 So, were you going to lead off the testimony? Yes. Yeah. If any of you other folks want to come in here morning, welcome. Who's that? Sure. Well done. If we, if you find your seat in our big room. Yeah. Come on in, Bethany. We got some... Everybody knows who you are. Yeah. There's a chair behind the door, too. Yeah. Sit right on that. I can stand if it's a little... No. You can sit here. Oh, yeah. Sure. So, um... I would say... Eventually, if we're lucky. We are lucky. We may get a bigger room in a little year. It's some kind of magic spell to make this bigger. But I'm not going to bet the final one. I've got to get my Hermione powers. Did you make it? Just barely. Yeah. Thank you. Um, to, um... So, really great. So many of you could come down today and be with us for a few minutes, at least. And, uh, just quickly, I think we'll run around and introduce ourselves, and then we'll get started and make the most of what we've timely had. Brian Collamore from the Rutland District. Ruth Hardy from the Addison District. And I'm Bobby Star from Essex, Orleans, Canada. Chris Pearson from Chippen County. Anthony Plater from Washington, Canada. So, again, welcome. And John, we'll let you get started. Great. And get the show on the road. Okay. All right. Well, thank you. Thank you for your time this morning. My name is John Ramsey. I'm the executive director at the Center for Narcultural Economy in Hardwick. We're a nonprofit organization working to improve food systems for our community and bring viability to farms in our region and other parts of the state. I was just going to touch on a little bit of the work that we do and then hand over the testimony to Ben Noderman. And I'll introduce Ben a little bit more after. But at the Center for Narcultural Economy, we have a number of programs and enterprises that are designed to help the community come together around food and education and farm viability. We own and operate the Vermont Food Venture Center, which is a shared-use facility. We have about 20 or 25 farms and food businesses that use that facility. And they come as far away from Chittenden County, the Northeast Kingdom, Franklin County, Central Vermont, and Upper Valley and use that facility. When someone comes into that facility, not only do they have a safe working environment and a safe commercial kitchen space, they also have food safety from our facilities manager. They have production assistance. They have business training and they have marketing assistance. Our community programs, Bethany Dunbar is our community programs manager. She manages Atkins Field, which is a green space in the middle of Hardwick. It's the host of the Hardwick Farmers Market, and there's a number of programs that we do there focused around food access and education and connecting the community to agriculture, which is something we feel is extremely important for agriculture moving forward into the future. We also have a farm institution program, which provides fresh local produce to a number of our larger institutions around the state. And out of Vermont, actually, we sourced about 140,000 pounds of raw produce from Vermont growers all over Vermont, Champlain Valley, Northeast Kingdom, Chittenden County, other places this year. We minimally process that product in our facility and prepare it for use in commercial and institutional kitchens, like I said, around Vermont and New England. You store that right on site? You have that much? We store the raw product on site, and then we basically, it's called, the program is called Just Cut, so literally that's what it means is we process that product and it goes out the door. We want to deliver that product fresh to the institution so they can take that, you know, chopped cabbage or diced beets or, you know, peeled potatoes and use it right in their institutional kitchens with minimal labor, and it's creating a supply chain in a market that otherwise wouldn't exist for our Vermont producers. We recently purchased a business called Farm Connects, which is a cold chain delivery service, and that service is providing, basically, pickup and delivery for a number of Vermont producers, about 60 producers use that service. We are actually working with Greg Cox down in Rutland. He actually just visited our facility last week with a number of people from Rutland, from the school and the town, or the city, and also we're working with other food hubs around the state to basically create connections and markets for farmers that otherwise, again, wouldn't exist. That service moves about three and a half million in local farm products to markets for farmers around the state. It delivers to 200 stores and institutions and restaurants in and around Vermont and outside of Vermont, and like I said, we're working with other food hubs to get product down to Brattleboro and other places so it can be pushed out into other parts of New England. Vermont Farm Fund is another enterprise that we operate. Last year, we made almost $400,000 in loans to farmers, business builder loans, and emergency loans to sort of respond to issues that come up on farms for farms and food businesses. I guess I'll leave it there, and we'll leave some time for questions at the end, and again, this is Ben Noderman. Good morning. Thank you for your time today. I really appreciate it. I'm owner and manager, co-owner and manager of Snug Valley Farm and Hardwick. We produce grass-fed and grass-finished beef as well as pasture-grown heritage pork. I'm in partnership with my parents, and we're in the generation-successional process, which is quite an undertaking. Annually, we're finishing about right now and we need to 100 beef a year and somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 to 500 pigs. We have a land base of just 100, 300 acres, always in the market for more, or picking up more ground. So, I guess we are very lucky to be where we are here in Hardwick being in the Northeast Kingdom. It's kind of like a moving and shaking spot as far as agriculture goes. I feel like we're on the leading edge of developing these markets like John was talking about with the CAE and moving forward and pushing our product out. So, I guess a couple things from a farmer's standpoint and from an ag standpoint that have been really beneficial are services like Farm Connects. My farm is a client of Farm Connects. We move fresh product weekly from slaughterhouse and processor to its end destination. Yeah, we're just very excited to be where we are and we're actually very lucky to be in Hardwick. Hardwick, as you know, has grown up quite a lot in the last 20 years from where it was. So, we're kind of like in the heart of this movement. From an ag standpoint, I know some of the points were what could the state, how does the state help, or how could the state help farmers advance from where we are? I see a lot of great programs here like the water quality BMP program which we went through this past year. We built some manure stack pads to improve our water quality on our farm. One of the glaring things I see as a need in the ag world is farm succession planning. I think that is drastically, drastically lacking. There's a lot of great service providers out there like the services that CAE offers for farm viability which is a program we've gone through for business planning. We put that together quite a few years ago. That really shaped our business and pushed us to where we are now. But as we're going through the succession planning and transition process, there's some severe gaps and if there could be some help in that world, I think that would do two things. It would help increase our workforce development of younger folks wanting to come into agriculture if there are tools to help the succession process and it will also help our smaller farms survive so they don't necessarily have to just shutter and close up. There's a plan for the next step. Where would be the best place to house something like that? That's a very good question. There's a number of service providers. The center of the economy we're a member of VHDS Farm Viability Service Network and there's a number of service providers within that network that have the capacity to do one-on-one direct assistance to farmers for succession planning. The issue is they're just not enough of them. Exactly. I think that they could be housed in a number of different organizations like ours or the Interveal Center. They're already doing a lot of that work as well. Other organizations, there's also a number of private individuals who also work through the Farm Viability Program and contract through the Farm Viability Program. The center needs to be housed specifically in one location as much as resources around it so that there's increased capacity. It's