 Good morning, everybody. This is Representative Carolyn Partridge, and it is the 27th of January 2021. And we are very fortunate today to have many folks from several agencies to talk about working land, the working lands enterprise initiative, but I'd like to start off by having us introduce ourselves our committees. And so I'll start by, I'll go around the tiles that I can see. And I'm going to start with Terry Norris. I'm Terry Norris. I represent Benson Orwell, Shoreman Whiting. Thank you. And Heather, Heather's one of our new members. Well, Heather Superna, I represent Barnard, Pomfret, Quiche and West Hartford. Great. And another one of our new members, Henry Pearl. Yeah, Henry Pearl. I represent Danville, Peacham and Cadet. Alrighty. And thank you. And John O'Brien. Where do we have three committees on here, Carolyn? Yes. Okay, right. So I'm Hal Sag. I'm John O'Brien. I represent Royalton in my hometown of Tunbridge. Thank you. And Rodney Graham. I'm Rodney Graham. I represent Williamstown, Washington, Orange, Current, Bereshire and Chelsea. All right. Thank you. And Vicki. Hello, I'm on the ag committee and I live in Albany and serve seven towns in Orleans, Caledonia one. Thanks Vicki. And Tom, I think you're the last person on our committee. I'm Tom Bach. I represent the towns of Chester and over Baltimore and part of North Springfield. Yeah. Thanks Tom. And well, hold on. I just want to say who I represent Bobby. Carolyn Partridge. I represent the towns of Athens, Brooklyn, Grafton, part of Northwest Minster, all of Rockingham and my hometown of Wyndham. Thank you. Thanks, Bobby. And I'm Bobby Starr. I represent Orleans, Essex County and our committee knows how to introduce themselves. So go ahead guys, introduce yourselves. Hi, I'm Chris Pearson from the Chittenden District Vice Chair of Senate Ag. Great to be with everyone. Hi, I'm Anthony Polita. I represent Washington County, Senate Ag. Brian Collamore from Rutland District. And this is my third term on Senate Ag. Corey Parent representing Franklin County in Albert. This is my first go around on Senate Ag. Yeah, thank you. And we'll move on to representative Marcot. Thank you, Senator Starr. I'm Michael Marcott. I represent Coventry, Irisburg, Newport City, Newport Town and Troy. And I chair the House Committee on Commerce and Economic Development. And Charlie. I'm Charlie Kimball, representative from Woodstock, representing Woodstock, Redding and Plymouth. Vice Chair. Stephanie. Morning, Stephanie Jerome. I represent Brandon, Pittsburgh and Sudbury and I'm the ranking member. Lynn. I represent St. Albans Town. I've been in the legislature since 2009 and I've spent most of my time on commerce. Warren. Did you say Warren? I did Warren. Okay. I'm Warren Kitzmacher. I represent my failure. And it's good to be back on commerce and economic development after a few bienniums up in Govox. Good morning, everybody. It's Paul Martin. I represent Franklin Five, which is the towns of Franklin Highgate, Berkshire and Richford. I'm a first term legislator. Emma. Morning, everyone. I'm Emma Mulvaney-Sanek. I'm a first term legislator from Burlington. I represent half of the Old North End and half of the New North End. Glad to see everyone. Logan. Michael representing Ludlow, Mount Ollie and Shrewsbury. This is my second term. Last session I was on human services. Michael. Hi, Michael Nigro. I represent Bennington. And this is my first term. Patrick. Hey, I'm Patrick Seymour. I represent Sutton Burke and Linden. And this is my second term I was on judiciary. And Kirk. I'm Kirk White. I'm a first term legislator. I live in Bethel. I represent Bethel, Rochester, Stockbridge and Pittsfield. And I am clerk of the Commerce Committee. That's our crew. Just want to thank you, Chair Partridge and Chair Steyer for allowing my committee to join you this morning. I think the working lands has been not just for you all, but for commerce. A very important program. And we're interested in hearing more about it. Thank you. Right. Well, thanks Mike and thanks for it. It's so great to have so many folks here. And so what I'd like to do now, we got good news from the governor yesterday in that there's $3 million in part of that's one time money. To be devoted to the program, but I'd like to turn it over to Anson and Anson. Could you tell us, are you going to be here for the whole time? Are you going to be introducing folks? We really appreciate you being here today. Thank you. It is great to be here. And I do have to scoot about 11 o'clock. The governor's having a news conference today and they want me on standby to talk about working lands because of the announcement that you just made. And I'll have a little bit more on that. So it is great to be here. I'll be introducing some folks down the line. We have some producers and farmers that have taken part in this program. And they are the kind of the stars of this show and we'll get to them a little later in the program. But first, a little bit of background. It's great to have the Commerce Committee with us as well. We're working very closely with Secretary Curley and everyone at Commerce. One of our missions is to break down the silos and state government. And we've done that working closely through this pandemic with Commerce. So it's great to have you all with us. And I think you'll enjoy our presentation of how important this is to Vermont. So again, thank you for your support of working lands. This program is about helping people. Helping places and helping our communities who make their living off the land. We are thankful for your continued support of this program since 2012. Yes, 2012. It's invested in all 14 counties funding $7 million in projects, leveraging about $11 million, helping over 241 businesses, impressive numbers. Between 2012 and 2018 investments created over 500 new jobs and sales revenues of over $36 million. That's impressive work and commitment to our communities. This year, the governor is proposing historic funding for working lands. The governor, as he mentioned yesterday, has proposed investing $3.5 million in this program. We've never seen this kind of investment in one year. We hope you'll endorse this, tell your colleagues this will grow Vermont's economy, make it more affordable and protect the most vulnerable. The need is there so we can, we can speak to the need here because the board reviewed over 180 applications with a total ask of over $6.8 million last year so you can see the need is there. And this program is successful because of those behind the scenes who have put their heart and soul behind this. And one of those is Deputy Eastman who's joining us via YouTube. We thank Deputy Eastman for chairing our board and helping us get through all the work over the year and so forth. And also the dedication of board members. And the independent board that reviews all the applications that come before us, and that's done from a number of folks. One person we want to thank is Ella Chapin Ella who has worked with hundreds of farmers and producers over the years as decided to move on from farm sustainability, but her commitment to Vermont in this program is meaningful, and will continue for years to come. So we salute Ella, and which we know she'll continue to support her community over her new journey so thank you Ella Chapin for your service to the board and to the service for Vermonters. I also have another person that's going to be leaving the board, and that is Eric DeLuca. A big thank you to Eric. He's been with with working lands for a number of years. His term is expired, but Eric, Eric has done a tremendous job, leading this program, getting his hands dirty, and so forth. And so we really appreciate his work on that. So those are a couple of things I just overview of the program. I do want to turn it over to the manager of this. You know, linear Schmolar does a lot of work with her team at the agency where it's managed, and I want to turn it over to Lynn Ellen who has some more thoughts and will continue with our program Lynn Ellen. Good morning. I'm Lynn Schmolar. I'm the program manager for the working lands enterprise initiative. Thanks for your continued support of the agriculture and forest drivers of Vermont's economic development, providing jobs impacting a crusader blade, and ensuring our rural economies flourish. It's a real pleasure to work so closely with the working lands enterprise board, brought working lands businesses, and an honor to store this important program nested within the agency of agriculture food and markets. As a daughter of a former independent grocer, I'm a long time participant in supply chain activities. And so understand the incredible dedication and behind the scenes complexity involved for forest based business or food producer to get goods to the shelves. Before arriving to the agency a couple years ago I was director of purchasing and merchandising at city market in Burlington. In the role at that co op I collaborated with the National Carpers grocers on co op market expansion around New England, whose shelves in fact slot many of the products produced by the working lands current and past grantees. From increasing value at production to market development to hoop house construction improvements to wood manufacturing facility upgrade fiscal year 2020. The lack of direct disruption was no exception to the diverse group of enterprises that we have continues to decisively invest in. I know you'll enjoy hearing from the working lands enterprise board and working on businesses today. And I want to thank you again for your good work and service to the state of Vermont. Thank you, Len Allen. It's, it's just impressive work that you and the team of the agency and across the other agencies across state government have done with this program. It's been a really difficult year as we know in the middle of this pandemic but we've done some impressive work over the years. I do think it's now time if Eric is with us Eric to Luca as I mentioned Eric has been with us, and he has decided to move on off the board but over, I think it's nine plus years Eric's been with us. His commitment to agriculture in the state of Vermont is impressive. And Eric, I'm going to, I'm going to turn it over to you now. You've been the vice chair of this of this panel and I'm going to turn it over for you for some thoughts, Eric. Thank you, Anson. I wanted to thank all of the legislators that have been part of supporting this program throughout its history from the ones who helped to get it created through its launch and development and then welcoming the new folks who are with us today to share this story and if people do have further questions over time I want to encourage them to reach out to the now and or any of the other public sector leaders to learn more. I think, could we go to the, the, the next slide. So, you know, this program, when it first launched had an overwhelming response from the businesses in the in the working lands economy of Vermont that that first year. We had nearly 400 applications for about $10 million. We had around $1 million to put on the ground so that was a really strong indicator that this was something that was needed and a great opportunity for impact. Over time we refined our approach and also the businesses and the service providers that help the businesses got increasingly clear on how they could communicate with us and target the types of impact