest in times in order to actually get into the wholesale market or get into a distribution change, you, you do need to up your marketing efforts. And once you're in those environments, where are you on the shelf. So big brands pay big money so that they're not at foot level, they want to be at eye level on the shelf. When we talk about marketing, we also mean your people, do you have the sales staff to support inroads with retailers inroads with consumers. Do you have the customer service staff to be able to actually respond effectively when somebody has an issue with your product. And also processes. What is your order fulfillment process. Are you someone who can support the needs of your market in a timely fashion in a professional fashion. What is that physical presence that you have. Do you look like you're a professional reputable operation. So, what is the farm look like what is the front office look like what is your web presence look like. And then we also mean advertising and promotion. So what strategies are you doing to maintain retain and actually grow your market share. And it's in terms of barriers that everybody would love to do it the problem is it's expensive. It's expensive, and it actually requires skills and expertise. So, what are the key opportunities, I think, some of the key opportunities we have is for folks to actually step back and say, Oh, I actually do need to up my marketing game. I'm going to do an assessment and start doing brand audits where we can say, what are the areas that you do well within those marketing aspects, where are the areas that you need help. And then secondly, most of our brands are too small to afford a full robust sales and marketing team on their own. We just don't they're expensive individuals to hire, and at the scale that our brands are at they can't support hiring those people full time. So what I'm surprised by is that within Vermont, if individuals were to rise to the challenge of being contract sales for multiple brands, they can develop a pretty nice livelihood, supporting each farm or each brand within that small percentage of time that they need to be able to help them get that that professional expertise that they need out in the field. So there's definitely opportunity there for for folks. And then with respect to our recommendations. I thought there was three key recommendations that would be of use for the legislature. There's a couple big spend asks. One is that we think it would be really important for Vermont to invest in a by local by Vermont campaign. It's really important for us to have a public because one of the things that most people don't know is that as much as the trend to go buying local has moved towards retailers, even our largest wholesale growers do rely fairly significantly on the higher margin they get from their direct to consumer sales. So we continue to support having people have that direct connection to their farms when they can, and also when they are going into the grocery stores, really starting to value buying that local option when they see it available. The second thing that would be really relevant is, again, as I mentioned, even within Vermont having contract sales or brokers that can be supporting multiple farms. Lauren in the metro markets to have contract brokers that can be supporting several of our brands that are trying to get out of state that really need a high level of sales and marketing support so having some brokers. To support our efforts to get into the metro markets. And then the last recommendation is a fairly small ask, we're looking at about $5,000 to support farms being able to go to conferences, some fairly well known national conferences so that they can get exposure to what is happening in the industry with respect to what are other brands doing what are the trends. How do you interact with a broker. How do you interact with the distributors starting to network networking that goes a long way. And if our, if our brands and our farms don't have the ability to actually get access to those individuals, it, it can make it hard to to get out there so just being able to support the expense of getting to those conferences and enabling those names and phases to gain recognition would be great. Awesome. Thanks rose. And again, yeah, we'll hold on questions. That was a really fantastic overview of marketing and yeah I think the marketing brief provides a lot, a lot of additional detail to many of the points that that rose made and there's there's other recommendations there as well so thank you. Thank you rose and with that will turn to Lauren to kind of help sort of support some of the points that rose was was making and give it some more specific context in relation to metro markets so go ahead. Hi everyone I'm Laura Missy area with the Vermont Agency of Agriculture and the senior market development specialist. So I'll go over some of the high points of the major metro market brief, which is found on page 116 of the plan. So I was asked to pull this brief together. I'm trained as an urban planner so my first question was, what does this mean major metro markets. So I really wanted to define that area that we were working with. So we looked at Montpelier as the center and a six hour radius from Montpelier and called that the major metro area that we're talking about in this brief. Montpelier because it's about us. We chose this area because it's about six hours from Montpelier. And there are 49 metro areas within this 49 major metro areas within that