 Good afternoon everybody, great to see everyone, thank you for braving weather and mud to come. So we're excited to have Secretary Anson Tebbets with us today. He was appointed by Governor Phil Scott to be the Secretary of Agriculture Food and Markets in 2016. He grew up on his dairy farm in Cabot where his family raised Jersey cows and sheep and ran a Vermont maple syrup sugaring operation and while farming Anson also had a long career in broadcasting and both radio and television. An award-winning reporter and storyteller Anson's last position was managing reporters, editors and photographers for television. Anson still lives in Cabot on his farm where his son Alden as a student at Middlebury College hunts wild turkey and deer. His wife Vicki enjoys forging the land and his daughter Adeli loves the forest and baking. A nature lover and birder Anson's radio show for the birds can be heard weekly on radio Vermont and he's going to talk to us today about developments in Vermont agriculture including new products and technology, adaptations for climate change and improving farm resiliency and implications for the Vermont landscape and he'll be he'll be happy to entertain questions as well so thank you very much for Secretary Tevins. Well thank you very much here we go gotta remember how to use a microphone again so so I I recognize a lot of you folks in the past life or current life many people I may have run into in my media world maybe my ag world at the agency when I was Deputy Secretary or at the State House so it's good to see all of you here and what a great opportunity to have a chance to talk about agriculture with you. So first just a little bit of you know we do from time to time we do research at the agency of agriculture and we have a you know we have a hotline of people call in with with questions and concerns and maybe we can provide some technical assistance so it's about that time of year where it's people getting their chicks you know maybe across the way that people order them and they're about ready to get their chicks and and I always want to do the story of the the mail carrier who has to take the chicks and the chicks the last person on the route is the delivery and they had to listen to the peeping all the way through the money backgrounds so that occurs but this person was new to Vermont you know since the pandemic we've had a lot of new people moved to Vermont a lot of it they want to learn about you know backyard raising chickens and so forth so they called us and lo and behold they got the day old chicks they went home they prepared the soil perfectly and they you know they get the rose and so the the new farmer planted them with feet down and of course the next day next morning they went out and of course they're all dead well as you know you can order another round of chicks pretty easily so the new farmer orders another round of chicks but this time he says well I'm gonna do it differently I'm gonna put them head first so he put some head first and that's where we come in so they call us and you've got the agency of agriculture we know all so and then and then so what we do is you know we send a field agent out so we went out and we saw the you know the chick did dead chickens and we said well the first thing we got to do is get a soil test so there you go anyway that's my one egg joke so there you have it well thank you very much but yeah there are a lot of people they love the chicks until the rooster shows up and then the rooster starts growing early in the morning or a weasel gets them all but all good so I thought maybe we do a little overview of what we actually do at the agency and then I'm gonna talk about there's something new out which is called the ag census it's done across the country it's done every five years and it just came out on Valentine's Day so there's some new data about you know it's just it's a snapshot of what's happening now in Vermont and anyway we talk about the flood in the flood recovery and I'm happy to take if anyone who wants to jump up and ask a question in the midstream please do that I want it to be back and forth first of all the mission of the agency of agriculture here it is facility support and encourage the growth and viability of agriculture while protecting the working landscape human health animal health plant health consumers and the environment so if you as you drove or walk walked here today there might have been a point where we were involved so maybe you had to gas up so if you look we have a division called weights and measures so if you look you'll see a sticker right there and we inspect to make sure you're getting the the proper amount of gasoline that's calibrated correctly so we inspect that particular area the evolution of that is some of you may have an electric car and you may be charging so we will we will soon be having a program to make sure you're getting what you're paying for as you pay for electricity at your charging station so that's the evolution of weights and measures you may have stopped and got some some sliced deli meat or something we inspect scales so that's something that we do as well maybe the farmers market you you buy something in those scales that are inspected to make sure because you're paying by the pound we do all of that so there's a lot of things that we do at 143 employees and in state government that's relatively a small agency but it's an agency with 143 positions and then we have various divisions that do various projects so we have administration which which as I'm a part of we have food safety and consumer protection we have agriculture development public health and agriculture resource management we have a lab in Randolph which is relatively new remember the flood in Irene went through Waterbury destroyed the lab there new lab was created and it's just off the campus of Vermont State University former VTC a relatively new it's only a couple years old so there is what we have and they have the agriculture water quality division so we work to and create jobs through the agriculture development division new business and markets water quality we regulate feed seed fertilizer and pesticides and then food safety consumer protection which is our biggest arm of the