okay. I kind of lost my train. Sorry. No, that's perfectly quite all right. Some of the other great tools that are out there that have helped our operation have been the Ranching for Profit School which was brought here by the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund and the Vermont Farm and Plate Network last year. So beefing up, the already robust service providers with a different aspect or a different look at the same stuff has been a real help for our business and it's really pushed us further into the profitability and sustainability of the long-term business. Anything else, Ben? Do you sell all of your 80 beef that you have, 400 pigs? Yes. Do that network use? Sort of. We market a lot of beef, about 25 beef a year direct to consumer through farmers markets, buyers' clubs, direct to consumer sales at the farm. We wholesale roughly 250 to 300 pigs a year to different accounts like hunger, mountain co-op, to online farmers markets in Boston, to butcher shops and restaurants in the Burlington Waterbury area. And then we also finish about 70 for our direct to consumer. So it really, it varies. That's like a little business? It's a locked manage. And what slaughterhouse do you have? We actually use three slaughterhouses at the moment. Brows and Troy. We use Northeast Kingdom in St. John'sburg, Lindenville Business Park, and we also use a New Hampshire PT farm, even though they're just over the river. It really depends on where the product's going as to which slaughterhouse they're going to use. You have to take over that part. Anything else? Ben, so your animals are grazing, I'm assuming, right? Yes, they are. Largely. We've been following the payment for ecosystem service discussion. Like the FAP grants? Well, that's a good question. They're coming at it from a lot of different ways, but we set up, and this committee was part of this last year, an attempt to get our arms around it here in Vermont. And it's part of what I'm curious about is a lot of it has been aimed at some of the water quality work, so it's been more sort of Champlain Valley focused. But the idea is farms like yours that are basically in a regenerative practice, maybe there'd be a way for us to hire farmers to build soils, basically. And that discussion here is in its infancy, but I was just curious if that's sort of percolated around your region where there are a lot of villagers out there. I think going to that point is farmers don't necessarily want that kind of help from the state government. If you help us find new markets for our products outside of the state, that would let us magnify those practices that we're already doing to a greater extent, and then we can push the Vermont product further out, beyond our borders. There is definitely direct to farmer assistance like that to get them to kind of change their paradigm where the farms that have already made that shift just expanding the market share would be a great help. What I would just add to that is say that market development, there's marketing support, and then there's also market development. Marketing support is something that a lot of farmers need in order to move their product to consumers. Market development is something that as a state I think that we can invest in together, and that's kind of what Ben is talking about in terms of developing markets in and around Vermont, and sort of, you know, peeling back the next layer of consumers that we aren't already reaching. And so making connections like I was talking about before, getting product from the Northeast Kingdom, to Rutland County, to Addison County, outwards to Brattleboro, all initiatives that we want to focus on. One other thing that we wanted to talk to you a little bit, and I see Andy Keeler here from Jasper Hill Farm, is the Yellow Barn Business Accelerator project that's happening in Hardwick. And Sean Fielder, the Hardwick Town Manager is here, and Andy's place, Sean, could you please just talk about the Accelerator project and the state support of that project and how that sort of piece of infrastructure can help us in the farm economy world. Yeah, from the record, I'm Sean Fielder Manager for the Town of Hardwick. John, thanks for mentioning Yellow Barn and Business Accelerator. So the Yellow Barn Business Accelerator is actually the Yellow Barn Business Accelerator and Corporate Campus to put the full name to this project. It's been in the works for about three years now. The objective is to renovate the, what was the former Greensboro Garage, which was on Route 15 right on the west end of Hardwick and then add Accelerator space, which is a large industrial facility at the same location. So we've had a significant amount of public-private partnership work on this this past couple of years. What we're honing in on right now is securing our final grant support and so everybody is aware this is an 8.6 million dollar project. We have secured support from Vermont VCD sorry there's so many acronyms these days. Vermont Community Development Program thank you John. They've actually offered up a $900,000 grant. The Town of Hardwick has put money on the table. We've received money from NBRC to date for land purchase. We are waiting to hear from Economic Development Administration on a $3 million grant ask. I want to just commend Department of Ag and Agency of Commerce and Community Development. They've been providing a significant amount of support on this project this past year and a half navigating everything that has to do with our permitting processes at state, local and federal level and then also securing the additional grant support that I have mentioned. The good news is that at this phase we have two committed partners to the project this is public information. We have a cabinet committed to take over the entire Yellowburn space when that's rehabbed. This will be retail space so if you're familiar with their retail space Waterbury as an example this will be an entire retail space for them to showcase their product and show other Vermont ag related products. And then Jasper Hill John has mentioned Jasper Hill they're actually going to be expanding their business. They're going to be taking their retail area space. This is not insignificant it's a 22,000 foot square facility which is basically adding additional cave space to increase what Jasper Hill is going to have for their production. And then related to this we're going to have some additional remaining retail space for other entities that want to get in on this. The food economy in Hardwick is not new. Some of you said years ago that Hardwick's the town that saved the food economy that was the tagline. So we're trying to expand upon that. Thanks. So we're trying. I commented earlier about I want everybody to understand this our perspective is obviously the things we're talking about now are going to be advantageous to the town of Hardwick but if we can we're helping our neighbors. We're helping everybody not just in the Northeast Kingdom but we're going to those state boundaries as well the agriculture economy you all know this, this is your committee this is really important for us and the way I thought about this you've got the next generation sitting across the table right there. We're helping advance and support what it is he's trying to do. I mean he's successful, Ben's successful at what he's doing. That's the intent with this yellow barn business accelerator. We want to offer a space where businesses can expand bring the next generation along have positive economic benefit in this food and forest industry so it's not lost in some of our commentary now we've done some basic economic analysis of the yellow barn project and with it completed we still have a number of steps to go on our permitting and securing our grant funding at a five-year period the Remi model which is one of the economic models that ACCD helped us with predicts 110 jobs and 8.1 million dollars of personal income put back in the community at the five-year phase this is really significant for our state you know it's a positive trend and so we're about related we're right next to the LVRT and the rail trail has a whole different subject but anything we can be doing on that rail trail to continue to bring people to Vermont and see these activities and experience this it's a positive upward trend so there's a couple of things for you. Your plight's pretty rounded up. Some days it's fallen off the edge. It's a correct statement but we have good partners and many other people I didn't mention everybody that's been helping us on these processes have you ever missed and I'll mention NVDA and Dave Sannaker have been doing just getting buster amount of support for us and that's been really advantageous. We do have a department of