that would make the biggest difference. What we've tried to do is to take a portfolio approach to how we help businesses and at the core of that is our capacity to give grants to businesses that's a relatively rare form of capital to be able to provide and those grant dollars when we've spoken with them to other lenders and capital providers in the system. Folks have consistently said that this is the best and highest use of our funds because it is something that that difficult or impossible for just about any other kind of capital provider to make available to businesses and that money and its impact on the balance sheet of those businesses can help unlock other capital and I'll be talking a little bit more about some of the leverage of the public dollars that we've been able to achieve with our investments. For businesses we help businesses based on their scale and their stage of development and the markets that they serve. We have given small grants directly to businesses that help that business to get to the next stage of development. We've given larger grants to businesses that their work helps a whole supply chain and helps many smaller producers to access markets. Over the last couple of years at it particularly for the low grade wood market and the dairy sector larger grants that really can help with the with the market itself for the sector. But in addition to that we have funded service provider organizations and we've refined our strategy over the years for doing that including partnering with statewide track record service providers who can have long term relationships with businesses to help them meet their goals for learning and business assistance as they grow. And then also a category for smaller grants for innovative and pilot programs. For example this year we're about to fund a program that works with networks of black indigenous and people of color communities to help reach farmers from those communities. And in addition to that we have done some research and development over the years going back to our first fiscal year when we got together to look at the strategy we realized that as this program grows over time. More money might be moving through the program and we wanted to look at the range of ways that we could deploy dollars and one of the ways that we came up with by analyzing capital gaps and opportunities was to partner with other financial institutions. And enable them to get money to businesses in targeted ways. You're going to hear from Sarah isham from Vita shortly. We partnered with them to do an organic transition loan program at a point in time where there were opportunities for organic carries. And when you look at the impact of those dollars. It costs less than $3,000 of the public working lands dollars to retain a job in those farms for every public dollar that we put into Vita over $18 hit the ground helping a business. And another example of one of the pilots that came out of our R&D work was the Sprout program that Vermont Community Loan Fund has offered. In that case, to create a job it costs between $5,000 and $6,000 of working lands public dollars and to retain a job less than $4,000 for every working lands dollar that went into BCLF for the Sprout program over $5 hit the ground to help a business. So I think that those are pretty, pretty impressive numbers in terms of impact and job creation, looking at the data that I have available for the business grants that we've done over the years. It costs less than $14,000 of public dollars to create one job. So I think if you look at public programs federal or state, that's a pretty good level of impact. One of the ways that we do our work is through committees. This Enterprise Financing Options Committee on this slide is one example of that. The committees are helpful in part because they bring together our three public sector agencies as well as our ex-officio non-voting members, Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund, the Housing and Conservation Board and Vita, as well as the different private sector board members to bring their expertise involved. In the interest of time, I'm going to stop there and move on to Mike, but I just wanted to say that, you know, Mike Snyder was with this program since the beginning and we've had other folks like Sam Lincoln from Forest Parks and Recreation who've been great helps. But one of the things been a great joy for me serving with this program since it started has been to see the work that we've been able to do to support the forest sector and the forest economy. And we helped to get the forest viability program to get some of the good technical assistance that farms had been receiving for years. And we did the initial systems analysis that led to the creation of the forest network that Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund has been serving as a backbone for. And the so much that the forest sector has had over the last couple of years have been a great opportunity to run into Mike in the hallway and just share how much that sector has developed in terms of the interrelationships among the businesses in the sector that the communication between the and the public sector so it's just been great to see that in action and how these strategic investments and community building has really had an effect within the forest and wood product sector so with that I want to hand it off to Michael I believe you all know. And I just quickly interrupt Eric this is, is this on our website, our web page. Yeah. Okay, great. Thanks Linda. Go ahead Michael. Thanks. Madam chair and thank, thank you all good morning thanks all for your interest and for your ongoing support for the working lands enterprise initiative as some of you know, or I've heard me say before I like to say when we make when Vermonters make their world class food and forest products. And when we invest in them and their businesses. We invest in the best of Vermont and so, having been here as Eric said since the very beginning. I just want to note my appreciation it's just so wonderful to see progress, collaboration and support across, you know, the legislature and the administration and within the administration breaking down silos and secretaries have it said so it's a really great example and I'm really pleased to be here to help share in celebrating that and the people who has answered said are the real stars of the show. Also thank you Eric for your introduction and if I could, for your years of service leadership and many contributions it's greatly appreciated. And I would like to acknowledge me one more I'd like to also it's important to thank our staff. In particular Matt Langlis our Essex County Caldonia County Forester, who is our lead staff in support of our role here, and has served as my designee when I'm not able, and I greatly appreciate math service and input as well I'd like to give a shout out of appreciation to Sam Lincoln, former deputy who left state service that late this fall after nearly four years, and during which he was just a great teammate and made many, many important contributions so I want to just give that shout out to Sam who recently left us. And finally, another note of appreciation I think on behalf of the whole board is that we continue to be grateful for the ongoing consistent philanthropic support from Schevermont using their fifth grade passport program as a revenue stream. Schevermont's intentional focus on supporting the Working Lands Enterprise Fund is, you know, $60,000 I think to date. And it recognizes I think it's a really nice example of the synergies and the overlap with our working lands and our recreation economy, that they're, they're compatible and synergistic, and that's a really nice way to show that we appreciate that. Now, a few comments focused on the recent work of the board and staff and the Working Lands Enterprise Initiative. And let's see Linda if you could please move to slide for this is slide for great. So the additional fiscal 20 allocation that provided market level industry impact investments that added a mid tier opportunity with supply chain impact investments while including our traditional standard business grants that's noted here on the slide and like point to font I think so, but I've covered that for you there. And Linda if you could move us to slide five please. I just wanted to highlight some of the investments in the forest economy shown here, listed and shown, importantly, in a range of categories. This is an investment from the Working Lands Fund $20,000 to leap this is the logger education to advance professionalism, providing upgrades to their current website allowing improved promotion and tracking of logger trainings, more timely certification data for loggers and others seeking certified logging professionals this is really important for safety and a culture of professionalism in our logging sector, and is a critical component to our recent modifications and improvements and reductions in workers compensation insurance costs for this sector through professionalism and training so that support has significant impact, even at a at that level. Another example of the boards recent effort to scale up investments was a $150,000 grant to Rick Kesterson the owner and operator of Rick's Firewood in Hyde Park. He has increased production capabilities and raw material storage and improving waste storage in a in a kind of a key function there so pleased with that and proud of that kind of outcome, and another type of investment has been in the forest business school addressing a need that's been addressed among business owners who have he's a master the production and day to day operations in their sawmill, for example, but want to make better decisions about business growth investments etc. So that's another way of supporting through that kind of business coaching and assistance as as we've said before so many of these working lands businesses are so busy working in their business that it's difficult and challenging to work on their business and this kind of investment helps them work on their businesses to make them better and more productive more competitive. And so, in my attempt to get us maybe close to on time, I'm going to close there and turn it over to introduce Ted Brady, Deputy Secretary of Commerce and Community Development and ask Linda to advance the slides. Thank you all very much. Thank you so much Commissioner Snyder, low committee members chair people. It's great to see all of you. Ted Brady from the Agency of Commerce here. I want to first lead off by saying what you've created here and what you've worked with ag, and that team at ag to build has really created an economic engine and economic assistance program that's unparalleled and state One, we recognize it recognizes that the food farm in forest economy is the economic engine of rural Vermont. And so it's our moral moral responsibility to invest the limited state resources we have in these rural places and kudos to all of you for championing that cause. I also want to start off by saying COVID-19 has decimated the food, food, farm and forest businesses as much as it decimated so many other sectors. When you think about restaurants that are closing to disturbing the supply, the demand side of the equation for farmers. When you think about retailers that are shuttering supplying the demand side. Never mind the supply side of staffing and all these