 I'm Ben Hewitt, and I'm here with Coco Mosley, co-host, and Ardent. Graham, you nixed roof or not. And we're joined by Graham today because Graham is, in addition to being Role Vermont's field organizer, he is also our policy liaison to our policy consultant, Andrea Stander. So he spends a fair bit of time in the State House and monitoring bills that are moving through the State House, and we thought it'd be great to get a little bit of an update from Graham. So Graham, can you tell us a little bit about the bills that have been surfacing this session and what you've been working on? Absolutely. So every session there are countless bills that are going to affect our constituencies, whether they're farmers or consumers or just anybody. And as an organization, we have to make a choice through talking with our constituency, but also our board members and our staff about which pieces of legislation we're going to focus on. And so at this point in the session, we're through what's called crossover, which is a deadline by which bills have to go from one chamber, from the House to the Senate, or from the Senate to the House to stay alive. So we're at a point now where there's been, some bills have died as goes to Parliament, and some still have legs, which means they're still alive. So I can talk about the remaining bills that we see as being the potentially most impactful some positively for our constituencies and some having some potential negative impacts. Two of the bills that we're really excited about and we think are going to have some positive impacts on our constituency are the right to forestry bill, which largely deals with nuisance lawsuits from forestry operations in the state of Vermont and makes it easier to have small forestry operations into whether small nuisance complaints are lawsuits. And the other bill is the ag enterprise bill. And this is a bill which Roland Mott worked on probably starting in September or October with a group of stakeholders from the ag community, but also the land planning community. And it seeks to make it easier for farms to have accessory on-farm businesses and also provides some consistency across the state with how municipalities have to deal, can or can't deal with those businesses. So that would make it just a much more level playing field for people across the state. There wouldn't be this tremendous variability from one town to another in relation to what people were able to do on their property. Absolutely. There's that variability between towns with no zoning or very relaxed zoning regulations and then towns with more zoning. And if you're a farmer in certain towns you can, as it is now, have more leeway to do certain things than in other towns. Yeah, so let's dive into the ag enterprise bill. In terms of accessory businesses, what are you seeing people wanting to do on their farms that may or may not be zoned depending on where you live? Sure. So the main thing this bill does is it makes it so that any town can't outright prohibit any accessory business. So it means that they can say, they can't say no. They can say no if you don't do this. So right now we're hearing that people are, in general, it's pretty hard to be a viable farm operation when you're just doing production-based agriculture. Ain't that the truth? It's sad, sad times, right? It's sort of interesting that this bill comes from a really core sort of issue which is that people can't really seem to make a viable living simply by farming anymore. Absolutely. And that's what we hear over and over again by people coming to give testimony. We hear they want to offer dinners on their farm around the produce they're growing or the meat they're growing or that they want to offer educational events on the farm. Some folks want to do lodgings and sort of farmstays. What's really important in what we've identified as crucial to this bill that satisfies both farmers and municipalities is that there needs to be a nexus between that accessory business and the farming operation. Do you think it's opened the eyes of legislators to see sort of the struggles of small farms that are trying to make a living farming? Absolutely. I mean, not just legislators, but also other policy influencers in the room, other organizations who are out there seeking their own policy changes for their own constituencies. When you have someone come in and they talk about the real challenges of running their farm they're turning to the accessory business because, one, because they might want to educate people around their farm operation, et cetera, but really because of the lack of viability of their farm operation. When you see farmer after farmer come in of different sizes, different scales, different types of farms speaking to this issue, I think that's definitely true. Yeah, they didn't necessarily get into farming to have a bed and breakfast. Yeah, host weddings, and we see farmers are really nimble and able to kind of learn new trades and take on new skills, but there is this other real kind of sad point to it that we, as a state, are having a hard time supporting viable small farms. Right, and in one sense I think that indicates that this bill is getting it supporting people's adaptation to an unsustainable economic system for agriculture and it really points us to what do we do to actually deal with that root issue which is the lack of viability of farms to you because this is certainly supportive and that's a harder question because it really gets at things which state politicians have been telling us, it's harder to affect an economic system that's national or global. So yeah, if we're thinking of getting at that core issue, are there other bills that are addressing some of the challenges for small farms? Well we're hoping that this right to forestry bill can really be helpful for people who are integrating forestry operations on their farms and in terms of dealing with, we're seeing a lot more folks who are just having conflicts or complaints from neighbors in certain areas of state and that will help with that and that can be a big issue with shutting down what kind of nuisance reports, right? I mean we sort of, when we imagine Vermont and especially Vermont in the winter, forestry is a big part of what goes out in this