six hour drive from Montpelier and about 50 million people and 18,000 grocery stores. So I really wanted to get my head around okay what is the scale that we're dealing with here. And if you look on page 113 you'll see a small map that kind of shows where all these metro areas are, as well as the density of grocery stores. And so what we think is that without the support of these regional consumers specifically in some of these metro areas that the growth and earning potential of Vermont farm and food businesses will be limited and this really important sector will see stagnation or begin to shrink. And it's important to note, as Rose kind of mentioned in her summary, that when Vermont products are sold in regional markets, they do compete directly with international, national and other regional brands. And because the products are being sold outside of Vermont, the connection to place is lost or weakened. And so as a result, it's more difficult to garner the same premium price that we may be, we may be able to get or businesses can get in Vermont. And the sentiment when writing this brief was that the further geographically you get from Vermont, the less of an affinity or familiarity consumers have with Vermont products. So the bottlenecks opportunities and recommendations are true for this brief are truly a mix of what you'll find in many of the other briefs, especially the marketing distribution consumer preferences, business assistance brief, because so many of these topics come into play in these major metro areas. But generally selling beyond local markets requires energy and expertise. And again, Rose kind of highlighted this as well, but wholesaling requires time and attention and that can be very difficult for small businesses. We have gone into greater detail but there's a wide range of skills that a business owner needs that they need to master, which ranges from paperwork to building relationships and to understanding how the wholesale markets actually work. So from that shelf placement to meeting with distributors to understanding all the different models that can take a lot of time and energy. And in addition, the business owner is trying to optimize their own business practices. Additionally, the producers must have sufficient volume to warrant the cost of freight. And consumers and often times retailers expect a high level of professionalism and consistency in quality. So when applicable if you have a packaged product branding is also extremely important when your product is on the shelf with with these other international national and regional brands. But given the number of people who live within this major metro area or within our defined major metro area. We think that there's a ton of opportunity. So there's definitely opportunity and cooperative marketing and distribution. Potentially alternative methods of distribution and consumption, which has really never been more relevant than now with COVID but you know, pre cut veggies pre package ready to cook items selling direct to consumer models and capitalizing on some of these other convenience trends. And then again, especially within the COVID times, having a strong online presence and the ability to reach your consumers. So whether that's via email, social media, etc. So I'll point you to two of the priorities priority recommendations on page 197 priority strategy number 16, which is to fund coordinated marketing efforts such as a statewide marketing campaign for local products, marketing support in emerging emerging metro areas and a shared marketing broker position. So this came up in kind of two different ways in the major metro brief is recommendation two and five and then priority strategy number 17 also on page 197. But to help individual farms and food businesses reach new customers by developing tailored marketing assistance services and programs and so this really focuses on building the businesses capacity and helping them kind of learn these SOP so that they have a strong relationship with their customers and can carry that on. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you, Lauren. That was, that was excellent. And yes, again, I know there's probably a lot of questions that are coming up at this point, but we're almost to to the end here over the brief presentations and then we can shift over to Q&A. So now we will turn over to Becca Warren and and Fay Mack to talk about food security and as I was mentioning with with the goals that are related to kind of food access and food security in the plan that you know food security is multifaceted. There's many different sort of dimensions to it and I think in this conversation about you know production and kind of regional markets. You know, there are a lot of a lot of what's been happening through COVID to is supply chain disruptions, you know, has really posed a lot of big questions about how do we create food security in Vermont how we create food security in in the northeast. During these you know times of disruption and also during times when things are relatively normal whatever that may, may or may not mean nowadays. So that's what Becca and Fay will be kind of discussing a little bit here with the food security brief so Becca, it's all yours. Thank you Jake, and good morning everyone I'm Becca Warren with the Sustainable Jobs Fund and thank you for this opportunity. This is an issue brief on food security which you can find on page 157 of the printed plan. And that was in collaboration with experts from the anti hunger