of the agency it's all related to you know animal health dairy meat weights and measures etc so we inspect on the farm so if someone's milking cows goats or sheep we check for sanitation to make sure the milk is safe and as it heads to maybe a processing facility we're also in the the cabbets of the world so cabbage cheese we have inspectors making sure that they they're following the you know the protocol and everything is safe there we're also in our our meat plants inspecting both federal and state the meat regulations are probably the most complicated of any regulations that we do they're very strict because of just the nature of safety with meat this USDA regulations USDA for Inspector USDA it can go across state lines but if we're only inspected with us the state you cannot sell outside the borders of Vermont so some people that want to have bigger markets go into the USDA go into the USDA market so that's a little bit of what we do total budget for the agency is about 55 million that includes you know state dollars fees special funds and we get a lot of federal funds through USDA about 38% of our dollars come from the US Department of Agriculture with various grants now I want to talk about the census so the census is kind of interesting those that really like data we get a snapshot of you know what's happening in Vermont but also what's happening across the country so every state does this it's done every five years so last one was done in 2017 and this it takes them a year to figure out all the data so this does not include last year's flood so it's ended on 2023 so this has been around 180 years we've been collecting this and they can break it down into national state right into the county level across the country as well so what is the threshold for something for agriculture since 1974 the census of agriculture has to define a farm as any place for which $1,000 or more of ag products were produced and sold or normally would have been sold during the census year so not a huge threshold $1,000 so but important looking at some of the data in 2017 we had 6,808 farms and we dropped to 6,537 at the latest so it's a drop of 4% it's about 300 farms that we lost in in the five years granted this is just the census the average farm size 2017 it was 175 acres and now we're up to 180 acres so about a 3% increase so you're going to see a trend of fewer farms larger farms consolidation you'll see it everywhere you see it you see it in banking you see it in media you see it in retail you see it in agriculture as well don't know what the answer is but it's it's a fact looking at some of our neighbors so pick a state who wants to pick a state give me a state and I'll give you a New Hampshire okay New Hampshire according to the latest census lost 4.2 percent 4.2 percent I heard Maine Maine was 7.4 they lost 7.4 looking at the data it looks like every state lost farmers California 10.5 percent 10.5 percent so they have tremendous amount of farms there I mean in that some of that food's coming our way so yeah this is probably merging you'll see that you see that in Vermont maybe a dairy farm will go out another farm will either buy or lease their land maybe take on their cows or their cows will be become part of that operation no state I don't think they did I don't think they break it down that was the question was natural disasters do we know of the why we lose farms there's various various reasons we lose farms and some of the data will show economics for sure family structures are complicated at times so the next generation and we'll get into some of the data on the aging population and how that's impacting agriculture and we I just attended a workshop at a dairy conference and she was from Canada and her job was to essentially try to mediate some of the disputes between families passing the farm down to the next generation really complicated stuff really difficult conversations with folks multiple siblings maybe one a child stayed on the farm two others didn't how does the farmer decide how to you know transfer that land so it gets really complicated which is that her entire business is trying to mediate disputes of transferring farm operations to to the next generation so that is a good question because they would if they did it they'd have to go to the right they would have to go to the and do it that's good that's I'll have to follow up on that whether they do or not and we do have some in Vermont we have some Amish farmers now in Vermont they are in the Northeast Kingdom I believe it's Coventry it's the old Walker farm I think they settled there's a couple and I've got to visit them I think they have some open Saturday events where they sell some of their products but it's in the Northeast Kingdom in and in Coventry in that area any other state you want to know about Iowa 1% a lot of stuff going on in some of these significant row crop states a lot of issues with in those states with ownership of land some states are worried about China buying too much of the land so they're putting in statutes so places like you know Iowa the Dakotas I think I've got some legislation with that yes yeah we can get down into some of the any other states and I'll move on to some more that yes Nebraska learning my map here to do to do to do 4% Minnesota 4.8 percent New York 8.3% New York is a significant dairy state major major dairy state they are the fifth largest production in dairy California Wisconsin Idaho lot tremendous growth in the Dakotas now but these are I mean they're putting in you know these are 10 20 30 40 thousand dollar of herds numbers of cows significant significant so you can well imagine and we're you know we do have large farms but nothing to that scale we have 36 farms that are 700 cows or more we call we regulate farms in three categories large farm LFOs medium farm which is 200 700 700 plus is LFOs and then the rest so we have about 36 farms in Vermont that are over 700 cows and we know that through the there are regulations and how we inspect them etc in the what category the middle category is is it's about 200 230 something like that yep yep yep one more state we had yeah a lot of this relates to cow comfort so you know the traditional you know we talk about the old red