ag contact that's involved with us and we are getting the support from the higher ups whether it's commissioner level or secretary level they're behind the positives that we're seeing on this project so anything that the senators here can do to help us would be greatly appreciated. A rising tide lifts all boats. To start the grounds. We are collaborators we can't do all this work on our own there's a number of great organizations and people and municipalities and businesses that hopefully our own project can sort of be a model for us in terms of bringing those businesses, municipalities and nonprofits together to move our project forward. I think we have about 5 minutes left and Tom Gilbert from Blackdirt Farm our last testifier has just arrived I have a question for you about talking about the basic processing that you do for many institutions chopping and whatnot is there any talk about putting together a freezing facility so we can freeze the amount of vegetables like an individual quick frozen line, something like that we're doing a lot of research and development on a number of different products right now including some more frozen products for institutions and that's a goal of ours in that program to sort of understand what we can do and what sort of price points we can hit for those institutional markets and we'll have a lot more on that in this coming year and so I think we'll have a better understanding of what the infrastructure needs will be around that like western mass processing has a big individual quick frozen facility that they can run through a large amount of we have that supply institution for the year round exactly we'll give it to Tom I apologize for being late I actually was early and I've been sitting with Carolyn Partridge for the last 45 minutes and didn't realize I was in the wrong room I got a lot of obviously a gossip that's for sure so I was running out the door so I only had a chance to print one copy Linda but if I could submit some written testimony I can pass this around right now and I can supply an electronic copy if that's better for you so I think I'm familiar with many of you yeah thank you for having me and thank you in advance for taking up Anthony's bill from June 65 on the poultry foraging and my name is Tom Gilbert I'm with Black Dirt Farm I also play a number of other roles I sit on a number of boards in the northeast kingdom not specifically I represent the town of standard on the northeast kingdom waste management board so I see this from a variety of angles I moderate for the town of standard I coach elementary school soccer I'm pretty active throughout a long time I'm a board member with the center for nag economy and it's with all of those hats that I'm coming in today and specifically supporting the two 65 bill because I think what is the most concerning thing that I'll try to highlight in my testimony right now is we appear to be having a problem with agencies working across purposes and in the wake of that we're undermining the very successes that we're actually having as a state and those are the actual successes that aren't just helping us address the issues of today but if we're serious about reorganizing as a society around issues like global warming hunger and water quality we have to start innovating and thinking beyond traditional boundaries so there are three fundamental problems that we're facing that I'll try to unpack without it making it confusing because this bill addresses one of those but just two seconds on our farm just so you have a little bit of a better sense of who we are we're in standard Vermont just nine miles north east of Hardwick how long the drive is that? from here 45 to an hour depending on who you get behind can we do a field trip there? please absolutely yeah we had offered that earlier and this value was kind of far away but more than happy to do that and I think one of the things you'd see in our place is that we have what I would call an integrated operation as opposed to purely diversified so our farm model is designed to follow carbon through the food system the way that carbon would otherwise move through an ecosystem and we have all we try to capture value and create value along the way each of those stops so we go off of the farm we collect discarded food in the region schools, institutions, businesses we have about 30 tons of food a week we deliver to two other operations and then we bring about half of that or a little more than half of that after our farm each week we make a compost blend that we forage our land hence on it's an attempt to mimic the ancestor of those hens the Indonesian red jungle fowls eating habits much like farmers, dairy farmers and beef growers are trying to get back to grass-fed operations so we don't what the hens don't forage we add value with and then a portion of that we add further value and make worm castings out of and then we grow about 50 acres of hay and then we grow hemp for the CBD market and then tomatoes and salad greens for our local produce market I employ eight people that works out to little less than six FT a year and then three seasonal part-time people that pay minimum wages and we are doing the work that we're doing because we think we actually need solutions at this point we're not just interested in having a cool viable business that allows us to pat ourselves on the back but we're interested in sort of breaking through to the other side of issues of the energy costs associated with imported grain for instance like there is no way that we can tackle issues of global warming in this state house without addressing the energy consumption that goes into food production it's the door that brought us in it's the door that's going to take us back out fundamentally the challenge that we're facing right now is that what we're doing is ultimately a disruptive behavior it's disrupting sort of the way we typically think of farms operating and what you're seeing is a regulatory reaction to that that isn't actually based in a legal or legislative framework it's based on sort of reaction personal opinion you're feeling tight on time so I'm going to keep moving here so the Anthony's bill specifically endorses this activity as something that is considered farming because right now our status as a farmer is not only at risk we've been told we are not a farmer there are many many implications to that do they call you a short all sorts of things but most of them aren't appropriate in here they would be surprised yeah I wouldn't be but for us the implications of now being a farmer much greater than having to obtain a solid waste permit that is sort of the story that I find very insulting because we all understand in this room how important your farm status is to a farmer and we would be out of business if we lost that how many yards a year do you process through total material I mean if we sell about a thousand yards of finished compost but the hen is eating I mean we're probably handling they're probably consuming 50% of what we initially handled so we handle a lot more than what we end up selling so 2,000, 2,500 yards something like that and we shift eggs all throughout the province into the Boston area and the other two things just because this is not exclusively about this bill but what you need to ask questions is in the last year there are two issues within the URL the Universal Recycling Law that ANR has reinterpreted and they have reinterpreted in favor of industrialization of the food system so we are no longer source separate they're no longer acquiring people as source separate organic materials from trash this is initiating the race to the bottom that we all feared we initially worked on the Universal Recycling Law a few years ago and so we are now knowingly sending micro plastics into food production soils and we are knowingly taking high quality HDP plastic recyclable plastic that was previously getting recycled covering in food scraps rendering it unrecyclable and now setting it to incinerators that wouldn't be legal in this state so so there are a variety of these things I won't belabor them there are more I guess at the end of the day the singular message that I would provide is that one of the greatest problems that I see is somebody trying to effect change in this community is that as bills leap here they basically get relegated to one agency the other agencies do not consider them to be the laws of the land they consider them to be if it's a solid waste bill it goes to ANR if it's a food system bill it goes to ag they don't each maintain a degree of accountability and I think there's a feedback loop that's lacking that's putting us in a position where we're actually really undermining the capacity of the state to do the work