community regional planners and academics and Fay Mack from hunger free is one of the contributors and has joined today to help answer questions that might come up about food insecurity, as well as just visually show this cross sector interest in food security in the state. In the brief we considered both individual food security and the security of Vermont's entire food system, and we found that there is no holistic plan to protect Vermont's food supply, nor the individual food security of Vermonters during emergencies or against the changes we know are coming with climate change. But there is a lot of excitement in developing comprehensive approach to food security. Jake made reference to the four pillars of food security earlier. And those are availability, access, utilization and stability. We have definitely experienced the fragility of these pillars over the past year. And one in three Vermonters has experienced individual food insecurity during the course of the pandemic. And we've also seen disruptions to national food supply chains. So the closure of meat packing plants for example the plowing under vegetable crops. To continue with the example of meat, we know we've seen this national disruption, both increasing demand in the state for meat and exposing the limits of our processing infrastructure as Randy was discussing. So because of our strong agricultural sector, we believe Vermont has a unique opportunity to over the next decade, ensure that food remains available, accessible and stable, and that all of our residents are food secure. A very brief recommends fully funding the proven programs that assist vulnerable Vermonters with a special emphasis on those programs that include our agricultural businesses as part of the solution. So programs like crop cash, Vermonters feeding Vermonters, universal school meals, which are impactful on individual food security, and also circulate economic benefits within the agricultural sector and the state as a whole. Your committees, I believe, have also heard testimony about updating the state emergency management plans to ensure food security during disasters. And this step is part of the recommendation from the brief to adopt state policies and plans to ensure that the Vermont food supply itself can weather the emergencies that are caused by climate change pandemics or unforeseen other disasters. The state is taking these steps and many other good steps toward food security, but individual steps are not necessarily going to get us where we need to go and want to go. So the priority strategy I want to highlight today and leave you with is this strategy of charting a comprehensive approach toward food security in Vermont and centering it around our thriving and and diverse agricultural economy. So a comprehensive approach would weave together issues such as affordable housing, healthcare, affordable transportation, the siting of grocery stores, food distribution, access to local foods, and then the systems for ensuring continued production and expanded food in Vermont. So really, this plan, all the topics that we covered in the strategic plan in the briefs really relate to this food security question, and I want to, you know, following up on Senator Pearson's idea of a picture. So I have a very clear picture in my head of the closed store in Cambridge Port, which was open when I was a kid and was a place people would get food of various types healthy popsicles, a range of things. So what is the holistic approach that might get the Cambridge Port General Store, literally shuttered right now to look more like the Greensboro General Store. That we're talking about with this. And so the, the Farm to Plate Network is the starting place for creating this holistic approach. And it's also going to involve working with our neighboring states to reorient a significant part of our food production and all the components of the food system to the regional level. So we can reduce risks to our food system, and we can protect the most vulnerable in our state by creating a cohesive approach, and we're excited to work together to do that. So thank you for this opportunity. Fantastic, thank you Becca that was just a really nice and concise explanation and summary of the brief and the issues in there and yeah, just really wonderful kind of summary of things. And so with that, we are now at a point in time where we can have a little more dialogue and conversation here with Q&A. And so we'll try to, you know, we have about a good 15 minutes that we can probably have for Q&A and discussion. And so all of the brief authors here are available to you. So we're really just excited to hear what your questions are and kind of hopefully direct you in a coordinated fashion to a person who can who can answer your question. Is, Jake, is Faye going to, is she going to present? Faye is here to support Becca in terms of answering questions that may arise related to food security. Yeah. But that, yeah, the presentation portion is complete now. Yeah, so, so we'll open it up to questions from legislators. So are we, do we have questions? One I have if we back up a ways is Randy Quinville in regards to his knowledge of slaughter facilities for small animals. We've heard from goat, a goat farmer that costs more to get the goat processed and slaughtered than he the goat meat is worth and, and I'm wondering if we have a adequate place for small animals to be processed or is, are we lacking in that particular area? Yes, so in, in the enemy brief it does talk