state but what kind of nuisance complaints are farmers getting? They're oftentimes essentially like noise. Noise, yeah. Kate Bowen gave some great testimony on this bill. She farms down in, I believe, Putney with her family and I'd encourage folks, you can find that testimony on the Royal Vermont website, I believe, or our Facebook page at the very least. So there's been a number of great folks coming to testify who are working in the forestry community, either as foresters or as farms who are doing some forestry as part of their farm operation and I think that line between forestry and farm is getting blurred and for a good reason because these are both people, groups of people working on the working landscape, making a living from the land. Seasonal sort of adjusting. Yeah and having to manage not just your land in relation to what you're growing but also to your community and facing the repercussions of impacts of your business on the community. Is this primarily sort of firewood, lumber, building materials? I think a lot of nuisance complaints have come from firewood operations. Yeah, sort of small-scale firewood operations where you might be selling cords to your neighbors. And can you talk a little bit about Royal Vermont's position on these, to sort of talk specifically about these bills? I mean we've been basically supportive of these bills and I think believe in general that these are a step in the right direction should they actually come to pass. Is that jive with what your understanding is? Yeah, the right to forestry bill and the ag enterprise bill I think are the two bills we really see as having a positive impact especially for small-scale producers but really for people in the working lands in general. When we get to other bills, the hemp pilot program was something that we were, Royal Vermont's worked on hemp over time and we saw this as a potential bill because it really would seek to create a program at the agency bag which would allow farmers to research or easily research and grow and find processing equipment for this industry. And at this point we don't have that carved out at the agency. The hemp bill however has gone from a standalone bill to a part of a larger bill called the Royal Economic Development Bill which has gotten bogged down. So as an organization we look to hemp not necessarily for a number of reasons for fibers, for medicines, for oils as a potential product that could help Vermont growers. There's certainly been some concerns around industrial hemp in Vermont as well. It has a commodity crop but in general we think that hemp should be grown like a lot of other crops, there's a lot of great value to it and from a rotation crop to a fiber plant, etc. It's just been an issue we've been working on for a while and we're hoping to push this. Just to rewind a little bit just in case our listeners aren't sure what's the current status of growing hemp in Vermont. We get this question a lot at the office and so I think it's not really readily available to the public in terms of what the laws say right now about hemp production. Sure. So Vermont is one of the few states, Kentucky and South Dakota among others that have provided some means of farmers being allowed to grow agricultural hemp. So at this point farmers are allowed to grow in the state of Vermont but federally hemp is still considered associated with cannabis and a drug which could be so if the federal government saw fit they could certainly come in and do as they saw fit with a hemp operation is my understanding currently and there's both, there's a federal effort now actually by some of the more conservative lawmakers, I think Mitch McConnell, representative of Kentucky has recently proposed legislation federally which would make hemp no longer a drug and the state legislation would make it easier for people in the state to access seeds, to access research and to essentially convert what they can do now they're allowed to grow in the state into more readily create a product out of it and market it and research what's in the product, the integrity of the product. Has there been a lot of support from Vermonters for this hemp, Bill? No, like you said I think we've gotten more calls at the office about hemp over the last year than almost anything else and it's often times from growers who are interested or also people who own a facility that someone wants to use for processing so the interest is there and I think we've also heard like I said some concerns from people about just being displaced through another industrial commodity crop. So that's what I was going to ask you about because it seems like there is a lot of movement and sort of positive energy around hemp in the state right now but we've also heard from a handful of people about the potential for sort of unintended consequences of this popularity which is that concern for displacing perhaps some small scale grain operations or other agricultural operations for the production of hemp. Is that something you can expand on a little? It sounds like you're certainly familiar with that possibility or with those concerns. Yes, specifically heard from a couple of folks. One, a small vegetable farmer who's been leasing land and was told by the person they were leasing from that in the coming season they want to lease all that land out to hemp farmers and that person's made to find new land and from a bread baker who is concerned with Vermont based grains supplies and to some extent I think from an organizational perspective it's sort of like corn. I think there's 90,000 acres in Vermont or something in corn right now and as a commodity crop it clearly takes up a lot of space and it's responsible for a lot of the pesticide. Sure, there's a lot of management issues associated with corn which have environmental impacts or human health impacts or wildlife health impacts and I think in a sense like whether it's hemp or corn or other annual commodity crops we have to look at them as an organization we can support saying yes of course you have the right to grow corn or you have the right to have the right to grow hemp but how you grow it and how it integrates with the rest of our social and agricultural ecology needs to be considered as well so that we can have healthy