that we need to do right now we need to move along I suspect but I hope we will invite Tom back because he's getting a lot of the notes that a lot of us are trying to well it looks like I'll tell you the secret like the house ag committee might be spiking their meal at the farm shop with a marrow on it wow they're really out to beat you guys this year they're always out we were just flabbergasted yeah well thank you very much for your time this morning you know thank you so much yeah I get to see you all as well and just yeah thank you for all your support and feel free to visit or connect with us any time this is you guys are all part of the housing and conservation coalition day right we're two days on the same day yeah there are so much vibrancy in our state so why don't you guys just introduce yourselves and then Nick are you going first yeah I'm going to go first and do a quick intro for folks let's do that let's do a quick round of interest from us so Richard Hall yeah Richard Hall Justin Ripp from Huntington Shannon Barley from Stratford Jen Lambert from Washington Miles Hooper from Randolph and I'm Nick Richardson I live in Jericho and I work here in Montalier Brian Collmore representing the Rutland district Chris Pearson from Chittenden Pantherically the Washington County great well thank you for coming and I'm the vice chair Bobby is almost always here so I'll follow through but why don't you take it away great thanks about an hour thanks Senator Pearson I'm just going to take a few minutes up from the top here and then I'm really excited to turn it over to the group of farmers that we have here with us today to really give you the sense of on the ground across the state we have a great cross-section here of folks who are engaged in farming day in day out on behalf of all of us here at Vermont to make sure that we have a vibrant viable ag economy and community here going forward we talked a lot about this last week and it was there at the presentation of the Vermont agency of agriculture farms and markets their new strategic plan and got to hear about all the different areas where they're thinking about trying to grow the investments that are going to be needed in order to make that happen we're here today to just reinforce and remind and I think have our best advocates here to really do the talking on behalf of their experience about how important full statutory funding for the Vermont Housing Conservation Board is to ensuring that those investments will take hold and be successful for the future of Vermont going forward each of these farmers has benefited in a way that they'll describe from their participation with us and with VHCB in housing and conservation work it's been an extraordinary partnership that's lasted for decades I think it had a really significant impact on the state of Vermont so we're going to spend some time talking about that today with you and we really appreciate the time and the chance to all come in and discuss it again for the record my name is Nick Richardson I'm the president and CEO of the Vermont Land Trust I've been in that position for two years now the Vermont Land Trust is a 42 year old organization which makes it just a few months older than I am dedicated to conservation of these states natural resources and in particular it's working landscape that's been such a focus of ours working with rural communities, farmers, producers forest land, foresters to make sure that we continue to use those assets in a way that really benefits all of Vermont we all stay connected to the working landscape that we love and we share so much that's requiring more from us today than it ever has and we know that it's not enough just to conserve land to just put conservation easements in place pop some champagne and then say we're done it's really just the beginning and we're addressing that through a really broad set of work that is coming out for the Vermont Land Trust these days it's around farmland access so here folks talking about working with us to move on to land to make sure that it's permanently affordable we're working on payments for ecosystem services I'm sure there's a lot of discussion that's happening around that we're actually doing the first aggregated forest carbon project in the country is happening here in Vermont bringing private landowners together a dozen landowners in the northern green mountains to get those landowners access to forest carbon revenue and we hope to be working with the Nature Conservancy and other folks to do more of that going forward I'd also love to see us working with partners to develop a health soil carbon credits a similar kind of approach taking what we're learning on forest land and doing that similar work on farmland so conservation easements are starting place but they're really not the end and if we're going to maintain a vibrant and viable future for our rural communities in Vermont it really needs to be all hands on deck we are addressing that by asking the question what does Vermont need for most of the day and we're answering it in ways that are very different from the ways we've answered in the past we're doing a lot of great conservation work across the state we're very active in that space we're one of the most active land trusts in the country in terms of the number of easements that we've done and the number of easements that we're planning on the basis but for us it's really just a starting place to think about what is the impact that needs to be had on this landscape in order for all of us to be successful so we're really glad to have the chance to come in and present that to you today the full statutory funding for BHCB and this year it would be about $22.3 million which is essential to that we've been in a sort of situation where what started as a great idea of investment and low income housing and affordable housing in this state and conservation at this full value has been kind of eroded over time put into strange different pieces in the capital budget it's you know there's an opportunity I think to return that to the original vision and the intent of that legislation which was to have a robust ongoing investment in these really important resources and the treasure appears I think very eloquent in describing the need and the value of that investment in the recent report that she gave so you know with that said I just want to open in that way and give that framing to the discussion and then really just turn it over to the farmers that are here with us today it's snowing outside they all have farm operations that are going right now farming doesn't stop and they've taken time out of their days to come and spend it here talking to you to understand the importance of this on the ground so I really honor you all for taking the time to come in and present here in the state house with us today and we appreciate you doing that I think we'll start off today with Shannon Barley from the Stratford Village Farm Stratford my name is Shannon I'm Orange County down in Stratford and I run a diversified farm that was an old dairy farm in the town of Stratford 178 acres and I run it with my husband who's a former U.S. Marine and my two children we raise lamb, beef, and pork and we also do a big vegetable CSA and we have an on farm farm market that we've converted the milk house of our old barn into a farm stand that's open every week and so we start mostly Stratford but we landed on this particular farm in November of 2016 after 15 years of flipping and turning smaller houses and pieces of real estate so that we could finally afford land which is a big barrier for people my age who either aren't are in line to inherit farmland or you know aren't coming from a lot of money or financial backup the financial access and the land access was a real barrier for us so we worked really really hard for a very long time to get to the point where we could afford kind of like the big cocoon for us the land and the infrastructure and the buildings that we needed to be able to run the operation that we envisioned and so the only way that we were able to do that and leverage that was because we were really hoping through the land trust in BHCB that we would be able to secure a conservation easement that would then make it affordable and let us focus an already tricky economic lifestyle with being able to get this off the ground so anyhow we purchased that in 2016 with some creative financing and in June of 2019 we settled on our conservation easement so we conserved 100 acres of the 178 acres and that allowed us to have some breathing room around our mortgage payments and also opened up some room to be able to put money into infrastructure which is a huge cost for trying to do this so at any rate we were