about being able to expand that that type of slaughter because again there's the hello market, there's the farmers that are diversifying into raising those types of animals. So, but you're right, most of the established facilities now concentrate on beef and pork because it's just more profitable. So, but if you could establish a place that is set up for that type of slaughter, then it would would absolutely help to increase that part of the marketplace. So I know, you know, at one point there was, you know, at the Royal butcher they had a separate slaughter floor set up just for those types of animals and that worked really well. I don't know what's happened with the Grand Isle facility but that was set up for for small animals calves and sort of thing as well. So, so yeah, I think that there was some interest from the go club collaborative working with Vermont goat dairy producers to try to help find a place for an outlet for those types of products as well but I'm not quite sure where they're at at this point as I understand they haven't moved forward with that but they did put up a building but I don't know if it's just because they don't have the help yet or or they haven't basically established what that market is again which goes back to the marketing side of stuff that Rosa's talking about. Thank you Randy. Are there questions from. Bobby do you see the Terry's hand is up. No. So you watch the screen and will work them in that. So, is that Terry. Terry Norris. Oh, no, I miss Terry. Do you see the little the little hands the little blue boxes with hands in them. No, you just put your finger up we don't have that fancy stuff on the center. Yeah, right. Okay, just to see my finger. That's all you need. No, go ahead. Yeah, I was just just going to say that when Terry Bradshaw said that show arm used to be like the apple capital of Vermont, as I moved here in 1960, and they were, I mean, they were everywhere. Well, I could be mistaken but I believe we're down to one, one orchard right now one person that does all the orchards that are left in the, in town so not sure if that's a good thing or not but it is what it is. And last, the one of the most popular pick your own Douglas orchards they, they were acquired by Champlain orchards and and blogits went out of business, two years ago so. And some of their orchards is taken over by Champlain but the rest is kind of got pushed down and cut off so it's a change. And what, what is transpiring on that land at the present carry. Well, Douglas is they're going to their orchard is still going to be maintained, supposedly the same way they have always done it, but it's owned by Champlain orchards, which they used to be in competition but and blogits they. I think they might store some hemp in the processing, you know cold storage, but a lot of their trees they, they just stop pruning them and you know and about two years if you don't prune your trees, they look like, you know brush and, and quite a bit of it was cut down and just kind of left. Yeah. Other questions from Terry Bradshaw has his hand up. Yeah, I, I'm on me. Yeah, I just want to respond to that and highlight. I'm sure that I painted, you know I didn't really touch on the kind of recommendations and what we want to do and partially that was intentional. Also I can be long winded but so many of the things that affect apples also that that landscape is the same thing that we saw a long time ago in in sheep where we have an industry that was able to be built when prices were good and then when prices start to get more cut throat we see consolidation, and then eventually reduction and you know where you have those more marginal businesses. And so, as the other Terry mentioned in short you have one producer Champlain orchards and builds a friend and he does a great job of what he does. Now if there's any commercial orchard in that town, he's running it's not very different from what we're seeing in in parts of the dairy industry where someone may have bought their three neighbors and now has one farm and that's what it takes to run on that kind of cut throats, you know, you know really narrow margins. Terry, how much do how much do Vermont Apple sell for the present time for a good eating, you know, store Apple. Yeah, good question. A Macintosh that I'd have to look at their ports they change every week but it's somewhere in the range of 18 to if you have a, if the quality is high enough the size is right the colors right and the market is accepting them, you know, maybe up to $32 the price may be but that's that's for the best of the best and there's not many that make it. The bigger issue is that most of themselves are probably 16 to 20 production costs are in the 16 to $18 range so again you're in the milk model. What is the high value apples that are being grown out west, you know, they're that are affecting $60 a bushel. We don't really have access to we don't have the capital to replant and there's some trade restrictions or I should say some licensing restrictions that keep Vermont out of that game. So the hot new apples you see the cosmic crisp and things like that we legally cannot grow them they're grown under a closed cooperative. And that's leaving growers kind of in the dust. Questions from other members. The Carolyn. Got my finger going. Just keep it in the right direction. Yeah, I was, I was going to make a comment on, you know, fingers but that I think one of the things that I find interesting and John O'Brien referenced it earlier in this conversation