barn they were you know tied in you know winter time for example when I was growing up our cows went in the barn probably the weather was you know in October and they didn't go out till May 15th so then barn and I get to stay home to let the cows out on and you see some of these you see some of these posted on social media now they have big events now I think I just saw one on Sweden where they let the cows out they've been inside in tie barns for a long time and the organic standards are moving away from that so organic standards are saying they've got to have so many days outside a year around so that there's a lot of nostalgia with that but so there's a lot of you know folks I mean our cows were you know they were taking care of a beautiful but they were inside and tied for a long time that's why they jump and go wild when they let them out on the green grass I'm not they just changed them so I'm you may be right on that but they they certainly it's a requirement that X number of days they certainly have to be out and change that bag bomb is 125 years old this year and I mentioned bag bomb because when the cows went out for the first time sunny day in May they all came back with sunburns and you imagine milking a cow with a sunburn in hell so tubs and tubs of bag bomb were used and there's a story that bag bomb tells where the men had absolutely the softest hands in the world because of the use of the bag bomb but bag bomb has become a they've evolved into how either the world is involved so it's they're doing it for consumers now as opposed to you know buying tubs you know the but they're 100 significant 125 years old out of Linenville they're still at it and we started by a guy named John Norris who never went through the FDA approval process he did it by he always marketed it as for cows but we all know it can cure lots of things so he never went through FDA approval but word of mouth yeah no Pete I mean people swear by it now they can they you know they've got little little little parts but letting the cows out for the first time was always that when I use I remember bag bomb all right moving on so some of the data so we get some of the counties anyone from Addison County Addison County has 751 farms so there are leading Ag County followed by Franklin 707 Windsor Rutland Chittenden Orleans Orange Caledonia Washington and Wyndham I don't think they I don't think they they don't do it by the but there are there is some data out there on Vermont nationally has some of the highest levels of organic production in the United States dairy vegetables as a whole has some of the highest about 25% of our dairies are organic in Vermont that's just the dairy side the organic there are two I would say three main buyers there's stonyfield which is started was started in New Hampshire their buyer organic Valley would be the other significant buyer our farm in 1994 was organic it was started it shows you how fast the organic world has grown in 1994 there were think seven farmers that went to something called the organic cow which was out of Tundridge and that grew and my parents what they did it for was because the system for paying farmers for milk is so complicated it's it's you don't know what you're going to get paid for until 30 days after you deliver your product so think about that so you have it's month-to-month so it's really really hard from a planning aspect to know what you're going to be up against so it could be you know ten dollars a hundred weight one month and they could go up down so this roller coaster and I think my parents finally made the decision because they got a contract with organic so they got a contract with organic Valley I mean organic cow but that's been spun off it was I think it became hood at one point and at one point it would I think it ended up being horizon which was just exited the region at some point but just only since 1994 so it it went incredibly incredibly fast land and farms by use acres cropland four hundred thirty six thousand acres are in cropland pasture land is about eighty nine thousand acres across Vermont and we are seeing Vermont grow up to woods so woodland is at five hundred sixty nine thousand acres top counties lane and farms again Franklin County hundred eighty two thousand acres is in farmland Addison second will 177 Orleans 121 Rutland 116 and orange at 87,000 acres all right 11 all this data well current use you know about current use is it it it doesn't it doesn't necessary I'm you know I'm I'm I don't think we can say definitively as long as it's not in development I mean it's being used and there's so many rules and regulations around current use you know how many acres are allowed you gotta have a certain threshold of a number of acres produced we haven't seen any changes in current use in a while you know and but without current use I can guarantee you there would not be as many pharmacists are now because it's being taxed on its use value for agriculture if that was to go away you would have a lot of folks exiting because there's no way they that amount of acres you could pay on development prices incredible program so we talked about age so 2012 the average farmer age was 55 2017 55.9 and then 2022 it's 57.7 so that's the average age so we got an issue without a doubt it's probably the number one issue I talk with lies figuring out the aging population it's maybe trying to retire and transfer the property to the next generation or someone else that maybe has not been in farming that wants to get into farming two major issues one is costs the cost of land is tremendous very expensive so someone getting into the farming for first time taking on a lot of debt they can afford it and then usually the situation is you may have a farmer a couple that still needs some sort of income even though they're retired and then there's got to be an income for the the new generation that's come on and I mean agricultural is not all is not alone margins are tight I mean they're they're extremely tight and it's so that's that's an issue there I think oh yeah we have a tremendous amount of land that is conserved or not I think the latest from the land trust is that we had 1000 farms that were conserved so and that and that's forever so that's