really well received in the community we have really wide community support we host several fundraising events on the farm we're really angled towards more of a community farm structure than anything else and with an unintended consequence of this farm has been actually the number of people that have stopped us before we purchased the farm in 2016 it's not vacant for years and years and it had had this very established presence in town as the Lewis Dairy Farm and so when that dairy farm went to put in the 80s it went through a few owners but for the most part it wasn't being used the land wasn't being used and so one of the unintended consequences of this purchase is how hugely enthusiastic the community is to see the farm actually being used as a farm and to see things being grown on it and to see animals back in the pasture and I really can't tell you the number of people that have stopped us everywhere to tell us how important it is to see that part of the valley being used as a farm again and so what's really struck me is that is how important farms are to kind of our rural legacies in terms of the cultural significance of farms but also and this is a less tangible thing but especially right now I think in rural America it's easy to lose hope that we're not disintegrating and I think what this has really brought home for me is that this has given our town a lot of hope and I'm not saying that as shameless self-promotion it really like if it were me or anyone else sitting here it's become so clear what an important role working farms have in our rural communities so the other important piece to our farm is that the west branch of the Ampupinusik river runs through what starts in Brisha and it comes down through our valley and feeds into the Connecticut river and so as part of the deal when we worked out the conservation easement is we agreed to a 50-foot repair and buffer on both sides of the river and that is being planted with some deep-rooted tree plantings I think there's seven acres in total of buffer that will be planted this spring and that's in partnership with the Connecticut River Conservancy NRCS and hopefully BHCB I'm applying for a water quality grant through them to help offset the cost of that and again this isn't shameless self-promotion but I think just talking about the role that farms as a community service so there's the kind of the cultural broader piece of providing providing what towns people really see as a legacy but then there's this other piece that is the conservation practices and I think there's a broader benefit to farms who are conscientious of these things pollinator crops, the repair and buffer carbon sequestration any number of things that we're doing day to day you know either passively or intentionally are happening and all with an eye to making sure that we're doing things responsibly in the right way and growing food for our community so all of that to say I was really impressed when I realized that transfer tax money which I've cursed over and over again every real estate transaction that we had we paid that transfer tax but what made it so wonderful to me was to know that that's where this funding comes from and I think that's really brilliant and I've even told friends who I've been really active with in other states I've said you've got it you know this is such a model for other states I feel and I'm so appreciative of that and I'm appreciative of the easement and the collaboration with VHCB and the Land Trust because without that we would we would really be trying to keep our heads above water right now let's just ease it so that we can focus on what we're what we're here to do which is grow food so I just want to thank you we had testimony folks at UVM extension as I guess it was last week who have worked on the pastorization or excuse me the grazing folks and they were reporting that farmers who have made that transition report a higher quality of life a higher satisfaction you're suggesting that that extends outside of the boundaries of the community I think that's not surprising but it's unintended consequences in the best of sense maybe I'd appreciate it as well thank you Richard would you mind speaking next sure so I'd like to thank everybody for the opportunity to talk about what the Land Trust has done for us our family Fairmont farm and funding for VHCB so I'm Richard Hall and I'm one of five owners at Fairmont farm and my wife Bonnie and my nephew Tucker Purchase and then my oldest daughter Claire Ayer and my son Ricky Hall Hall Park for the farm now and we recently formed a new entity to bring my two kids in and that's been a big part of our farm something that I'm probably the most proud of is we work pretty hard with my folks and Austin Cleese back 20 years ago to do a buyout with them and now recently we've done this with bringing my kids in in between my brother left the farm and we were able to bring Tucker in and so that's been a big part of our operation through those years I think Fairmont farm we incorporated in 92 and we at that point we milked about 300 cows and currently we're up to 1600 cows and we milk in two locations one in East Crasper we grow about 1600 acres of corn and we cover about 2200 acres of hay ground from very Vermont to Glover so we cover some area we primarily grow our own forage but we also on a good corn year which wasn't this last year but we will grow quite a bit of high moisture corn too so what else we I was just thinking about our connection with conservation and my father John Hall and Austin were big proponents of conservation 30 years ago and I think our first property was conserved at that point and both farms were separate at that point and we had both conserved land and then we came together and currently we own about 1650 acres of conserved property that is both tillable land woodland our town in East Lawn is done a lot of work with conservation there was a fund developed in the town by my father and Austin were big parts of that and that's been used quite a bit so we also farm about 550 acres of conserved property that we don't own let's see what else am I thinking about covering we through the years bringing in the new kids we have some different stuff going on my daughter is doing a community day camp at the farm that's something that's recently been happening and she's been a big part of getting the message out about dairy and as we are now one of two farms in East Lawn there's more and more need to get the word out let's see I think I think what we have found over the years that happens to us is we rent a fair amount of property during the time that there might be a generational transfer of property that we rent is typically when decisions are made about selling that land or doing something else with that land and so if you're dependent on that acreage to as part of your operation you tend to come up against a request to buy that property at that time when a generational transfer occurs and that typically has been when we have bought property in that area I think that property is priced generally two to three times more than ag value because we feel like we have a farm that's got younger generation coming in we feel really comfortable with conservation it's been really good for us and so we believe that's when we look to conserve property is when we're going to purchase land we have purchased a little bit of property without conserving but I would say the majority we've tried to use conservation where do you ship your milk? do you ship your milk? do you ship your milk? no it's ag remark and our milk goes into the cabinet can I ask another question? this is a very specific question but you mentioned the camp have you had any issues with insurance for that camp or it's your liability insurance just including it in your regular farm insurance? that's a good question something I was looking into in the off session so I just thought I'd ask you you got the wrong person because Clara would be the only answer to that but yes we have had some issues with insurance and Clara has worked pretty hard to make sure we feel comfortable doing it but I can't tell you exactly what she's done but I know there's been some special questions maybe is her name Clara was my predecessor was Senator Claire Eyre oh yeah and my sister's name is Clara so I need to meet Clara great I think if we move through a lot of time for questions at the end, Miles next great so Miles Hooper I'm now going to say something yeah so our first interaction with the land trust was in 2012 when our family business, Vermont Creamery which both my brothers and I grew up putting cheese in boxes all summer long I decided that in order to leverage a goat's milk supply in Vermont we had to go out and start a