was the sheep industry that happened back in the 1800s and, and sort of keeping in mind and learning a lesson from that in that, you know, and I don't want to put the kibosh and anything I think all of this is so interesting. And, but we should probably keep in mind that we don't want to put all our eggs in one basket so I think that the whole diversification thing is important. And I think one of the, one of the problems for the sheep industry back in the 1800s was that all of a sudden Australia and other places started growing sheep and fiber and what have you very deeply and and they were stiff competition. But I just want to ask Becca, Becca are you Sally and Richard's daughter. All right, when you mentioned the Cambridge port store which unfortunately is closed I thought about all the ice cream sandwiches I bought there as I was campaigning for office over the years. Yeah. One day my dad said, we got to go to the Cambridge sports store the popsicles are five cents. Yeah, I'm real sorry that place is closed now. Thank you. I think I don't we haven't heard this as committees but I believe Abby. Yeah, we were talking about Randy and was talking in regards to me how we needed to do some type of a survey of the facilities. And I, I think did, did you folks Abby at the agency do a little mini survey of the facilities to see what it would take to to advance them into a better position so they could slaughter more and package more. Yeah, so Senator sir. We're going to talk about this I think tomorrow in our testimony but there's a few things that happened. Actually, Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund led by Ellen personally and I think some of her staff reached out to our slaughter and processing facilities during the early stages of the pandemic to get a sense of how client they were with the PPE requirements or that they had the additional staff necessary to take on the additional safety requirements in our processing facilities to ensure that we didn't end up in the same situation in the Midwest at Smithfield facilities and the like that had to close due to high COVID cases so we have some of that feedback from Ellen's conversations we also did outreach to our slaughter and processing facilities to suggest ways that they could even production, add an additional shift, or find ways to increase their capacity to respond to the increased demand for local so those were just suggestions that we offered we even offered, whether our inspection staff could run additional shifts and run overtime to allow those businesses to add additional slaughter or processing shifts, but that was more of an offer than it was a then feedback. So we'll hear more about this tomorrow. Any house. Thank you, Abby. There are other questions from any of the members. If no, if not moving. Moving down to the metro sales area. I mean, when, when you go metro with your milk, they, they charge you sliding fees they charge you shelf space. They have to use a cooler course they charge you the stores. And I'm wondering, is that true with fruits and vegetables if you, if you move to the more metropolitan areas, do they assess a fee on on you as a presenter of these products. Does anyone know that know the answer to that. Rose, do you want to take a crack at that. Sure, sure. Yes, oftentimes, regardless of the industry, the more that we start interacting in the, the national competitive landscape that comes back to that marketing. If you want that placement if you don't want to be down at somebody's feet, you're going to have to pay to get into a placement that is more visible or accessible. But in the cooler doors, if you want to be on the side of the cooler door that opens as opposed to the side of the cooler door at the hinge, it's going to cost money and then you have to also protect it. All of those things do tend to require money and the large brands that pay that money don't like to give up those spaces very easily. So, it can be a challenge to get good placement for sure. And what about, I think you talked a little bit about working through a broker to get this all set up. What do they, you know, that costs money as well right. Yes, that's actually why we were looking at potentially starting to try and develop some some new brokers. Most of the established brokers and this is why we want to get some of our, our brands and our farms that are looking at going out of state to actually start interacting on this national level. Most of the brokers that work on that larger regional level require at least two million in sales before they'll even start talking to you. So we had one of our larger vegetable growers who actually was really proud they came with me to one of those national conferences, and they were in 200, I think was 200 whole foods and they were really excited. And the broker looked at him and he was like, well, call me when you're 10 times bigger. And that really put it was really disheartening for both me and the grower because we were both pretty excited for him. But it just goes back to that. They look at us like we're tiny little brands and, and so if we can start with brokers if we can develop our own brokers that have the interest in supporting our Vermont brands. And that would go a long way towards helping. What about, are there other questions. See any Carolyn. I don't see any hands about, you know, we, pardon. I said, I don't see any hands. Good. We have a, you know, I don't know, 13 or 15 day show down at Eastern states each year. And yeah, there's, there's