things that all of our farms and our lawyers have had to go through. So I want to tell the story about how your investment helped these businesses overcome and adapt to this crisis. And also how your investment helped Vermonters respond to an enormous disruption in the supply chain and redefine Vermonters relationship to food. So right when the crisis started, we, the board knew that we needed to do something to help these businesses. And obviously we didn't have the CRF money yet. We didn't have a large influx of funding from the state yet. And so we redeployed $250,000 and if you look at the slide in front of you. Now, this was the $250,000 of we live money that we redeployed to be responsive to COVID-19 related business needs. We made 16 business grants and one service provider grant and they're all listed on this sheet here. But these are things to try to help cure some of those problems in the food supply chain going forward. It's meant to help businesses grow instead of shrink through the crisis. And we managed to deploy this money in a timely fashion. Now as you all remember back to the longest legislative session in the history. Thanks to the CRF money, you folks were kind enough to appropriate us not one when I say us I mean the working lands enterprise board not one but two appropriations of CRF money. One was 2.5 million, if you could advance me to the next slide please. One was $2.5 million to the agency of commerce to work with the we live folks to make some magic happen. And that is represented I believe in the left hand picture of Vermont, all the investments that were made with that $2.5 million the agency simply executed a MOA with the we live with with ag I'm sorry, and we managed to put that money through the we live process and make $2.5 million worth of investments in agriculture food forest and wood products industries. And finally after in a separate bill I believe an h966 I'm sorry I have I think I might have these backwards yeah and h961 and h961 I have them backwards the h966 the one to the right is the 2.5 million, the one to the left is h961 which was another $2.5 million that you folks appropriated to we live and made investments. I threw the agency of agriculture is greater coven 19 agriculture assistance program. So these were made in combined with the other ag assistance programs you put out there. Just to say, thanks to you, the state had a body that was able to respond quickly and himbly and effectively to businesses that were struggling. As a reminder, the food forest and would product sector. No represents more than 80,000 people who have jobs in the sector, which let's not forget that that's not 80,000 out of 600,000 that's 80,000 out of a workforce of about 300,000. So it's an enormous number. And Eric said it before. But it's worth saying again, I really don't believe there's a more effective program out there for the cost that we invest for creating or saving a job and making some economic magic happen. So with that I'll turn it over to another person that makes a lot of magic happen in the economic world which is Ellen Kaylor from the Vermont sustainable jobs fund. Good morning. Nice to see you all. I have been asked to share a little bit about the ex officio seats on the board. As established in the workplace enterprise fund statute. There are three ex officio seats that do not rotate off the board, and are not members of the administration. And they include Vita from on housing conservation board and the Vermont sustainable jobs fund of which I'm the executive director of. Today, together we provide some consistency and some historical knowledge over time, as well as really deep expertise in the working land sector as a whole. And we help and assist the full board then as we consider strategic investments in the farm food, wood and forest products sectors. So it's important to know, however, and Eric mentioned this in his remarks that we are non voting members. So while we can provide guidance and sector specific information to the full board. We don't actually get to vote on any of the grants that the board makes. And we're okay with that. The Vermont sustainable jobs fund was included as an ex officio member because in 2009, the legislature asked my organization to create and manage the farm to plate investment program. And for the purpose of writing the farm to plate strategic plan. So, as soon as with the soon to be released farm to plate plan 2.0, which many of you are actually awaiting, as we are waiting, giving it to you. This includes 34 priority strategies and very informative briefs across an array of food system related products markets and issues. And the board then will have even more good Intel and market information to help guide funding decisions in the years ahead. So the, the farm to plate strategic plan provides real foundational information that then helps guide the board in its decision making on the farm food sector. In 2014, as Mike mentioned the board decided that the forest products industry would benefit from some kind of analysis or plan, like the farm and food sector has had to help guide its grant making in the forest related grant projects area. So the board appropriated $100,000 that year and tasks and a newly created forestry committee to hire consultants and conduct a stakeholder engagement process and to develop an analysis of what the industry most needs. So that was completed in the spring of 2019 the forest sector analysis. And it's been used as a guiding document by the board as it annually evaluates how to prioritize its investment strategy across the sector. So one of the recommendations that came out of that report was to develop a forest industry network and various value chain forest value chain projects as a means of strengthening that industry. So much of this work is now being funded by we lab through a contract with the Vermont sustainable jobs one, along with other foundations and NBRC funding that we're able to raise. And we're doing this all very much in high level coordination with all of the other stakeholder organizations that are supporting the industry. So that's a little bit of background of sort of the fact that there are these ex officio members on the board and I want to turn it over to Ella Chapin and Sarah Isham who also serve on in the that capacity along with me on the board and I should say, along with Eric we are the longest serving board members we've all been on since the very beginning days and 2012. So it's been a real pleasure and real honor to serve in this way and I think we have continued to make really really smart investments in our working lands businesses and I'm very grateful for all the support that you guys have all given over the years. So with that, Ella Chapin please. Thank you, Ellen. Hello, everyone. Thanks for having us and spending this time talking about the wonderful outcomes of the working lands enterprise board over the years. Again, for the record my name is Ella Chapin and I run the Vermont farm and forest viability program at Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, and soon to be moving on in March, and to be succeeded by Liz Gleason, some of you know, who's been working with me for 10 years on the farm, so there'll be some good continuity there. In terms of VHCV seat on the board, I just wanted to share a little bit of context around how sort of VHCV's role for the state managing the viability program and business technical assistance through our network of business technical assistance providers. So it's been pretty essential for we lab and the farm to plate work and the viability networks to really coordinate a lot of the business technical assistance and it's been a role that that I and we have played on the with we lab over time. It's, you know, we, the viability program manages state investments along with federal funds out to, you know, a network at this point about eight to nine organizations that either work regionally statewide providing in depth business technical assistance to farm and forestry sector businesses. And, you know, those nonprofit organizations are really focused on providing high quality services their staff is very much available and working immediately with producers and so we end up sort of representing that work and there's a lot of funds state and federal funds to that network at sort of, you know, these kinds of planning levels statewide so it's been great to be able to be a conduit of information between those organizations and the work of the we lab board. And since really the inception of the we lab board there's been, but there in the early years of the board there was very clear sentiment from, you know, sort of citizen members and ex officio members and other members of the board very early on that business technical assistance was a really important thing to invest in and that, even though we have as a state invested well in sort of the capital providers and the business technical assistance and production technical assistance providers that are out there. It's a great foundation it's in fact, you know the foundation set up in Vermont to help particularly the agricultural industry is the envy of most states across the nation in many ways, especially for supporting such a range of business types and scales. It's an exceptional foundation already when we have started but there was there's always an ongoing need to further add capacity and and follow the developments and ag and forestry industry as business types and business models change, sometimes rapidly, like we're seeing right now. The we lab board really very early on recognized that the majority of people that they were making in grants to really have been through one of these business technical assistance programs and we needed more of that work. I'd say also with the recent investments in dairy grants and and other grant programs to provide relief during the pandemic. I know the agency and we have all you know really agency bag stuff and and our viability teams have really noticed a clear need for even just basic record keeping with many businesses in order to access the relief programs at the state and federal levels that it exist out there so there's just an ongoing need to continue to adapt our business and production technical assistance to the changing needs of the agricultural and forestry sectors. I want to note just the role that we let staff have played in directing businesses that are applying for grants to different technical assistance providers and coordinating with our viability network and others. And knowing that while many businesses come in and receive grants if they really have the foundation of a business plan and are really ready to access that capital. Others get sort of pointed in the direction of the viability program or other technical assistance providers, and then are able to come and be in a better place with our business and ready to take on a new project and the capital that comes with that. So we've seen that routinely over the years. And we love has made a lot of investments in business technical assistance as you've already heard, including a $50,000 investment at the beginning of the pandemic. And as folks talked about about redeploying some of the we live assets, 50,000 of that, as some of you know came to the viability program to stand up a brand new cove recovery rapid recovery response program and we served over 500 businesses