there's you know sometimes when an easement is drafted they do carve out a little bit of land maybe for a son or a daughter that maybe wants to build a house so we have a con so it has to be used for agriculture so we are seeing we are seeing places that may be growing up you know and brushes it's if it's not actively used working landscape is really important so yeah and then we've got we're having cases now where the housing is really impacting agriculture as well you may have seen where some of our processing facilities cannot find enough help because they cannot find enough housing for folks Cabot is an example Cabot right up the road the plan and Cabot I think they've they talked about they couldn't get some product out because they didn't have enough employees yes that's correct yeah they are running dorms from Goddard and and that's helping but it also goes to the Jasper Hills up in Greensboro they there's an audience out there that wants to move to Vermont Joy Vermont loves the outdoors loves the recreation loves the mission of you know making cheese but they're having issues with finding housing that's affordable for for young people so it all is tying in here with it you know with with housing impacting you know products yes sir Vermont has tried to do that we have tried to maybe go to a supply management system but Congress probably would not allow it they got very close at one point there was I want to say prior to me coming but when I've been I want to say during the time of speaker Boehner it was during his there was a very close a lot of energy very close to getting it we had the Northeast Dairy Compact with for a while that was very successful but the issue with dairy it's very regional and so the north is you know northeast is different the Midwest is different now we've got new players that are significant like Texas is growing tremendously with dairy New Mexico is growing some of the folks from California have gone to Idaho and now I'm seeing lots of reports of like South Dakota having significant increases in dairy production but some of the co-ops they're at post COVID soon after COVID put their own systems in where they were not allowing some farmers to grow and put on and that's the dilemma here because if it's like this it's it's endless battle so if the price is low to the farmer then they think some farmers think they need to put on more cows to you know get more milk so they can get paid more and then when it's gets really good the same effect can happen as well like the price is really good I got to make my money really fast because I know a down thing is going to happen again they are working on some tweak with the federal system and the federal system is was created you know in the 20s 30s and no one has been able to really figure out a system that you know works for everybody it can get very territorial you know you know but we were blessed with big markets around us so you know the Wisconsin's they're dying to get into the New York's and the Washington's and the Boston's and that's where our markets are and they'll move it across if they can so it becomes it becomes at times very territorial but everyone is kind of in the same boat to everywhere I go you know the nutrition rate is about the same for every state so that would tell you whatever system is in place now well the market share so you'll see you know explore the dairy case sometimes and look at some of the products that you're seeing you're going to you're having but you're going to having you're seeing you're seeing telemuk that's Oregon so that's so they're they're on the doorstep and they're trying to eat into the market share in Vermont so yeah I mean the two the two main processors with Ben and Jerry's of course Cabot Agamark and then Vermont Creamery which is has a butter line a cow's butter but it also has a goat cheese Vermont Creamery is a company that could use more goat's milk from the region and that's one of the things we're trying to do we're trying to we need sheep's milk as well we talked about the Amish the Amish are providing some milk for Grafton Grafton has a combination cow and sheep's cheese I think it's called Shep's hog award-winning amazing but they're sourcing some of that sheep's milk from the Amish in New York so anyone want to start milking sheep here come on we could use we need about a we need about a thousand more goats to so and we've got one significant large goat farm that started up in Hyde Park Jones Lane farm and they made the transition they decided to get out of the cow business because it was they couldn't really grow and it was it was kind of it was their time to try something different so they've got about a thousand goats that they're milking and they're supplying it to Vermont Creamery which is up in Websterville very town and they're owned by Atlanta Lakes which is a you know Fortune 500 significant company so just some key summary points on the census so our farms are down by about 300 smaller farm numbers are diminishing it's probably not a headline there so expenses are up farming income is is up as well a little bit and the people are making the decisions on the farms are 35 years and older so I think they it would under this I'm not sure but under is the sort of the regulatory thing so if you know farmer a buys farmer B and they're already under regulation they have to notify us so we know that you know they've increased by 300 400 cows and they may have an amendment to their to the to their permit so we we can track it we can track it that way but you are seeing you know it's not a huge consolidation across Vermont but there's a few here and there that have either you retired and someone else's bought their herd there is a need right now this nationally some of the dairy is going into beef now which is I don't know if you've seen some of the stories where the beef prices are really good now for the beef ranchers and a lot has to do with the supply is down so a lot of you know how long it takes takes a couple years to produce a cow for slaughter but a lot of some of the dairy heifers are now going into the to the meat supply which is impacting it but the ranchers are having some good times now but they're they're going to be behind so that's