thousands of people that go through our Vermont building. I'm wondering, do, do any of you folks know of people that display and their products there, you know, as far as I know the cider guys are there and you know, Cabot cheese is there. But what about, is there anyway we could display like veggies and promote that there. You know, as a, you know, Maine does, you know, potatoes and they're, you know, you see people walking all over the place with their baked stuffed potato and, and I'm wondering, is that a marketing area that we that we do use and utilize in our, is that something we could do and not to help promote our out of state or our natural sales. Lauren, I see you. Yeah. So, I run the Vermont or I manage the building the Vermont building at the biggie so I am down there for not not the whole 25 days that we have staff there but oftentimes like 13 to 15 days. We do we we put an application out each year to to solicit vendors to come to the Vermont building. Our vendors are returning vendors as you mentioned like cold hollow American flatbread, and we are oftentimes calling out the need for more prepared foods I think fresh veggies might be a challenge at the biggie because it is an ag fair but but it's really focused on like fried Oreos and deep fried so I don't know that anyone really wants like, get a fresh carrot and walk around the fair with that so it would this wouldn't be that market, but certainly if people had creative ideas on how to incorporate local food into a prepared food meal that would be relevant and totally we would be excited about reading an application that look like that. This year we're not. Sorry. No, no, finish your thought. I just wanted to let Bobby know that John O'Brien has his hand up. So, my, my last thought was this year we're not doing a public application right now we're holding off until we see what happens with the biggie because last year was canceled. But we will have some open slots if we do run, if, if it if the fair opens, so. Thank you, Lauren. John. I see you're John. Thanks Bobby I just thinking about what Terry said about, you know, Vermont's a great place that or for apples grow really well in Vermont, right. And, and, you know maple trees too but more and more it's not enough. So I was thinking, just, just thrown it out to this group. Are the, are the going forward are our economic advantages of being in Vermont, more about education in some ways like I'm thinking like our committee's been hearing a lot about soil from Heather Darby and others. And so if, if regenerative agriculture, if Vermont can lead in that we could have the best soil in the country, not necessarily you wouldn't think of it necessarily as a product but what it does with climate change and everything else may give us that competitive advantage on the on the other side of things on the on the far side. If we, if we teach, say the Northeast that that local food is going to be more expensive but very high quality and there's a connection to farmers. That's an economic advantage to so so those kind of big picture issues I just want to want to know what this group where where say in in this in the big book that is and and just in general, you know, is that where we're headed that that Vermont isn't exceptional in what we what we could produce but but there are other avenues especially education where we could have a step up. And thank you john. Got any answers to john. I did you want to john you're gonna. All right, go ahead. Representative of a Brian it's a great question and I think that's part of what we were trying to hit on here with the, the strategic plan is that it's not one thing, right there's no one silver bullet that's going to allow us to excel as a state or and within the region, as But it's these lots of different components and taking that more diversified approach as we've been talking about all morning. That's where we can really excel and shine. But to do that well, as we've heard from all of the different presenters, we need really strong support for marketing. We need really strong support for technical and business assistance. We need to be better infrastructure like we just need the support system around our farm and food businesses to be much more robust than what we've done in the past, we need to invest in that. And through that, then we let the farmers and food producers who do what they do best they produce amazing food. Let them really do that and do that well, and the rest of us then support them in doing it and getting it to market so that both from honors as a state can take advantage of that. So I think that's the way I would answer that question and Mr. Chair, if you're okay, we'd like to shift over to Abbie Willard from the agency because we're getting close to our end time here. And Jake's bandwidth is a little low, even though he's literally across the room from me. So Abbie, you want to take it, take it from here. You're taking it from me, Ellen. Sure. I'm happy to. And I'll just also respond really quickly to Representative O'Brien's comment. I think, first of all, I like the reference to this plan as the big book. I think that's a great reference. I like that. But I'd also say, I think there are a variety of briefs in here that talk about the environmental, the soil health, the payment for ecosystem services brief is something to take a look at. But just the general concept of Vermont being a state that markets and promotes the value added attributes of our food products is really, really important. And