farm we couldn't just go out and say hey you guys got to ship more milk we had to commiserate with them and be in it so we started Ayersburg goat dairy in 2012 there wasn't a bank under the sun that was going to lend money to a start-up goat dairy so we coalesced a bunch of you know we did some creative financing and of course land trust was the biggest player in that whole acquisition that was an extremely important farm 116 acres that was an extremely important farm 116 acres right outside the village of Randolph and it was the developers were just like oh gosh that's going to be easy site work down there with all that sand and nice bottom land and the town was really concerned about what the future of it was because the Hodgson's Perry and Carol Hodgson were well known in the Jersey Association but Perry was a milk tester so he was known statewide the town was concerned about what the future of this farm was and it actually wasn't for sale at the time that we bought it we were and asked the question and land trust stepped in and provided about $450,000 for the sale of that easement they purchased that easement for about $450,000 and without that cash in hand we could have never made built out the operation and made that that big investment in the goat sector so that was huge fast so just worried about goats, making annoying mistakes figuring it out, moving forward 2017 was it? yeah we made a play for the for 150 acres right off exit 4 which was created for the largest development in Vermont history so the square footage of the master plan that the developer had put forward was totaled more than like Tafts Corners so you want to talk about like major character change of an important you know central Vermont town there it was you know and we also took the position that interstate development would interfere with the downtown's viagoty that can be debated both ways a little bit but we wanted people to shop in the downtown and so it was more than just seizing the opportunity to own another piece of farmland it was like how do we kind of protect our rural economy and not let the multinationals just set up along that interstate corridor so that was a big lift that was an extremely important easement and ultimately the town was eternally grateful that 150 acres had been conserved and in conjunction with another project just nearby to conserve the remaining 22 acres now the whole 172 is conserved the Magnificent Wales stales are sitting right there walking across to the Green Mountains and it's really an absolute it's just that we will be so grateful in 50 years that we did that I remember distinctly that I think it was the Missoula Observer or some newspaper from Missoula Montana that's Missoula came out they sent somebody out to cover this store Montana's a long way away from it because of the interstate exchange what's going on in Montana is you've got some cities that are starting to push out and the farmers are faced with okay do I try to generationally transition this land is this our chance to finally capitalize you know how do we hang on to it when valuations are rising all the time so what they did was they came out and they interviewed I don't know a dozen people were involved in the project and they really broke that as a model for designing a land trust that would continue to preserve concerned land right outside the city limits because they were concerned about the city sprawl so I was like wow not only they hear about it that's remarkable in itself but also had the ambition to come out study it and report back to try and create a model in their own state and I thought that that was quite significant I'm very fortunate myself to have been in a position where the Creamery, Vermont Creamery was able to basically guarantee to our financial partners our vendors that we're going to go start a goat dairy we know that there isn't a lot of a lot of high success rate for these types of operations but we're going to do this and of course the land was not owned by a family member or there was no generational transition there it was the land was having to be purchased from the Hodgesons so I'm very fortunate to be able to be the steward of all that now and I really I don't understand how somebody coming out of VTC or UVM with a degree in animal science and they wanted or diversified agriculture or whatever can get on to a piece of property without the land trust I just I don't see how it's mathematically possible the the margin on a goat dairy, cow dairy, vegetable farm, organic dairy you know it's my new a lot of cash coming and going but the amount you hold on to is small so lenders are not behind these kind of projects in 2020 and I see Vermont Land Trust and BHCB as being absolutely an absolutely essential mechanism to making sure that there is a younger generation coming on to these these these parcels, these farms because most farmers in Vermont I think view their unconcerned land as their 401K and so when they so without somebody like Land Trust to make up that delta between the young ambitious the young ambitious knowledgeable person now that is hell bent on being a farmer then I don't if the Land Trust is not there I don't see how it's possible, honestly so I think that with everything the way that the rate at which our world is changing we are going to be so grateful that we held on to farmland in subsequent generations Miles that's great I think just to build out a little bit of what you're talking about provide some context there's goat dairy didn't really exist as a business in Vermont in a large scale way before your farm operation got started in their whole pockets of it around there are now how many goats in Vermont that are part of goat dairy there's been significant growth since your farm operation again the growth is considerable there is a quite a significant project on the horizon right now where we're transitioning a large cow dairy to goats and I think but also just beyond you know Vermont is one microcosm but we are seeing goat dairy as kind of a category goat's milk category and all things goat continuing to grow I love this photo by the way who are those from they're from our girlfriend yeah you guys are all different so goats are becoming a really important part of Vermont's agriculture industry across the region that's becoming true that wasn't true 10 years ago it's true now so it's a really exciting thing just the point of bringing other resources in how conservation works there's literally hundreds of millions of dollars of federal money that's come into Vermont as a result of the Vermont Housing Conservation Board continued investment in funding conservation through VHCP so when you think about the full statutory funding for VHCP consider also the incredible leverage that comes in behind that and what we don't spend enough time talking about here is the leverage of private investment over 100 million dollars of private investment that's gone into conservation over the last 30 years so you gotta think about that as a big chunk that we don't spend enough time thinking about private capital that comes into support is because people care so much about the stories that you're hearing today so I just want to give that additional context Jen can I ask you to say a few things actually you set me right up you set me up for my story so I was raised in Wakefield Vermont and then in high school started milking cows and feeding calves after school and decided well I might as well go to VTC for their ag program while I was there I was lucky enough to get a 2 plus 2 scholarship to go to UVM and minor institute and while I was in school and afterwards I was able to get a job at a big 600 cow dairy in Brookfield Sprig Ranch and met my husband while I was working there as men for a couple years it became obvious to me that I'd rather I really wanted to own my own place wanted to own my own cows and came upon my husband's great uncle was looking to retire so short distance of where we were living so I thought man this is great so one night I showed up at his farm and he wanted to sell me his cows and he looked at me like I was insane and after a while he said okay yeah maybe we'll think about doing this so I approached multiple bankers and they all kind of kind of gave me this weird look and asked me how much money I had in the bank I was like none but I went to 2 plus 2 I managed this big dairy I educated I am I know what I'm doing so they kind of sent me on my way okay kid see you later so what ended up happening is we did some fancy financing with the current owner Richard Lamber and family friend stepped up and decided that together they would finance the cows for us so we bought the cows and rented the farm and so that one along pretty well for a little