probably impacting what you're paying at the supermarket for your for your beef yeah they're included they're included in there so it's that it's it's dairy it's vegetable it's maybe apples berries fruits etc not in the not in the census we just and that's there is there's organic and then there's grass fed and there's some some of the company's buyers are looking strictly for grass fed products there's many many many things the certification for organic is done by NOFA which is the Northeast so they do the certification of you know the standards and we made some progress nationally on that when Horizon Exited we worked with the USDA to make sure because there were standards but they really weren't being enforced so you had mega herds maybe out in the mid west that they're moving animals back and forth with limited time in between you know they could be conventional cows and they were moving him and quickly so some of that inspection is now they're committed to doing some of those inspections to make it more authentic so that was one of the blessings with horizon leaving the region yeah the slaughter the slaughter that is an issue that we made a little bit of progress on it's we have about 14 15 facilities but there are very small ones that could be very big ones but it's kind of like you've got to have core customers and you got to move a lot of product through quickly efficiently one area that we've made we've got was one in Ferrisburg that we've made some insignificant investments in some of the infrastructure you know it's difficult work first of all so you've got to work in a facility you've got to be cut from a certain cloth to do that you've got to have that and then some of the work physically is really challenging so they've gotten some new stuff where they the carcasses are moving you know they don't have to really move it or touch it they've got platforms now they can you can sit on the platform and work and you can go up and down etc but infrastructure is expensive so you could put a couple hundred thousand dollars into a meat facility and it just does a fraction of what you need to be done but if we don't have enough places to process that impacts the land because then people get discouraged and they're not going to have animals on the land so you got to you got to keep it going but infrastructure is is the key part with the meat industry to keep it it's good got to be packaged right the portable one that was a poultry one and I think someone purchased that somewhere along the way when I wasn't around and I don't know if it's I don't think it's around anymore it may be it may be someone may be using it like bringing the chickens to it now as opposed to it moving around there is one there is one in the works for small room it's small room it's sheep in pigs are particularly challenging most of the slaughter facilities do you know beef but the small room minutes but there is a gentleman who's I think going to be ready this year to travel around with a portable one which can deal with some of those issues some of the smaller producers and then they wouldn't have to wait in line at some of the other facilities because they got the core customers and if you raise a few animals and they all come in the same time as that's the other issue so they all come in the fall right you want to you want to process in the fall so they get all backlogged there and in the slower months other times of the year yes meat regulations are really complicated and it depends it it depends if you're and I'm not even going to touch it because I'll get it wrong you could we could spend a whole day going over meat regulations but we're trying to get some changes made at the federal level to make it a little more flexible to ease up on the on-farm slaughter so it has to do about when you buy it you have to be present when the slaughter happens etc so we're trying to make some Vermont style friendly changes and still make sure that our meat is safe because we don't want to get in a situation where we have some sanitation issues and we got some meat is safe federal level federal level is some legislation we've been working with rural Vermont on some stuff and they've gone down and we're trying to get a little more flexibility it would allow a little more on-farm slaughter which would comply with some of the USDA regulations and being able to sell more off the farm etc but again it's complicated it takes a huge left sometimes to get changes made especially at the federal level yes yeah and we do have there is an energy out there of a lot of new farmers that really want to to take on an operation and a vegetable farmer you don't need a tremendous amount of land we're a little concerned with the vegetable berry world because of two things that happened last year one was the hard frost you remember the hard frost in May and that was that that hit a lot of them depending where you were standing whether it was the grapes they were going to go into the wine or could have been the apple orchards some people manage the orchards a little bit differently that was a big deal and then of course the flood hit the vegetable people probably in the worst way possible because all their expenses were lined up for that July harvest starting to go to their markets and a lot of them were wiped out so that was that's it's been a little discouraging with that so with that up that's a good transition because I got some dad on that how we doing on time you all right okay I don't want do we have a coffee hour do we have what we do we I don't want to get in there so we all know where the flood we know Montpelier some region I think we was about 20 towns that really get it whacked but also not only the flood event it never stopped raining many of you probably have gardens right never stopped never stopped so it was really challenging we're calling it kind of severe wedding so a few things happened we did some surveys we had some grant programs to try to get money so farmers could live maybe another day not gonna make them whole because of the the startling so we did some data and I'll show you some of the data 34% of our respondents said their loss of feet feet crops is the most significant damage to their operation 28% was the