I think we do that and that has built the reputation of quality and integrity that Vermont products have. And the reason that we haven't had a by-local campaign in this state for quite a few years because the entrepreneurs have done it for us in many ways. I've also been thinking recently about adding to that list this promotion of the true and actual real cost of food as a way for Vermont to differentiate itself as what makes us different than other states. And that addresses that we're paying real wages, we're taking care of the environment, we care about being accurate in our business models to capture the cost of production. So that'd be a fun one to talk about. I think we'd have to bring Mark Canella in and other kind of business minded folks to sort of see what the consequences to that model might be to have Vermont become known as the state with the expensive food. But anyway, there's a fair price for food. Right. And that's, that's right. I think that's the important difference. So anyway, that's a that's a future conversation. So, I'm just so grateful to have had the opportunity to listen to all these authors talk about the intelligence and the Intel that they have from the industries and the issues that they've worked on for so many years share both today but also incorporate into the plan. So, I'm going to let Ellen kind of do our final farewell but before we do that I just wanted to share a couple things both how we at the Agency of Agriculture imagine that we'll be using this plan and then run through, it might be a little bit clunky but run through a few examples of how how the plan can actually be used, because I think it is an overwhelming document and there's a lot of content here that rather than miss the opportunities to know how to use it will walk through it really quickly. So, I'll start by just saying, you know, as a representative of the Agency of Agriculture and from the Ag Development Division, I and members of our team and our agency throughout are asked routinely to testify and give specific industry need or market development opportunities and testify on these various issues about how to improve the success and the viability of agriculture in our state. And when we offer that testimony in that perspective, we're able to draw upon research and data, and then firsthand knowledge of what we know the challenges to be and what we think where opportunities exist, and then strategies that we could suggest on where to focus. The beauty of this plan is that now everybody has access to that fundamental and foundational information, as long as you take a chance to read it. And so I just feel that's such an important opportunity that all the contributors the 1500 different voices that are captured in this plan have made possible. So specifically for the agency. I, we intend to use the goals and the strategies in this plan, as well as the information that's laid out in the 54 individual briefs as resources and reference points of where should we start on a particular issue or who should we call who were the authors that contributed to that piece. And where do we need to focus our staff efforts our program development and target funding. So the priority for priority strategies will look to these as real direction for our work, and this will be the ideas that we offer as approaches to achieve that economic development and that equity in our food system, and ensure the environmental sustainability and access to healthy local food for all Vermonters. So we have those priorities strategies in this plan and will continue to reference. We also refer to the 15 goals when we're talking about collaborative projects and funding requests, and then we'll look to those objectives to monitor our progress. And I have been inspired by the plans vision and our team that's been working once a week on this for the past year and a half. At the inauguration when we had the poet laureate share sort of just this vision for the world in the country. It really I think reminded me that we've created a similar vision. We have collectively created a similar vision for Vermont agriculture for our businesses, our community members, and we need to refer to that vision anytime we're connecting with new partners and we need inspiration, or we know why it's important to make investments in our state's food system. So how fortunate that we have such a document at this time to rely upon. Again, acknowledging there's lots to read in this plan. I want to just talk briefly about ways that I think this could be valuable to you as legislators and then and then walk you through a few examples. I would consider inviting agency of ag or Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund staff in to testify and include the brief authors to discuss the issues that they're outlined in the briefs. So let's look at the priority strategies and the complete list of recommendations for the critical areas when you're thinking about where to invest or what new programs are needed or what college policy changes will strengthen or sustain the health of our food system. I think so much of the information is here in this plan and gives us a place to start. So I think there's a couple of different ways. I think first you can start at the beginning and identify with one of the 15 goals that you really want to see achieved in the food system or become a priority for a committee or for an individual. And then you get to the priority strategies that begin on page 29 of the written copy and I think