while and after a couple of years we were able to be able to prove like so we're cash flowing you know paying the grand bill making payments but the problem was is what we were paying for rent the mortgage was going to be 2 to 3 times as much and so there was no way we were going to be able to afford this mortgage which is when Vermont Land Trust stepped in started working with them and they were able to buy the conservation easement on fire making the mortgage much more affordable the mortgage was ended up being about what we were paying for rent so it made it much easier for us to cash flow and well enough to cash flow that we were able to afford to put in 2 milking robots I think Vermont Land Trust coming in and helping us buy our farm is what really green lighted so much of the innovation on our farms people come to see our farms to talk to us we're very positive innovative place I have enough time that I'm able to come to farm bureau, come to events like this I don't remember having that much time when I was in the parlor constantly couldn't ever seem to get help milking cows is really hard and stressful and at very odd times of the day now the robots were able to hire just a completely higher level of person the hours that they're there to work are much more manageable more like a normal job but I associate all of these positive changes with Vermont Land Trust coming in and making life just easier and I think about what everyone's been saying about Vermont Land Trust farmers having a better quality of life and absolutely we have a better quality of life that took some of this job so that we're able to think more clearly and make more investments to our farm and I'm not sure what would have happened if Vermont Land Trust hadn't been there would we have been able to afford our farm I'm not sure it might have happened but it might have happened years later I don't know if the pressure of having to make those payments would have made us eventually exit the dairy I'm not sure but I'm very grateful that they were there to help us by our farm and we're actually working on another project right now so that we can grow our farm even more there's another big chunk of land that's contiguous to our farm so we're really excited about grabbing more land thinking about what Richard was saying when land comes up for sale it's not when your checkbook is ready it's when people are retiring or a health issue so we've actually got multiple neighbors that are kind of like knocking on our door like oh hey we're ready it's like oh wonderful but you know it's just it's great to have Vermont Land Trust there to support you and help you make some of those decisions to figure out what's possible I know the future of our farm is going to depend on us owning land we rent a tremendous amount of acreage right now and our long term goal is to own as much acreage as possible so that our business doesn't depend on you know someone else letting you rent acreage for 50 bucks an acre or whatever so yeah very grateful for Vermont Land Trust Nick is there a rule of thumb on what the conservation is it a third of the value off the inner half or can vary widely depending on what region of the state we're talking about what the development value is yeah I kind of typically describe it so for a basic and firm project director it's a bell curve maybe around 50% anywhere from maybe 30 to 70 is the typical range value of the property we have a lot of road frontage so it was about half yeah it's significant either way 30, 50, 70% we're talking about a significant part of the value so when that comes out it makes the capital nice it's performing a lot of money it's very close to there so what happens when years from now you're ready to retire and maybe you don't have somebody your family wants to take over your farm the easement goes with it but what about the financing then for the new owner of anybody's farm not specifically yours but you know how does it work in another 50 years when there might need to be another transfer would you be able to then help with financing again or is it just a one time deal well that reduction in the capital should stay so once we do it you're talking about that land being an agricultural value so when these folks sell it they're also going to be selling it on at a lower value but they will be able to realize a higher economic return off of it and yes the land trust will still be there and I won't be there 50 years from now but if I have anything to say about it we'll still be doing very active work around pairing the next generation farmers to land just like we're doing today I think it's so important because we're going to really need a lot of first generation farmers to keep ag alive and well in Vermont young people have been turned off by their families dairy one way or another or the transition just hasn't happened and I think it's going to take a lot of a lot of people coming out of ag school to fill these roles so folks like that we have one more one more farmer who's with us today to give testimony Senator Starr I just wanted to say hello thank you for having us in we've heard today so far from Shannon Barley and Stratford Richard Hall we probably know from he's not familiar with Craftsbury a couple times Miles Cooper here and they look familiar to you and Jan Lambert was just giving a presentation I know are you on the right side of the hill I forgot what you're talking about she's on the right side of the hill so she's on the north she's on my left so that's a great great conversation about all things conservation and the importance of continued funding so thank you and Justin Rich is going to close us out with testimony Justin Rich from Burt Rock Farm in Huntington and just to follow up on Senator Harvey's question it's a nice question to be able to say well what's the exit strategy in 40 years for these farmers to be concerned because that presupposes that there's been an entry strategy and without conserved land and to say like ours there'd be a hell of fewer entry strategies in our business we've been at our farm since 2008 we bought our original farm which is 17 acres in 2008 not conserved but it was during a recession right after the stock market collapsed and nobody was buying houses so that's our closure so our own trade of farming was that and the fact that my wife works full time off farming always has so our cash flow position can be better than a lot of folks who are trying to derive an entire family's income from farming we grow organic vegetables we're doing almost 90 90% wholesale at this point so a lot of our product leaves the stake goes down to Boston I actually don't know where a lot of it ends up how do you get them down there? so we're members of the deep root organic farmers cooperative we ship through two different companies that go down to the Boston area too our local truck doesn't really leave Chittman and Madison counties so we run deliveries to Burlington twice a week this time near Middlebury once a week but we're we're kind of in the medium scale for farming for vegetable farming these days so we're growing 20 acres of vegetables doesn't sound like that much but 20 acres of organic vegetables has the economic impact of 100 cow dairy at this point so it's something yeah so we're in a valley with one 250 cow dairy teeny bit of beef and then mostly houses so our valley is a 10-mile-long strip of land along the river mostly mile-wide or less so our whole valley is probably 400 tillapole acres and it's all amazing soil so an interesting thing was so we bought our original farm in 2008 we've leased a couple different parcels ranging from one acre to ten acres along a six-mile strip of the valley so I'm driving my tractors on the road all the time which I think some people probably find annoying but I think it's a good public service because it's first I'm going the speed limit for about two miles out of it because they're a teeny little village with 25-mile-hours limits but I just think it's good for people to see tractors on the road yeah I think it's good for people to slow down every now and then it's funny when the cyclists try to draft behind me because it makes me a lot comfortable but what's the deal um but conservation didn't come into our farm until about year nine so we bought our original farm we rented from a couple of really great neighbors we bought a landlocked river bottom parcel for relatively cheap non-conserved because it didn't have any development ability because there was no access so the town granted us access to the town garage agricultural access only so that I feel this de facto deserved even though not legally but then two and a half years ago an elderly neighbor passed away and his 76 acre farm came up well it