average loss of annual income 28% was the average loss of annual income reported as the direct result of severe severe weather and flooding 53% of respondents anticipated a feed shortage or problems with feed quality because the severe weather and flooding that was that one's still with us so you know maybe dairy farmers would get maybe four crops and a good year they may have only gotten two and the two they got the quality was poor so it's just like us if we poorly we don't we don't produce right I guess that's and that's same with a cow or sheep or goat so if they don't get good feed nutrition they don't produce as much milk and if you don't produce enough milk you don't get paid a decent check so that was part of it 56% of respondents said their cash fell will go negative in the next year because of severe weather and flooding and then the other issue we found out is 70% have no crop or livestock insurance those who do have crop insurance do not receive sufficient premium payouts to cover losses 76% 70% have no crop or livestock insurance the crop and the insurance programs run to USDA but essentially the feedback we've gotten are not to the scale of our farmers they're they're maybe for bigger row crops that may be more you know bigger states big row crops so they're not and then the return on investment is not that great so that was the issue so we did our survey and then we had a granting program that was run through the agency of commerce which agriculture was eligible for that was the 20 million dollar one and I think we kicked out about 3.7 million to about 133 farmers but the losses totaled because of severe weather and flooding 69 million so we figured the loss is about 69 million because of the the weather so no I don't believe so I believe I know there was I know NOFA did do some follow-up on inspections and that's the other issue still with us and you can you drive around you see the debris so there's tremendous amount of debris in fields if you drive from Cabot to Montpelier you see it some of those are in farm fields so that's all got to be cleaned up USDA has a program that's helping pay for some of the costs and if you're you know during the flooding event so your crop of say carrots was underwater that has to be disposed you can't sell it so a lot of those farmers you know was it July 15th around the middle of July so a lot of those crops were just starting particularly the the greens and whatever underwater blueberries were coming in so we had blueberry pick your own operations all underwater so their entire season was was lost so significant losses so we did if you have time you know and I can send along do you have a like a last email you can send everyone if I send some information I can if someone wants to do some more work on us but we did have a task force that looked at some of these issues and had some recommendations and one of those is I think we got a we got to figure out the insurance program that fits the needs of our monitors yes as far as people losing everything there were a few that that lost you know maybe not everything and there were some that didn't have any property like equipment damage we had some issues with say the tractor shed was underwater so they lost their tractors they lost their tools but it was mostly crops according to this it says 28.2 was the average loss of annual income reported as direct result of the severe weather inflow I don't know if that's gross or not it's a good question so it says 28.2% was the average loss of annual income reported as direct direct result of severe weather and flooding yes sure hopefully not related to chickens in soil to don't till because it's good to help run off if you don't till so that helps conserve soil but if they don't till they would use glyphosate roundup to kill weeds instead and I don't know if the department has any information on that yeah yeah because there is a so we want the soil to be essentially a sponge so we want you know you want healthy soil you don't the trend is not to touch it as much as we used to touch it like we used to plow every spring maybe in the fall too so that the plan now is sort of the trend has been in Vermont is they just had a no-till conference with farmers a couple weeks ago in Burlington but you're correct so there is so if you're you're doing you know no-till you're planting cover crops those cover crops are going to grow and then you've got the crop that you want to eventually harvest so maybe it's corn there are that does happen where they have to get the weeds down and so there is and I don't know what the answer to that is because they are at times can be in conflict right but we do have programs at the agency that encourage no-till manure injection etc some cost-share programs both to the federal and state level to encourage more work in soil health etc yes this is the question about there's a bill in the legislature just passed the Vermont House Ag Committee it deals with treated seeds they call them neonic so they're treated with something that is expected to help the yields and control pests the advocates of the banning of these neonics believe it's detrimental to the bee population and doesn't really help the farmer so there's a proposal to ramp up and ban the sale of those in Vermont it would be I think 2029 New York already has legislation similar to this the question remains what is the replacement seed and where they're going to get it so that's the other thing that needs to be determined in this kind of interim solution there's been some work done at Cornell has been some worked on it in Quebec UVM would like to do more research on this they've started some with extension service there was a board created by the legislature called the Ag Innovation Board and they studied this issue for basically all last summer multiple meetings with various folks and their recommendation was they weren't ready to call for a full ban yet they said they needed more more time or research before going to the outright ban so that was their recommendation so we'll see how it lands it goes to the House floor probably when they get back there on break this week and my assumption is it will pass and then it will be the Senate's turn to decide what to do and