thriving farms that aren't just dominated by an industry or one crop. So it's just not another replacement for large scale corn production so we can still have local grains and have a veggie farmer be able to find land to grow on. I'm curious where things are at with the there's been I think over the years a couple of different itinerations of a regenerative ag bill and I know that there's something at least in process right now and maybe you could just touch on that real briefly. Absolutely. I actually testified last week I think in the Senate Agriculture Committee about this so over the last few years like Ben said there's been a few different quote-unquote regenerative ag or regenerative soils bills out and rural Vermont has certainly been supportive and excited about testimony we've seen in the state house conversations we've seen within and without the state house that regard just that people are beginning to become more aware of the potential positive impacts of agricultural methods from sequestering carbon to protecting and improving water quality to improving wildlife habitat to you know growing more nutrition in foods so we're glad that those conversations are happening and people see that but the the challenge has been you know how are we going to incentivize producers to take on these practices and what's come forth have been a couple of different certification efforts last year there was a regenerative soils certification and this year there was an attempt to get the new Rodale Organic add-on in places law in Vermont and you know both of these certifications would require certifying bodies which requires funding and we also felt this organization that we really need to understand what how do farmers and community members in Vermont want to define regenerative is it just going to be about soil health isn't going to talk about farm worker quality of life in the social regenerative nature of things is it going to talk about economic regenerative quality like are you able to sustain yourself economically are you dependent on something else and if it is just going to be about ecological regeneration then what are the qualities we need to be measuring and is there real has there been enough stakeholder input on it and from our perspective over the last couple years the bills that we opposed didn't have enough stakeholder input this year what's happened is this Vermont environmental stewardship program which is a program that the agency of agriculture has been running it's a pilot program it's been in the works for a couple years I think this is the first year they're going to roll out with it they've substituted that program into as the regenerative ag piece of legislation so essentially it would make it would codify this program as a not just an agency of ag program but as a legislatively endorsed program which takes about 10 to 12 people per year and if you comply and you come in alignment with all their tests for environmental quality then you get a sign on your farm and like my testimony was essentially that you know rural Vermont is not going to stand in the way of this program we think any program out there that has some decent ways of improving farm practices and if farmers want to engage with those programs we're not going to stand in the way but in general we feel like the crisis is such environmentally in relation to agriculture and socially, economically in relation to agriculture that we need more than this we need real incentives that actually compensate farmers for the values that they are creating in terms of water or in terms of soil or in terms of animal health or nutrition and also that whole people accountable if they're doing the detrimentally so you know how it's just not enough and we don't have the answer to what that needs to look like but that's the conversation we need to be having in our opinion It gets back to our original conversation about farm viability Yeah I was just hearing you talk about that you know trying to develop that mechanism for acknowledging and maybe even compensating farmers for that value it occurs to me that we talk a lot about the ways in which our economy tends to externalize the environmental costs associated with you know more industrialized forms of agriculture but we're also sort of perhaps externalizing the environmental benefits in the sense that we aren't even acknowledging or recognizing those for people who are actually whose practices are actually nurturing to the environment and mitigating climate change and healing the land and building soil you know those benefits you know they stay with the farmer but they're much larger than that too they're really a benefit to society and community benefits and we're also externalizing that in the sense that we're not acknowledging it and we're seeing the repercussions of that right now with the lake and otherwise sure from decades you know I don't think we can expect to clean it up in a matter of just a couple years and just to say you know because you're mentioning some of these things that make me think you know one of the things we also said in testimony on this bill was that and we've said for a few years we really need methods of compensating people who are already exemplary farms because a lot of NRCS funding and otherwise goes to farms that really need to improve their methods and I should say rightly so you know farms that have problems should really be need to be improving those problems there should be funding but also folks who are doing that work and have been from the beginning are not being compensated and don't have any method for continuing to be incentivized to do those practices or in that sense they're losing their farm viability and they're not there's no compensation outside of potentially organic certification or some other label and in terms of a new label we just haven't figured out if that's really the path that farmers want to take to get compensated for this right and I think as an organization we have been a little bit agnostic on the issue of more certification you know I think it's probably safe to say that we're not generally speaking have not been necessarily supportive of adding yet further certification processes to the plate of farms that are often really over