over the course of the nine months of the year to roll through December, and that $50,000 investment that we live enabled that program to stand up and then was was able to take advantage of the coronavirus relief funding that you all approved for that program for the second half of the calendar year. So I think I'll stop there, there is a need to really increase business technical assistance and other kinds of technical assistance that you'll see in the, in the strategic plan that's coming to you in a week or two from Ellen shop and the agency of our culture, calling for many more people on the ground to be doing business and other types of technical assistance. And we are all looking for ways to continue to advance this and make the investments necessary to do so. And I am turning it over to Sarah Aisham at Vita back who has been a longtime partner at we live as well as on the viability board. Thanks Sarah. Thank you Ella and thank you for the opportunity to speak with you this morning. Hi, I am Sarah Aisham, I'm the director of our cultural and forestry lending and Vermont economic development authority, and I serve as the designate for CEO Cassie Palhina. The economic development authority as an ex official member of the We Working Lands Enterprise Board has allowed for partnering and leveraging opportunities. We also we collaborate closely with a Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund, and have referred many farmers and forestry business operators to the farm and forest viability program so there's a lot of synergies here. This role in providing financing to farm and forest based businesses to enhance Vermont's economy has allowed the Working Lands Enterprise Board and Vita to work collaboratively and identifying gaps barriers and opportunities for these industries. Working Lands Enterprise Initiative is unique because it invests in the businesses and organizations that are keystones to support our working lands economy. Without these organizations that are the key, without these enterprises and organizations, other businesses would not have the same access to markets or growth potential. The Working Lands Enterprise Board consistently provides grants to businesses and from time to time philanthropically supports financial institutions to provide innovative financing tools that leverage public dollars to address system gaps and opportunities. So doing the Working Lands Enterprise Board complements the day-to-day work of Vermont lenders, and we were fortunate to be able to benefit from this pilot program and provide the organic transition program, which you have seen on the slide. And I very much appreciate this working relationship that we have. And with that, I would like to turn it over to Secretary Tethers. Thank you very much. And thank you to all our presenters and now we want to turn it over to some of the people that have really been on the ground and have been recipients of grants in the past. We're going to take you through regions of Vermont across the state of Vermont. We're going to go to Brookfield. We're going to scoot over to Granville and up to Stainard and then scoot over to East Hardwick and over to Pittsburgh. So I'm going to introduce someone that you're probably familiar with because you probably had some of their fantastic products. Judith Irvine is the owner of Fat Toad Farm in Brookfield. And Judith, welcome and thank you for joining us virtually here with the legislature. And why don't we begin, Judith, why don't you talk about just give us a little snapshot about your business and how maybe this program has impacted you and how you have adapted because of COVID-19. That might be a good way to kick it off. And I'll turn it over to you, Judith. Thank you. I also wanted to just sincerely thank all the legislators, legislators and the state agency people here who have been working so hard to help all of us Vermonters get through the past year. And the work is not done, obviously, but we all really appreciate it and feel very comforted that you are on our team. Fat Toad Farm is the name of our business. This is a family owned business in Brookfield, Vermont. We make a goat's milk caramel. So the connection to the working lands of Vermont is that for the first eight years of our existence, we ran a dairy farm, a dairy farm for goats. And then after that we sold our goats to Erisbrook goat dairy, which is in downtown Randolph, because we found running a specialty food business and a goat dairy was getting too much. What happened as we went into 2019 is that we were doing 70% of our business with specialty food stores all over the US and also including restaurants. And as we know in 2020 rather, the rug was just 100% pulled out from underneath most of those businesses, and we were facing a major question like what is going to happen here with us. And we had always had a website presence, but we just had that as a relatively small component of our business and we realized, well, okay, we're going to have to pivot 100% and focus all of our energies and resources on that because as we all know, people rushed into the online marketplace, and it just, you know, blew up, both from a consumer point of view but also from some of the stores point of view that they couldn't have people come through their doors but they established their own online presences. So one of the issues for us is that we had done our website and our Amazon presence just on our own, you know, just pulling it together as best we could, which was just not going to cut it so the funds that we received from the Working Lands Enterprise Fund made it possible for us to contract with an actual professional organization, and they helped us take a laser like focus on our Amazon presence and our website in order to make it all more professional to drive more people there to capture more information to do the analytics necessary to really understand what's happening in both those arenas, and to prepare ourselves to not get drowned by the wave, but to ride the wave, and it made a gigantic difference for us. Our Amazon sales went up 110% our website sales went up 198% and overall for our business it made it so that instead of really potentially closing, we increased our sales by 23% overall. So it made a huge amount of difference and we were, it became it has become so important for us that we will be continuing that work with lean edge marketing as we go forward into this next year, because we're not done yet with this change in how everybody lives and works and buys in the pandemic world and we need to still remain focused there. Thank you Judith and as you can see and I think you'll hear other stories, committee members of how people have really pivoted and really had to change their whole business model. Because of COVID and we were grateful for the funds for the working lands that we've been able to help them do that and you're going to see a lot involved that in commerce and marketing and how to, because the markets were so disruptive. I, I'm going to with your permission madam chair I've got to scoot off and hop on a news conference with the governor but I'm going to Lynn Ellen Schmoller who's our director of this program is agreed to moderate the next members that are going to tell their real life stories and it's happening on the ground, and where their permission I'm going to, I'm going to hop off and maybe I can hop off later if you're still going but I've got to go for the governor and hopefully someone will ask me about the working land program so the state of Vermont can hear more about it and how impactful it is to the state of Vermont and we'll get permission we'll turn it over to Lynn Ellen Schmoller our director. Thanks so much and really appreciate you being here and maybe we should have somebody here make that phone call into you into the governor. So thank you. Thank you. Thanks Lynn Ellen for taking over. Thank you so much. Up next I believe is Gabby tweet from old road farm. Good morning Gabby. Hi. I'm Gabby, my partner Henry and I run old road farm, a certified organic vegetable operation in Granville. This past September we closed on our property with the help of the Vermont, Vermont land trust. And so we're going through a pretty big expansion. We've seen over 100% increase in our revenue since 2019. This past season we had one full time employee and for 2021 we're looking to have two full time employees and one part time. And we had a lot of business help with through the farm by ability program. So that has been crucial in our business development and expansion. And as we continue to grow our business, we are accessing more markets and bringing larger volumes to these markets so we decided to invest in a delivery van to help with this extra volume that we are bringing to market and working lands grant had approved our grant, which was great and yeah so we'll be doing that. And we did have to do a little bit of a pivot shift this past season in our markets are farmers market was canceled. But the demand what for local food was still there and we so we decided to open up a CSA and we got a, you know, we received way more members than we thought we would. So we're continuing to expand our CSA and we had news that our farmers markets going to be open for 2021 and we're going to continue our wholesale. So, all of this has been super great and helpful in our business expansion. Thank you, Gaby. I wasn't sure if there were any questions that are if we should just keep going. Why don't we keep going Lynn Ellen and and we're almost to the end and then people hopefully have noted their questions and we'll ask them. Thank you sounds good. We're going to welcome Riva Reynolds from standard family farm good morning Riva. Thank you. I just turned my video on and forgot to do the mute. Thank you. Thank you everybody for inviting us today to share our stories and thank you so much for the grant funds that that we have received. I am part of standard farm. I married into this. I am a Seattle native. I came to UVM met my husband, and he grew up in the Northeast Kingdom on a fourth generation farm that used to do replacement heifers and sugaring and hanging in a variety of things and and now focuses on maple syrup. We are certified organic, and we also do some grass fed beef, mostly for our family, and that's also certified organic. We established a grant a couple of years ago from working lands enterprise initiative and also had support from the farm and forest viability program with business planning and all of these things have been wonderful but as everybody knows this year was unlike any other. We had experienced, especially with programming support steady growth. We had record year in 2019 was sales, and then March rolled around, and suddenly my father in law did all of his sugaring by himself, my husband didn't go to help. We weren't sure what was safe, what wasn't. So that was, that was a hardship for our family to do that and we're feeling much more prepared, going into the 2021 season. We saw our sales completely dry up, and we were projecting losses of over 20,000 in revenue for the year with with grant support and and hard work, we ended up only coming in $8,000 under our revenue from the year before. So we were able to make up about $12,000 in revenue, which was really exciting and a big relief. And one of the ways in which we were able to do this with with grant support was to focus