your question is yes there is there there are some that believe if say there's a outbreak of some particular pass that then they will treat it with something else so there is the that could happen so we'll see how it lands but it's one of those kind of thorny issues that you know we're trying to trying to navigate so you know we we love our bees because they are so important to agriculture we know that they've been side-by-side for years and they you know the Apple people rely on them so they're important but then we got some people that are growing corn are getting nervous that and it's not only cow corn it's also in your sweet corn too so you have treated seeds in in other things outside of just feed for animals they UVM extension the question is about you've been extension our relationship with them they are important important partners for us because the key part is we're regulators so when they see when a pharmacy is us coming sometimes they you know they're a little they treat us differently but when UVM comes they're not regulating so they're they're there offer technical assistance there to offer you know guidance and they can do some things that clearly we're not we can't do so from time to time we support maybe support a program that doing whether it be grazing whether it be no till etc so UVM extension is a really important partner right down into you know 4-H 4-H is a you know a youth program and it's changed over the years but that's another program that's really valuable but without UVM we'd be probably in a little bit of trouble particularly on the technical assistance and we can never have enough technical assistance and sort of that knowledge that people when they got a problem like during the flood we talked about soil extension service was able to go out and test the soil to make sure it was safe again so they did do some testing on that they had their wonderful drone service that was run by UVM the spatial group they got those drones up and I got I got the federal response quicker because they didn't rely on having people go out and take pictures and then send a man they had always drone video that they immediately got into FEMA which probably I think was a couple weeks quicker than we normally got yeah FEMA said at times can be pretty pretty complicated all right yes yes diversification that is ongoing one thing they were seeing is agritourism you know if you travel the world now you like real life experiences you know you want to go places you want to learn things you want to see things so there is a trend that is allowing more on-farm stays you know the whole issue with where people stay now we have farms that have actually put on another house and then they're open you know they're renting that out they get to see the cows they get to feed the cows so we're seeing that we're working on some legislation in Montpelier that would it's called on-farm accessory businesses and we talked about how margins are pretty tight farming we're hoping to allow more diversification on some of these businesses without having you go through the act 250 process as you well know if you touch act 250 get people get really nervous but say you know say you're the beat farmer here and you're the beef farmer over here under the regulations you've got to make sure 50% of your product under the on-farm accessory business are your products and if you start putting more somewhere else then you're in violation and you have to go through act 250 we think it would be make more sense that you should be able to sell you're supporting your farmer down here and we're not going to turn these into the fear is they're going to turn them into a like a cumberland farms you know it's going to become a retail store that's not the goal the goal is to support more diversification more leeway for folks because the margins are so tight in agriculture there's no way they they can go through the the regulatory process so we would like to get some clarity on that it we've made some progress with a bill we don't know where it's going to end up but the trend is yes lots of diversification people are growing grains in Vermont now you have we have saffron farmers we have more picurone operations more selling directly to consumers and we have a tremendous amount of product that's going in the mail now the pandemic really changed the game in a lot of places for survival cheese in the mail what's the place in the matter of valley that it's traps they're putting it we've got tulip farms now you can get a csa you know you can get a bouquet of tulips every Saturday from a farm in in the in the matter of valley there is rice we have a rice farmer in virgins and I've had that rice and it's amazing the difference between the rice that he grows it's incredibly good but he uses his ducks to manage the pests so it's that and he's gone to Japan to get the infrastructure he needs to harvest and etc but and we're seeing a lot of I think grains maybe some of the next thing you're seeing farmers grow more of their own grain as opposed to maybe buying it from the Midwest hydroponic yet the that's a weight field right yeah and they do whether it's tomatoes or basil right yeah basil that base and just incredible amounts of basil and what cannabis we don't have a space in cannabis we maybe our lab in in Randolph may eventually test some of it but they have something called the cannabis control board and they kind of manage the entire operation whether it's the was the farmer that's got X number of plants or a bigger operation one of my best tours I went on I went on that last summer that somewhere before I went on a cannabis tour just because it's you know it's a plant it's just like farming you're growing a plant you got past you got weeds you got you got a light you all soil all this stuff so I went on a tour it was a classic Vermont tour cannabis and show up at Parker pie if I would be in Parker pie with a wonderful pizza so you show up at Parker pie you're supposed to show up at Parker pie and then the school bus will pick you up and take you to an undisclosed location so I thought it was very Vermont II I was like the school bus picks me up and we all get on the school I don't think no I didn't it was like it was you know it's