extended as it is unless there are really really very very clear benefits and do you see this where do you see this regenerative ag bill the one that's moving through right now is this still primarily a soils bill similar to the ones that have preceded it and does it have legs as you mentioned earlier yeah no I think it does it's interesting I don't think any no one wants to stand in the way of a program that could potentially improve practices I think but at the same time most people who are testifying are saying this isn't enough and this bill certainly focuses exclusively on soil health and ecological measures of regeneration or sustainability and again those are really good things to be measuring and I think there should be a broader discussion on what are the metrics we're going to use to balance to measure this for our standard because if we're going to say these are like the best of the best are the tests actually showing that are we just sort of making mediocrity the sort of best so if somebody who's listening wants to have some input in this bill or in the other bills that are shaken right now how would they go about doing that sure well there's a few different ways if you are specifically interested in a particular bill you can I think number one you can call or email Role Vermont and ask to talk to myself Graham or I think that'd be the best and I can either directly talk with you about how you can get involved that may be that may include giving testimony in person it may include giving testimony written if you are not someone who wants she feels like that's the way you can participate there's certainly other opportunities in which you can support our organization at helping to get more people's voices heard on this issue as well so I'd say just start by contacting us and we can direct you as best we can based on your own interests and skills that's great and if you have specific questions about other bills or other work that Role Vermont is doing or you want to see us doing feel free to email rvr at RoleVermont.org that inbox has been flooded by the way Koto I'm having a hard time waiting through all the queries but we will get to yours I promise so yeah please be in touch if you have questions or comments Graham thank you for your time and we'll definitely have you once the session maybe wraps up we'll have you back on and to sort of get the lay of the land at that point can I speak to one other bill please do yeah I know I was trying to be short but the pollinator there's a pollinator protection bill that I thought would be worth mentioning just because it's something that's been happening for a few years on and off you know members of the community have not have felt like bills have been insufficient and at this point this would be a bill we'd love to that you can make your voice heard right now on at the state house this bill is currently let me just check really quickly I believe it's still in the senate ag committee and it's been changed to H904 if you're interested so this is the pollinator protection bill and it specifically seeks to regulate neonicotinoid pesticides in the state and it's been incredibly weakened throughout the session and we're sensitive to farm viability issues associated with the cost of seed and challenges that farms have because they've sort of grown into via the industry the use of neonicotinoid treated seeds but homeowners as well across the state for treating ornamentals have been using this and the evidence points to not just significant pollinator damage but also broader insect and ecological damage associated with these pesticides and the bills a little weak light in that right now it originally asked for it required that seed dealers not only carry treated seed but also untreated seed which actually makes it possible for farmers and other growers to choose untreated seed but that provision has been struck so at this point it's really just a bill calling for a public education campaign around neonicotinoids adjudicated by the agency of agriculture and there's not much else to it right now so given that what would people be should people be doing sure it's again in touch with the pesticide action network or ourselves at rural Vermont we can direct you to some there's some letters going around circling which is suggesting some new language to be added to the bills specifically language which was recommended highly by the pollinator protection committee which was a legislative legislatively convened committee to address this issue and their recommendations have really not been being addressed or listened to so we could help direct you to petitions to sign on to evidence if you're looking just to learn more about the topic we can get you we can hopefully get you in to provide testimony about something you're interested in but I really just wanted to make this bill make you aware of this bill because it's something that our community's been interested in over the years and there's another iteration of it right now and it's just not sufficient and so people's input could be really valuable here as the bill gets stripped away absolutely it becomes less powerful absolutely we're seeing other interests sort of strip it away and if you feel like your voice if you want to make your voice heard now as an opportunity and is that sort of lobbyist for that are stripping away some of the protections or you know I would have to pass on who specifically has been giving testimony I know that there have been some feed dealer organizations and they're giving testimony you can see agriculture's been giving testimony but I'd defer that question to our consultant Andrew yeah awesome thanks again Graham so that email again Coco is RVR at realvermont.org and we would love to hear from you and I think I believe in our next episode we are going to be joined by Lindsay Harris going to have Lindsay yeah so she'll be talking to us about what's going on in Tunbridge and she's someone who's I think operation and livelihood really has been directly impacted by previous legislative sessions and what has resulted from those sessions so it'll be really interesting to talk to her about that impact on her farm and livelihood so thanks again Graham thank you Coco and thank you all see you soon