probably page 31 for the PDF I think it's about two pages off and those priority strategies should help reach that priority goal that you've identified. And then you get to flip later in the document to page 193 the paper 195 in the digital, which includes the table of sources, and that table of sources then connects those priority strategies to the specific briefs that include the detail about the sector about the market or about the issue. And those individual briefs include those specific recommendations that offer policy suggestions or investment areas that have already been kind of vetted and suggested by the industry experts. Or you can do it in the opposite way, which is you can start with a specific brief that there's a sector or there's an issue, or there's a market that you're most interested in addressing and then you can follow the recommendations in that specific brief back through that same table of sources on page 193. But then aggregate up to the priority strategy on pages beginning on page 29. And then you can see how that connects the one of the larger and bigger kind of goals of our food system for the next 10 years. So, here's two examples that I thought we could do. And I don't want to take too much time because I know Ellen needs to talk for a minute more. So we could take goal 18 or actually, I'm sorry, I'm going to do priority 18. So this was what representative strong reference was like how do we redesign the state's education funding model. And so if you look at strategic priority 18, you can see that that relates to goals for five for the food system. And then if you go to page 197 this shows how that strategic priority connects to recommendations of in seven different briefs. And so you could look at those two of those briefs so let's take labor and workforce and labor and workforce brief has two recommendations that address to how we could make state education funding models more sustainable. And so that brief is on page 166. Or you could look at the agricultural literacy brief on page 130. And there's two recommendations recommendation four and five of that brief that address some of the same issues. And then you could also look at those two briefs and say, look at these authors, many from UVM extension Mary Peabody, Sarah Climan from UVM extension, Dana Hudson from Shelburne Farms Vera Simon Knobes. These are individuals that you could actually ask to testify that have sort of worked in this field or sort of experts in this arena, and would be great people to talk about education funding and including more agricultural components. That's one example and we could we could do more and I think that we're happy to come in and talk more about it. So I think at this point we just have to stay focused and keep working together and know that we have a really wonderful unified plan to address kind of the next 10 years. Thank you, Abby. I'm wrapping up again I just so want to thank you for dedicating this amount of time for all of us to come and talk with you we could have gone on for many, many, many more hours there's so many more briefs that we didn't even talk about yet. But we know we've got time you know we we have other parts of this session but also as you know this is a 10 year plan. And so we're going to we're going to keep focused on the different pieces of this plan and try to move it forward with you. I want to thank all of the presenters today for being here and helping out and for the agency of ag in your partnership. And I think what's really key for me in all of this to remember is that something that Jake said at the very beginning, this is not the stable jobs plan this is not the agency's plan this is all of our plan this is you are working for this, and we, we were presenting it here but we all own it. And so thus we all need to be working together in a collaborative way to implement it. And that's what we're all intending to do. And we're excited to work with you on that. And as Abby said, please call on us. Please call on the individual brief authors and the contributors to help you think about the best ways to practice to pass policy to provide resources, and just overall support for this growing industry because the opportunities are very big. There's a lot of bright spots. There's definitely challenges and bottlenecks that but they're all things we can overcome if we really do it together so I just really want to thank you again for your time, your interest, your passion for local food. And we'll, we'll keep talking with you as we go forward. Yeah, well, thank you very much Alan and, and all of you folks. It certainly is a great plan. I think I know we talked earlier in the week in my committee on the sense sides, excited about it. And it gives us a lot of backing to move forward with proposals. And you also, I think you deserve a lot of credit and thanks for presenting to us the so called big book. And so we'll be, we'll be hearing more from you as as time goes on and, and getting some of the witnesses in that you heard from as well to verify and, and push us in the right direction. Carolyn did you have anything in closing. Bobby, I would just add a big thanks to everybody who worked on this. We're referring into the to it as the big book. I'm sort of thinking at it as the agricultural Bible. And I want to thank all of the 1500 people that worked on this this is really an incredible piece of work. I really appreciate the data this included and can't say enough to thank you all. So with that, I guess we'll say goodbye and