beautiful summer day on a Sunday yeah it was I don't know what I think it went on for a while and the bus driver was wonderful because on Monday she was taking the kindergartners big straw I was just like only Vermont and Sunday the bus is being used for cannabis but on Monday it's being used for the kindergartners it was like yeah yeah but it was wonderful it was like I learned so much in that little little tour and in the end it was they got the same issues this is someone that's growing kale you know they're worried about pests soil health etc whether it's going to be a market where there's too much in the market the price is going to be down so no they're not they're not in they're not included and the other thing about cannabis federally it's still illegal so that's so anything that's remotely if you accept federal funds you got to be very careful about crossing that line because the federal government still does not consider it legal so trivia time now look it's maple season all right so here we go trivia time to the first person who gets this right gets this little bottle of goodness from ledge Haven farm in Orwell all right what is the state bird hermit thrash I'm gonna go with right down here and one of the fun bills of this year that we're doing in the legislature is H 6 6 4 you know what H 6 6 4 is yes we don't have a state mushroom I didn't want to keep you in the dark so some kids down in Wyndham County have gotten together and they found a lawmaker who's also look foraging it's huge now people foraging it's kind of fun huh yeah a lot of foragers out there now so the proposal is to create the bears head tooth as our state mushroom I guess there's six states that already have a state mushroom but we would be the seventh so they testified and I think they'll be back so if you want to have fun we gotta have a little bit of fun at the state house right can't all be taxes and schools and agriculture stuff and I'm just gonna end on it you know we talked about the farmers have been struggling there is some private people that are out raising money it's called dig deep for local Vermont farms I'm gonna leave some of these cards here this is where if you've got a farmer in your county you want to donate you can donate 10 bucks 50 bucks you really want to donate go wild and then they're going to distribute micro grants to the farmers they're still trying to dig out from this but it's as support of some important partners like the ski areas ski areas understand if we don't have farms it hurts their industry you know they're dependent on the weather so the skiers behind it some of the credit unions are behind it some of the former executives of Cabot behind it Vermont Association of Broadcasters so it's and it's a go right to your phone I'm just gonna leave them here and all right that's good well this has been too much fun I don't normally have so much fun that's good so anyway well thank you for I didn't bring cheese that's the thing about being there I eat like so much it's that's one of the best and I know where the best food is best drink is I knew the emerging companies that are coming along the line to get there's a goat gelato so I had the goat gelato from down in virgins it's not goatee it's really incredible so the stuff like that so all this goat gelato Lulu ice cream is emerging company and she's developing new products she's supporting she's buying some goats milk from a local farmer so it's helping that farmer what we want to do and before you know it she could be the next Ben and Jerry's but small batch ice cream is is something people are really craving now and we've got some new cheese people coming online so thank you for supporting agriculture yes I don't have I don't have any jurisdiction of it we occasionally help because they are using some Vermont products for example a Lawson's sip of sunshine they have a maple and I learned I toured the facility a few weeks ago and I learned 8% of that I think it's a 16 ounce here 8% of his Vermont maple in it so they use a lot of Vermont maple in that particular in that product so there's there's things like that we're trying to get more grains grown so you know we have a significant hops farm in Vermont which is kind of neat they're in Moncton I believe and if you ever get a chance to see that place in the fall I mean the trellises to the you know to their heavens but it's actually gorgeous so they're trying to you know a lot of our hops is coming either from Europe or Michigan's a big state out way out west so they're trying to make inroads to the local breweries which we have you know a significant significant amount so they're starting to use it but again it's consistency so they're developing a consistent product and then they have a I think a market where some of the home brewer people they can sell if you need hops for that so all right oh yes well I know the one right the one right in town it's another story and the founder of that is about to start a new company with another distillery in Addison County so the original Caledonia spirits gentleman he's working on another one so this but his goal is to he's always 10 or 15 years and everybody's his goal is to grow more local grains to support more land that can be left in the ag production and then originally I think Greensboro slashed Hardwick Bar Hill which was named you know you know quality incredible product but again so all these businesses are just it takes so much I wish everyone understood how difficult it is to get a product to to to the public and then consistently deliver it you know distribution is the nightmare really hard not really we do have we do have a distribution out of Hardwick that makes deliveries in the Boston market Brooklyn New York is a big market for a lot of our a lot of our food so we have trucks that go there but the amount of commerce that's being done in the mail is extraordinary so we got to work on infrastructure we got to work on places where people can aggregate you know farmer can bring it off the hill bring it to a place truck can pick it up and get it on the road because we don't want 30 trucks going on the same road yeah they they are but they're such at a scale you know we need the smaller scale so all right well thank you