more on wholesale orders we had been doing a lot of restaurant orders, and that piece dried up. We also found a new customer that was interested in buying barrels direct from us. So we had to invest in the equipment to safely pack and strap palettes. We ended up building a small loading dock of sorts to be able to safely move these things into our pickup truck. And we also invested in a palette jack, so we could easily move palettes of things around and weigh them accurately. We had a restaurant customer, they did their own creative pivot and ended up purchasing much higher volume to bring down their unit price, but they needed to get it in pallet form. So that was another customer we were grateful that we were able to to pivot and become, you know, shippers of pallets, pretty much. Despite being down $8,000 revenue from 2020 or from 2019 in 2020 we actually ended up selling 300 to 400 gallons more of maple syrup. So it's this interesting balance we actually do have higher revenue when we sell retail but we can move more syrup and I think that the market is more consistent when we can build these wholesale relationships as well. So I feel so much better going into 2021, we're working towards a better balance I think of wholesale and retail customers that's more sustainable. And we're also in a better position to safely manage, we have started tapping to safely manage tapping and sugaring this year. Thank you. Thanks, Riva. If it's all right with folks I just want to rewind back to Judith Irving who just sent me a quick message that she wanted to add something. So Judith, would you like to unmute. Yes, thanks very much. Yes, I wanted to make sure that I mentioned, we've been in business for 14 years and throughout that period of time the farm viability program has been by our side the whole way, and it has made a big big difference for us. The other thing I wanted to highlight was that we were privileged to join the Vermont Sustainable Job Fund group in 2018 as a for a full year of support, and that morphed into being part of the cohort group that met throughout this past year. And that was a group that was managed by the Vermont Sustainable Sustainable Jobs Fund, and it brought together in our group, six to eight of us who were basically struggling through the whole year trying to figure out what was happening what was going on in the state of Alabama. Employee point of view employer point of view supply chain sales, you know anything you can think of and even on a basic level of supporting ourselves to be able to keep going and I wanted to really emphasize how important that is for all of us. In fact, we'll be continuing it this coming year, well the year we're in, because we all found it a very important mechanism for for staying in touch and supporting each other. Thank you. Thank you Judith. I'd like to welcome Ben Noderman from Snug Valley Farm. Morning Ben. Hi, good morning. Thank you. Thank you everybody for being here and thank you for having me. So we're Snug Valley Farm. We raise grass fed and grass finished beef as well as pasture grown pork. We're an east hardwick. It's where a family operation. It's my wife and I, my folks and our three year old son if you could count on this farm help. But we are eternally grateful to the support we've gotten through the working lands board and the initiatives that have been out there. We've received two different grants from the working lands board one back in 2013 or 14 to help us get a delivery vehicle. A van to go to farmers markets that was our primary motive moving our products which is that at that point was four or five farmers markets a week. We fast forward six years or so and we started 2020 or ended 2019 doing a few farmers markets looking to move more toward the wholesale market. Obviously March happened or March, March hit and cove it happened. So we had to make some drastic pivots we looked at our farmers markets business farmers market business drying up overnight. Our institutional sales we supplied some colleges schools. All that ended like a light switch going off. And we were really forced to to think about how we're going to approach the next year and how do we offset these these drastic changes so waiting in the wings for the past year or so we had an online website. We have our website but we had an online stored like almost ready to go live. It only took a global pandemic to force us to put in the last six hours of work to put the store live and get things going. So we were thinking about how are we going to offset these sales how are we going to keep our customers able to get our products wherever they were in northern Vermont. We at that point we had been doing monthly meetups is what we were calling them like drop point pickups people would pre order we'd pick up put the order together bring it to a certain spot they would come meet us and take their product home. That we've been doing that for about the last five years to keep our farmers market customers hooked on our products through the winter. So we didn't have to retrain them in the summertime. So we pivoted from that like, Oh, well, why don't we continue this take it to the next level. Let's start home delivering this so we launched a home delivery business. It's like a second week in March or enterprise I should say, just to be safe. No contact. My folks are not spring chickens and we wanted nobody knew anything at that point so we wanted to protect everybody have as little contact as possible with with our customers keep our customers safe, and keep them confident in the supply chain that they were utilizing. We applied for a one of the coven response grants in might have been may, I think I don't remember quite the April May that helped us purchase a refrigerated delivery vehicle, our product is all is all frozen, and also add a part time worker to both fulfill orders which we were packing anywhere between 40 and 50 orders a week at our busy point, and also delivering two routes a week one on the root 100 corridor from Morseville down to Warren Wadesfield over to Barry Montpelier, and then back toward hardwick, and then the other one in the greater Burlington area. You know anywhere from Starksboro all the way up through Colchester and back on route 15 toward toward hardwick. So, we applied for the grant got the the max which was 25,000 invested in a refrigerated vehicle added since getting that grant we've added one full time worker at the farm, two part time workers who are are packing orders and delivering orders on our two delivery days. And that that just has brought us like we're in the dark not known where we were going to go. And it's kind of shown us light like this is the next. This is the next evolution of our of our process here. Along the way, we have brought on. Let's see, seven or eight partner farms so we offer meat, being beef and pork, but we thought there are lots of other farms of our farm friends of ours that were affected by this COVID situation. So we partnered with farms like sweet round farm set out of out of Albany. That's cream top milk and cheese. Debbie's maplehurst farm in Greensboro maple products patchwork bakery and farm in hardwick being bread. That that's table, which is a high and dried salami producer in Waitfield out of the Med River food hub. Here's this pastured poultry whole fresh chickens from Albany, the laggest farm sweet corn ploughy a creamery also out of the Waitfield faced an area high and cultured butter and Henry's hens which is a pastured egg operation here in hardwick. So we're essentially a rolling grocery store so people are able to able to place an order on our website for all these products so we're kind of a mini aggregator, like a true farm aggregator. So all these farms were negatively hit by the COVID issue or problems or pandemic I should say. So we've kind of rising tide lifts all boats brought them on in an effort to supply high quality food to our customer base and not just our products but our farm farm friends who are hurt badly by this as well. We've been utilizing the farm viability services, I would say, I'd have to check back but it's been eight or 10 years we've been using business coaching analysis on and off, depending on if we're making any big moves going forward we'd you know, bring them on to help us determine if this was a good idea or not. And one of the other questions that answered or when Ellen would be asking is, do we, do we touch any other working lands grant recipients I just went down the list there's eight different recipients that we work very closely with anywhere from the anybody from the like the food venture center and hard work to sweet round farm, Pete screens, meaning place passers down in Cornwall, wind farm, maple wind farm plug a creamery, but I mean, I didn't even realize that we were touching that many. And that was that was kind of an eye opener so the working lands initiative has helped not just us but you know partner farms that I didn't even realize had been helped so we're eternally grateful for that and all the help that it's provided. I think it is one of the best grant programs out there to lift like the rising time to lift the agriculture and forestry sectors. No doubt. Let me know if you have any questions. Thank you so much for sharing all of that, Ben. I believe we only have one more business on the line I'm not sure if Adam has been from Adam's Berry farm was able to join us but we do have Ken Gagnon from Gagnon lumber here this morning good morning Ken. Well good morning everyone I see some familiar faces and some new ones and I'm glad you invited me. And I guess a quick up to speed is where we operate a family saw mill, but which started out with my dad in some 60 odd years ago and I had the, how you say the, however the thing you want to call it was born into it spent the first 18 years of my life wishing that I could do something else and came back at it and here it is 40 years later and I'm doing it and so we operate a hardwood we're kind of up for the lack of terminology we're kind of a hybrid saw mill, not so much about virtual people but it's the kind of wood we saw we, we started out sawing primarily saw foods through my first 10 years and dealing locally, pretty much the first 10 years and then in 1990 we built a new mill on the same farm we're on a family farm that was been in Pittsburgh, my great grandfather started out in 1880 did had a dairy here up until the early 60s my dad was trying to juggle two balls and decided hey he's going to go with the wood and let the so basically transition to a full time saw mill. And that morphed into him becoming a more of a trucker I came on in 1980 and 90 in 1990 we decided to upscale and built a new mill. And at that point we started, we picked up and ran more hardwood for wholesale industry so we developed the last 25 or so years with with our, you say our meat and potatoes has been wholesale hardwoods. And then the remainder has been softwoods with both retail and wholesale. I'd say overall we have 1010 folks that work with us my father myself, my wife, and then I got a crew of seven. And this year definitely was a bit of a bumpy ride to start out with we the lumber market really took a took a pause there in March, a lot of the main wholesalers and well a lot of the companies we dealt with in Canada basically stopped trucking for quite a while. That was a pretty big shock. And, but interestingly enough the