wasn't even up for sale yet and I do that thing where you say can I call the lawyer yet you know a couple months after he passed away and he didn't have any farming heirs and I said are you interested in selling the parcel and he says yeah we worked at a price based on the appraisal and during that appraisal process I went and met with Alcarnats at the land trust and said okay so here's how much it's going to cost we can cash flow this for a couple of years well not cash flow we can pay for it for a few years but an important part of being able to buy the 76 acre parcel will be getting the value down a bit and so all along the way the land trust I actually couldn't believe how they were able to predict things like that would probably be 18 maybe 19 months from now that this hurdle will be crossed and they were pretty much right within like two weeks the whole time I guess they're professionals but so that was summer 2017 we didn't close until fall 2017 and the whole time we had this big mortgage payment and we weren't in current use by the way either so it was a very expensive two years before the land trust money finally came through but we finally got the conservation easement on 18 of those 76 acres this fall so my wife and I we were like you know we why do we feel like we have no money there's enough coming and I said well it's the amount going out at the moment so between conserving that field renting ethics at the house 200 years ago I rented that out so now we can actually cash flow before we buy which is a pretty nice feeling pretty rare in the world of production to cash flow land it's a mile and a half of the road which is really good for me so we do organic vegetables which means we don't have very good fun decides or insecticides so it's nice to be able to take our potatoes one year five acres in this field move them six miles up the road next year the bugs are really lazy they don't fly that far and you can really grow a much better crop than we would specialty crops other things are less sensitive so that the land trust it didn't get us into farming it's allowing us to expand our business in a way that allows us to meet our local and regional demand and like I said I think it's a good it's helping us keep a town which is really on the rural suburban fringe at the moment from going fully into more of the suburban enough that there's anything really wrong suburban living but you know a lot of people in our town I think would really be sad to see that nice 18 acre field surrounded by houses by the way it's in a fishbowl I love it it's really nice great and also it's helping keep a little bit of a rural economic engine going in our town I mean the dairy in town is obviously significantly larger than we are so they're a real example of rural economic activity but you know I'm in town all day and there's not a lot of people who work in town I mean they work in town right they can hear and they go to Middleburg they go to Brallington there's a small group of us who work in Huntington during the day and it's you know I'd like to see a little bit more of that are you on the fire? no I'm not on the fire how have they not gotten you? two little children they're always looking for people who are working in Huntington because everybody leaves the fire department is doing pretty good I have one but it's like so uh Monday yeah I've got you I have a three year old you're gonna have a mother kid just to keep you that that's all of them that's just a picture saying it's not just about it is about keeping farmland open as farmland but having a farmland is nice it's nice for the views it's nice for I can make my living but it also sets the tone for rural towns to actually have function rural economies I just I just reflect that you know of the five folks that we brought in to testify today four of them are participants in our farmland access program we did a hundred farmland transitions over the last ten years so we're seeing for example four there are a hundred across the state we have this headline view of agriculture that has a lot of challenge in it and a lot of gloom and doom what we're showing you today is a lot of really enthusiastic savvy entrepreneurs who are coming into this landscape and doing something and those aren't our ideas we are creating the conditions to possibly for people to be successful in this land both established existing dairy farms are such a crucial part of our farm it will be for many years to come and a diversified set of younger farm businesses that are coming in as well so I know we're short on time and you guys have a thing but they're coming in we got people coming in a few months I wonder if there are other questions that you have well did you talk about some of the other activities that you folks do for rural communities like the Scott farm I gave the briefest of pre-embolged one thing that wasn't mentioned is and we've got a lot of that on our conserved property is the trail system and it's really heavily used and I think really appreciated I do have a slide presentation that I can send to the committee that talks about that because more detail on us I'd be happy to come in and do a work overview that I'm not interested in that would be interesting including the work that we're doing with rural economic development like what we're doing at Scott farm what was the proposal it's a flat proposal this year and continue to keep a fair amount of that in the capital and I would strongly urge the committee to consider a recommendation that gets us back up to full statutory we're not that far away but it's we need I think the idea of coming back to this idea of full statutory funding I also want to think there ends up being an enduring issue of having some of that funding coming to the capital bill versus through the property transfer tax in the way that it was meant to BHCC is going to really focus on that this year and we've talked a lot about it and we've had some conversations about this it's kind of a technical issue anyway but it has some impacts and we'd love to see the intent of this legislation be followed through on by returning to the original source of funding that was going on Talking about trails when I was at some of the stairs in Kingdom Trails over in St. J area they have I think the ladies they have trails on 80 or 90 private property parcels and they've been having to go through that 250 to put a trail you know private property on that and let them across when they have to go through 250 and really we work our butts off encouraging all these healthy living styles and then we go and zap it with a regulation that oh yeah you can go ahead and do this and it's the greatest thing but you've got to jump through all these hoops to get there and what's happening is that the private landowners are saying hey I'm not going to go through that hassle and so what we ought to do somehow is set up a system where you go through Forest and Parks Forest and Parks Recreational section could just as well manage the trail parts and get away from those heavy regulators to do it because what's happening is as I said private landowners aren't donating that right away in that parcel and it's creating you get to this point and then you're done so it's good about every issue we've ever dealt with on recreation we've always tried to work trails into it on some of the easements any other if you guys mopped into that any of you on your trails not to the point where Triggers Act 250 you know because I think the models I think it's a little different when you're giving the public access to your property versus charging people to use the property the other thing was the local commission in the kingdom had an interpretation of when Act 250 applied differently than what the environmental board so I'm hopeful that it's been a little smoother in the last couple of years we heard a lot about this on the study committee that went all around the state I was part of and it was not being properly applied and looping in too many people particularly in the trail discussion so hopefully that's a little better how do you manage they're not because they're not permit right because they have frozen land so it's sort of just different I will say that kind of echoing Richard and Shannon's point sorry and I was like lost it there the community is so grateful to be adjacent to a piece of conserved land like in Justin's situation where I can't imagine that any one of those houses isn't so grateful to have their front yard protected just about every time I drive past the piece that we conserved by exit four there's somebody out there doing something walking around so if you're doing a good job they get a great deal the public gets a great deal to use great thank you so much