retail side the side with the softwood side picked up and overall we've been able to keep everybody on 100% of the time and have, you know, worked our way through worked our way through dealing with customers in a much different way we're we've done what they call curbside pickup you call in your order and put it together. And we've minimized as much close contact and they have been fortunate. So overall, we've had a 2020 was was an okay year definitely would like to do something a little different with the stress levels for 2021 but we'll see how that goes. 2019 was the year that we were fortunate to get a an infrastructure grant to bring in three phase electricity to our mill that's been a big. That's been a, if you want to liken it to something is kind of like liking it to rural electrification that happened in this state back in the 20s or whatever we ran generate we ran generators diesel since 58 all the way up till just a little better in a year ago and so the heavy lift the three phase power for running our equipment was all run by diesel and we could see that that was getting to be more challenging, not only with the price of fuel fluctuating the way it does, but also a number of other ways that was going to make it more difficult for us to stay competitive. So we put in an application. Like I said in the end of 19 2018 it came through in 2019 and worked with the we lab folks found favor with us to help us put this through it was a big project. The sticker price on this whole thing came in at $380,000, which was, you know, totally beyond anything we could swing to justify. It turned out that with the the grant from the we lab and then remount and power kicked in and basically we picked up the remainder which turned out to be about 45 to 50% and we we swung it. And it was it was so that now there's a 1.6 miles of three phase power that runs from root seven. Right down. Two roads and right to our mill, which is something it took a little you getting used to was quite a big deal. It was a big deal and so we that took. It was basically December of a year ago, December of 2019 when we flipped the switch and have been running with that diesel without the diesel. Since then, and it's definitely made a much, it's been a very welcome. How you say change from from going that route it's definitely opened a number of doors we it's allowed us to be able to put on some other equipment we've just added a four sided planer actually it's got seven heads seven motors on it. And it would have been something that we had been dreaming about for a number for a long time and we made that happen this past fall so we have a planer matcher now that can do up to 15 inches wide and up to eight inches thick and primarily doing molding and pattern such as the group paneling and that sort of thing. So that's been a big step the other big step that I've dreamed about and that's really this project has helped get us to as we we made a commitment with catamount solar and we're putting an 85 k w solar array system on our mill roof, and they're starting to install that that requires a three phase connection so that will feed power we're going to end up with a net metering program that'll get print near 70% of the of the electricity that we use now is going to be coming off our roof so that's in my mind. You know, it's like I, I tell people it's like I bought another generator and then I bought the diesel with it, but it's not diesel I bought the sun to go with it so I'm looking forward to that. So anyway, I think without that we lab program it would be a much bigger different picture for us here at our mill I think we'd be fighting up an uphill battle to stay in this game. And, you know, for me going forward I've got a crew that are that have been with me to 20 years or more I've got some guys that have been with me and you know the future looks pretty solid we're looking forward to it and my dad. He's also a driving force. I mean driving. He's 84. And he is the he's a delivery guy. And, you know, he's been real supportive about it I thought he would be a little reluctant about the solar thing but he's pretty cool about that and so we're looking forward to seeing that come on. So touching base with other businesses that we connect with we are, we're, we're networked with more, more landmarks, working lands folks that I realized we've worked with a number of other sawmills. Right now we're helping out collaborating with sear lumber up in Milton, Vermont, they had a catastrophe, catastrophe. They burnt the mill burnt in November, and they still kept their kiln and planer operations and so they reached out to us and we're sawing eastern white pine and they're taking it up and they bring the stickers down we're sawing it putting the lumber on stickers and they're keeping their guys going up there. So that's been a good thing it's also making it challenging to keep enough logs coming in. It's been a little different kind of flow but we're happy about that. Other places we deal with are there's the stone farm over in Orwell's as a turkey farmer that we supply pretty much a big part of their bedding. We work with Champlain orchards up in there. Gosh, I'm shawram and sunrise orchards also up in the shawram with their use for Apple box materials. So, I guess, and then the other thing that we've been a part of is we supply wood chips for fuel for two schools in Bennington Mount Anthony Union High School and Mount Anthony Middle School. We've also supplied to Middlebury College and also Green Mountain College and hopefully Green Mountain we're looking forward to them coming back online hopefully this upcoming year so I've burned up enough time. Thank you. And thank you so much for being here and I just, of particular note, this FY 19 grant was an industry impact grant and was just an example of some of the scaling up that the board strategically wanted to do and I'm going to try to hold it against Ken for not inviting Dave Hubbard and I back when he flipped the switch because we did go down and visit him prior, but I'm trying to get over it. So I see that Adam is here. Good morning. I'm really excited that Adam is here from Adams Berry farm. Take it away. Hi, Adam houseman from Adams Berry farm in Charlotte. We received a supply chain grant in 2020. And the project was to expand our production and some of our efficiencies and then also work on kind of developing a broader both aggregation system, co packing system, along with more consulting and education within both Vermont and the greater region. So initially as of this year I mean obviously it was a strange year, but we did most of the site work and planted all in all we put in about 7000 new blueberry bushes this year. And that will increase our gross sales by about $200,000 huge input for far as energy getting established but then the long term benefits blueberry plants last about 50 years so our kind of impact within the market will be will be broad and long lasting. It has some other wonderful benefits and that we've been trying to shift our business to be more of a year round business. We've kind of as our business is mature. This is, I think coming into our 20th year this year, we've really struggled with kind of the seasonality of our business. And so with this expansion we're freezing more and more and developing more of a year round presence within the marketplace and distribution, and this will allow us to employ people throughout the year as well so we're really excited about that as far as the commitment to employees but also the stability of the workforce, stability of the farm and business as well. So, I'm trying to think of what else to share but other than that we, far there's the blueberry investment we also invested in packing equipment and sorting equipment, and a lot of that has to do with increasing both the efficiencies of our own business but also also the quality and then our goal is to be able to kind of create a model that can be replicated through other growers, which is common in other parts of the country and other growing regions but in Vermont it's not the scale of a lot of the growers and is much smaller. And so we're trying to create more of a model that could be replicated by other growers to be able to help them scale up and help Vermont farmers to reach a broader audience and have a broader reach than just the immediate kind of hyper localized what I call the hyper localized market that we all work with that will allow us to team up together and push broader, you know, into other parts of New England and really hopefully open up new markets and new revenue streams for farms and stability for other farms in the future as well. What else. I guess, as far as as far as other details about the project, we're now we've kind of come to the end of the first season of implementation, and now our winners being spent working on kind of consulting materials which we've been teaming up with Sam Smith from the interval center on developing materials right now and Sam also actually helped us out with business planning, kind of farm viability work and making sure that the project was realistic before we launched it and pitched it as well. We've been working on that we've been kind of fine tuning some of our food safety work and our, our packing line and packing system so that it's sufficient for both us and and in theory as we invite other other growers to use it or co pack for them that it can easily handle that flow and increase flow that we're we're hoping to develop over time. So our project is, it's a, it's kind of a long term project because I'm because of perennials perennials take a long time to get established so we've put them in the ground. There's a lot of preliminary work that has happened right now and now it's where we're entering kind of the maturity phase and growing to maturity and so the results will be seen long term for us but it will. The impact should be should be tremendous over over the period so so we're we're really excited for the opportunity this is our actually second time that we've been through the working lands program far as a grant recipient and each time it's launched our business into kind of the next level the next scale and enabled us to really broaden our our reach and have have just tremendous impact on the local food system. And so we're we're just feeling so fortunate that we're part of this and able to be able to kind of launch our business and our farm into the into, you know, the next 10 years as well. So, so thank you for everyone's support on that. Thank you so much Adam before I start to ask about popsicles I really need to ask bottom chair I'm looking at the time here. Would you like to shift to questions. Adam I collaborate on popsicle years ago so we'll we'll talk about that offline. Yeah, that would be great if folks have questions for the committee members who know how to raise their blue hands that would be great if Bobby if you see Bobby I see your finger up go ahead. Yeah, I have, you know, we've had some hearings. Well, first of all, I want to thank all the participants for showing up and taking part in in this today because, you know, it's great hearing from the farmers and people that have received grants from the program that we set up many years ago. But getting back to questions. We've had hearings already, you know, about other issues. And the issue of labor keeps coming up. I think that from what we've already heard the labor issue is the biggest issue facing a lot of our, our people in in the ag business. And I'm wondering, have any of you had labor problems and you tried to access the h2a program to get employees that way to cover your labor issues if you had any. I can speak to that. We have a pretty laborious crop as far as harvesting berries and continual harvest as well. And labor has always been a challenge for us. And four years ago we entered the h2a program and started working with a group of brothers and friends from Guatemala. And so it's part of our crew. It's not our full crew, but it has made a huge difference in the stability of our business. And that first of all, they're truly professionals that want to be here and farm and work. But it's also that that annual they return every year and have created an annual stability and so instead of spending a good portion of your season training people and getting them up to speed. We have a group that comes back and hits the ground running and now is very self sufficient and it's allowed us to grow in a different way. The program is cumbersome. It's expensive. And there's definitely challenges around that. They're brought up often, but never fully addressed. But the h2a program is great. I think also seeing businesses try to become year round businesses is helping employ local individuals as well and keeping that just stability in the workplace. Thank you. Does anybody else want to comment on the labor issue? Any of our farmers in particular? I'm seeing Ben Noderman nodding his head. Yeah, so labor has been a big challenge for us. So when when COVID hit, we were kind of running a bare bones operation just pretty much myself doing everything and my folks helping out when they could. So the two part time equivalents or part time employees that we hired for our fulfillment and delivery system. We're both out of work folks due to COVID one restaurant manager whose restaurant closed permanently. The other. The other is a performing artist who is. I'm hearing some background noise. I could make people make sure they're muted unless they're speaking. Thanks. Sorry about that. I don't know if it was. Now you've muted yourself. Sorry about that. So, so the two, the two part timers were out of work folks due to COVID one a performing artist and one a chef and restaurant manager whose restaurant closed. So they were they were very happy to come on and and work part time for us the full time that we have hired took us a long time to find. So we're looking for somebody who just wasn't a grunt farmer or farm worker we're looking for somebody who is interested in regenerative regenerative egg that we practice that we could train in our grazing system and really has like longevity in the position, not just a worker. And we actually found him through Instagram or he found us through Instagram, and we hired him and he was at a farm in Pennsylvania. We hired him and he started December 1, and it's been a huge help. We have, we also have a part time high school student who's been with us for pushing three years now doing doing chores, light chores that a high school guy could handle. And we're always, we're always trying and looking for more folks but it was very hard market to hire and even though a lot of people were out of work, but I think we got very lucky. I'm very happy with the crew we have. Alan, you'd sound better if we could hear you. Yeah, I know the, I was pushing my space, my space, my spacebar was not working Bobby. You were actually better on milk. Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. I see, I see a hand up a Paul Martin representative Paul Martin has a question. But before we go to Paul, I'm wondering if there's any other person any of our other guests who would like to comment on the labor issue. I'm not seeing anybody waving. Oh, speak up great. With with sugaring it is like very picking very seasonal. And I think that a lot of larger organizations have done good work trying to create something year round for their employees so part of the year. They are tapping part of the year they're doing something else but we've always struggled a little bit with wanting to stay at a family scale because we are concerned about, you know, the temporary labor part time labor. So with the working lands grant, a couple years ago 2018, we did actually hire in people for part time and we had two people helping in various ways. And I just found that all of the work that I had to do quarterly to file taxes, the workman's comp that I needed to have and keep up to date and file reports in and of themselves none of them took a lot of time but it just was one more thing to keep track of. It became easier to simply become more efficient or dialed back or just not do as much social media marketing, for example. So yeah, I think labor continues to play constraints and a lot of family farms, especially when it's very seasonal, and I've never considered h2a for the tapping and sugaring time of year, especially with with sugaring it's so weather dependent. It's not like you can say okay we need you for six straight weeks every day. There might be three weeks where the weather's wrong, and you just you're like okay we don't need you. And then you end up calling somebody being like okay we need you for like the next 48 hours, pretty much for 48 hours and you can sleep six hours a night. It's tricky. I think it's one of the reasons why sugaring tends to be either really large scale where you do higher workforce that does other things around the year, or tends to be very family where there are other questions. Yeah, please. Well, wait a minute Bobby, I, I'm wondering if we had the. Has everybody weighed in regarding labor that wants to and then Paul Martin has his hand up. I'm not seeing anybody else. Paul, why don't you go ahead. Sure. I'll try to keep it pretty quick. You can, you know just in respect out of time because I know we're running out of time, but the timing was right in a constituent reaching out to me this morning with an issue regarding meat processing availability. And I stepped away from the computer for five minutes earlier maybe it was brought up during those five minutes, but I don't think it was. I'm just wondering what you know maybe, maybe Lynn Allen could comment on this or, you know, I know that the governor had just allocated a lot of funds in the budget for this issue and vt digger did an article about it. Earlier today that representative Lisa Hango shared with me after we had answered the constituent. And it also brought to light. About a week and a half ago I purchased milk from a local dairy and also purchased some beef out of their freezer, and notice that it was processed in New Hampshire. So I'm wondering. You know, if there is any initiative in getting or incentivizing more meat processing facilities in the state, through the you know the working lands program or anything like that, that might make this issue go away a little bit or make it a little easier for for farmers to process beef. And Ben may have some comments on this as well. You know regarding processing or things like that our constituent also mentioned the desire to maybe process on farm and I know there's a lot of controversy around that health safety things like that but I'm just wondering if there's any commentary on this issue. And just to also add I appreciate everybody's testimony today it was really nice to hear from everybody it was nice to be on this hearing and I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you for your question representative Martin and I understand Secretary habits is now left the call I know that Ellen Kailer is on the call and I know that Ellen is doing some direct work I don't think there's a better person to speak to this in terms of the experience than the owner operator Ben Nauterman from Sug Valley so I will push that to him it is a priority of the agency but let's hear from Ben on this first. Okay, so we actually use four different slaughter facilities depending on our chain or the product chain wherever it's headed. We use one state inspected facility in Troy, which is Bros meat market we use Northeast Kingdom, which is USDA facility in St. Jay Lindenville PT farm which is just across the river in North Hamerl, New Hampshire that might be the New Hampshire plant. You saw in the package representative Martin, but and then we also use occasionally the royal butcher and Randolph slaughter is a challenge and it was a big challenge this starting in March when when there was a lack of things on grocery store shelves. Local producers we tried to ramp up, but they're only so many spots in a business that we plan ahead so far we've already booked like typically a year out. Right now I have all of 21 and 22 books because I don't want to be caught short on slaughter spots and processing spots so it's definitely a challenge. There were a lot of people trying to jump into the into the meat game during this this pandemic, which made it hard for us who are like make our livelihood with with steady supply they were taking trying to see what not steel but they were using the spots that we had been counting on that weren't maybe 100% signed up for but kind of had a rolling understanding our understanding with the processors. So it was a real challenge and we were we were fighting for all of our slaughter spots up until about November when we were slated to get you're able to sign up going forward for the next year or two. There's definitely a need for more slaughtering I don't know of any working land stuff that's coming down the pike but there is definitely a need. Did Ellen want to respond as well I see Chris Pearson's hand is up and Bobby. Ellen do you want to go ahead and respond. I think Ben covered it really well I think the board and the agency and the farm plate network is very much interested in this topic and figuring out how do we support any more infrastructure, more processing facilities online. So the next year or two. As you know, standing up a significant scale of meat slaughter and processing facilities a several million dollar effort that requires a lot of permitting and. And so it's not a quick overnight kind of thing. And during coven has been mentioned, you know, we needed things to be ready to go overnight because of consumer demand, and the needs of producers so we have a, I think a fairly coordinated general planned out approach going forward. Funding is going to be a critical part so we're very pleased that the governor mentioned that in his budget yesterday. Great. So, Bobby do you have something you want to follow up with I see Chris has as well. Yeah, we, we talked quite a bit about that in the Senate and had people and, and of course, in the fall before we had that December 31 cut off for covert funds. We had, we had worked with the secretary of bag, in regards to meat processing, and Abby Willard from the agency in her crew had done an in depth review of all the slaughter facilities. But it was late in the, in the fall. And we tried, we had to turn our money back in on a certain date to the administration from ag. And we tried to get some money to push out to the slaughter facilities to advance and do upgrades and buy equipment to add to their structures to help with this. And, and we were too late actually in doing this. And, but I would expect during this season. We will be putting and I'm sure it's an, you know, and the agency of ag will be recommending putting money into the meat processing a business to help out, hopefully for this fall at least. Another issue that I just want to say is that, you know, really, we only have both brothers processing of milk and monument farms where we're very short on milk processing in the state. So that's why you might see milk in Vermont bottled from an out of state out of state processor. And I'll let Chris jump in. Thank you. I've been thinking as we think about the meat processing. And so I guess this is a question for Ellen or Lynn Allen, or anybody. Has there ever been an attempt or should we think of an attempt for a meat processing slaughterhouse cooperative. I mean, there's, we hear this from pretty well all meat producers. And, and so the demand is is there and we seem to hope that someone will come along with a business plan but I guess I've wondered if anyone's considered that way it might be an interesting way to raise the capital as well. So I'm just curious if that idea has been explored at all. So you're unmuted. Do you want to try to take a stab at it. Yes, thank you. It's a great question. My general sense is that going for a more formal cooperative legal structure is not something that a lot of produce involves a lot of meeting and there's a lot of costs. However, there are discussions underway about more of taking an aggregation approach of multiple producers coming together, having some similar standards, being able to have a brand that they can sell under as a way of moving more product from the producer side of things. But was your question about the processing facilities themselves and the relationship between the processors and the producers. Clearly we understand, I've not met a meat farmer that's trying to raise meat say anything other than it's really hard to get slaughtered. And so the demand is there, we, you know, I'm not a, I don't have a crystal ball but I would guess that in the next 20 years, the demand for high quality local meats is not going down. And so just, I guess I just wonder, rather than, than all the work, hoping to lure somebody to the business that if there's a way to stand it up ourselves. And one example of just that actually was a working lands grant of 20,000 that was made in May to Justin Sower Wayne who's the new owner of Royal butcher in Randolph. And part and he's a beef grower he's a grass fed beef fraser. And one of the reasons why he wanted to buy Royal butcher was so that he could have guaranteed slots. So what he has about half of the slots are, are his animals. So, the, we were able to work in lands or gave them a grant to increase the amount of equipment, so that you can have greater throughput, especially on ground meat going through. So the same thing has happened with, with the packing house from my packing house down in in Springfield, where another entity has bought up about 40% of the of the slots with their own animals which is an aggregated, you know, a group of farmers that are aggregated to get those slots. So it, it's not in a cooperative model, but it's starting to happen in some places and I think the big question is that you're raising is can it be replicated expanded upon is that a model that we could get other farmers and slaughter facilities to go in on together so it's a great question. I'll bring it to the folks that I know that are working on these questions and see if, if it has any, any, any get some traction. Thanks. Thanks, Chris. Great question. Anybody else have a question at this point for any of our guests. John O'Brien. Thank you, Carolyn. I don't know. Maybe Lynn Ellen or Ellen can can kick this to somebody else but and it's sort of a follow up to what what we've just talked about was that I'm wondering, like, there are more applications than you have money for. So, in some ways I can see this working lands being reactive to those you're, you're weighing them, you know, with a number of factors but I wondered if, if you ever think of being proactive to and thinking like, Okay, me processing as a huge bottleneck so if we solve that problem. I don't know if there's a supplier effect or in hemp there's a certain bottleneck right here at, you know, at drying or processing, or, or, you know, in the forest economy there's a bottleneck right here so do you do I work with the agencies to identify those bottlenecks and then think, those are those are that should be the number one grants we give out, or go after them in that way. It's just like Eric DeLuca wants to speak to our Vice Chair and Ellen certainly could too but I yes there's absolutely and I use the word decisive earlier but there's absolutely intention behind the way the request for applications or the request for proposals are developed but I'll let Eric speak to this in the interest of time. Eric you want to go ahead and then Rodney Graham has a question to an Eric if you could just even speak to the FY 21 application if you'd like to. Well, just in the interest of brevity. The point that I wanted to make is that this question of doing analysis and targeting sectors and allocating funding to strategic sectors that we've identified balanced with seeing what the businesses are experiencing and and planning and bringing forward that balance is something that's been front of mind for the program throughout its history. And there has over time been a cultural bias to really see what the businesses have to say and what they're working with. And we try as Lynn Ellen mentioned with our request for applications to identify areas of strategic relevance that we've identified but then also give the opportunity to to flag what they see as up as chances to bring things forward. We have seen with low grade meet with some of the dairy situations over time. There have been instances where we have noticed particular market development or supply chain development opportunities and and targeted them with the way we design the funds. So we do it in both directions what we do give a lot of credence to what the businesses are seeing on the ground and how they how they bring things forward. Thanks Eric. Rodney, you want to comment or have a question. I have a question. Just a broad question. If someone was to someone was contemplating. In a slaughter facility. What would be the recommendation on where to start. Business plan. Moving on. A lot of head shaking. Yes. Great question. I mean I think there's just a number of different stakeholders that you need to engage in this and I think you know we did hear from force and farm viability. We heard from Vita we heard from Ellen I think that it does start with business planning but I think you have to engage the resources that you know are at hand and that's something that we do in the agricultural industry. Because we could just get a grantee who knows someone else who received funds, and they're thinking well this is how I could help my business and so I might get an email any day and I'm constantly just connecting that person to resources so. I think it depends on who it is but it's really just about asking the question and figuring out who can help you the stakeholders are going to help get your business up and running does that help you representative Graham. I'm also seeing a chat from Abby Willie and she says she says reach out to the agency of ag meat inspection division. As they offer a tremendous amount of technical assistance and site visits to support new and expanding facilities. So thanks Abby for shouting out here. Any other questions that anyone has. Yeah, Carolyn, I have one. It's, you know, we could stay on most of the day I think but anyways, you know we've gone around around the circle pretty well here and hearing from everyone. I'm wondering with the participants other than us as legislators for you other participants. What is there anything that we could do that would help make your life better in the ag field or the sawmill field. Any hanging out there that we should be looking at because we really didn't get too many pointers on what we could do other than supply money to help the working lands enterprise program. Anyone with a hand up or. That's good news. I would just like to encourage thinking about site visits and wherever you are in your county visiting your farm or thinking about the producer or the forestry operations and connecting with those businesses that are really the drivers of all we're talking about I mean I think that making those connections were small states are just really important and you'll learn so much about what the needs are directly so that's just one tactic that I can think of in terms of you all as representatives. I know one of my things that we've done over the years is actually go to do site visits that's been I love that I mean I have a farm of my own but it's always good to see what other people are doing. Eric were you going to comment. I was just going to add that Ellen mentioned that the, the, the act to keep your plan is hitting the ground quite soon with a farm to plate and the agency of agriculture collaborating on that and we try to make an effort not in on in our only in our work to align with and be aware of the priority strategies that come through resources like that but we also encourage applicants of businesses or business assistance programs to align themselves with strategies that are identified through plans like that and the ongoing work of the forest network that builds on the forest analysis for specific value chains that represent opportunities. That's another touchstone we use and that's a nice reference for you as well. And I see Judith's hand is up Judith you want to go ahead. Yes, I did. I wanted to mention that I think that the this whole WLF grant network and system is very well managed and very easy to participate in from a farmer slash producer point of view. And I think that's really important, because, as people have referenced, most of us did not get into the business for him because we'd like to write grants, or that because we're super high powered business planner. And so when opportunities come up that are easy to communicate to the real people about and easy to go through the process that is very, very important so in some ways I'm saying, don't mess with something that's really working well. Thank you Judith. I'm seeing that we're really close to being out of time here if we want to get. If we want to get done by noon, and I'm reading chats at the same time so a little distracted but I want to especially thank everybody who came today I know Bobby, take the opportunity to thank you all. I want to thank all of the, the folks from the agencies to, you know, have worked so hard to make this a really successful program, it's one of the best it's, you know, whenever I have to go to house appropriations and make a pitch for money for working lands, there's always strong support for it. So thank you all and thank you farmers especially Bobby is there anything else you would like to say. Just that if there is a problem out there not to be shy about contacting any of us or the agency heads that are here and, and thanks for being with us. Thank you so much. And with that I think we can wrap this up for today. It's, it's been a pleasure to have all of the committees here house agriculture and forestry Senate egg and house commerce and economic development thank you all for joining us. With that I think Linda you can take.