 Okay we're back rolling so I'll call the meeting back to order. We're all on a little bit of a time-critical so I don't want to keep you people here longer than you should and so we'll get started and so Gus I'd like to welcome all of you and well we'll run around the room. Brian Collamore representing the Rutland district. Brian Campion, the Bennington County district. Bobby Starr from Orleans County. Rich Westman should be right along from the memorial. Gus, your good comers. So I guess I'll turn it over to you and we'll get started. I'm going to ask Tracy to join me. You've got two chairs up there or four if you want. Yeah you move up on the corner. Okay so my way of introduction to the record I've got Celia directed for the Mott Housing Conservation Board and with me is my longtime colleague collaborator and now Interpresident of the Rutland Trust, Tracy Chow, and joining us also is Liz Gleason who's the Director of the Farming Forest Liability Program and also in the room is our Policy Director, Polly Major who you've met before and it's always a pleasure to be in this room with you Senator Starr and the Senator Westman as really the people who initiated our program all those years ago. We understand you wanted to talk specifically about how do we help young farmers get access to farmland so I hope I have that right. Yeah we've had quite a few questions so far even this year getting into the business and how rough it is. Yes and it is rough. I do and we'll get into this more but I'm going to we're going to talk about challenges and opportunities what tools we use including something called an option to purchase an ag value which we began to use the first 12 or 13 years of our program when we bought development rates for farmers we just had a rate of first refusal and then in the early 2000s we added this option to purchase an ag value and so now a majority of the easements that are publicly funded have that on it and it's a tool that Tracy will talk about more later but it's intended not to be utilized but to discourage non-farm buyers from buying farms and we will support and have supported lots of young farmers who don't have 50% of their income coming from agriculture get started but when a Bill Gates shows up or a doctor from Philadelphia who wants to buy a retirement farm at this county price we have a tool that basically says what's your plan for farmland and we vet it and so if somebody's not a farmer we have the ability to say no we're not going to choose you but we don't have a that's the point of which we look at whether somebody is really serious about agriculture or they're looking for a retirement home and a farm so we can talk about that more later on about it I'm not going to talk in great length about our other programs but to say in addition to virtue development rights we developed the farm and forest viability program many years ago about 20 over 20 years ago to support farmers to build more capacity for people to be in agriculture and you asked us to stand up the rural economic development initiative about five years ago and I think it's now I helped it 21 folks get when value-added producer grants is that the right number it might be a little bit less than that but certainly over the course of the farm viability program it's been at least 20 so that's the grant writing support that we give to people in rural communities after federal funds that are not easy to get that that's been quite a problem how many million do you know what that's we've spent a half million dollars and it's brought in over ten million dollars so far so pretty good return your institutions committee gives us a water quality program to manage which is often used by farmers either to participate in DMP or in and help leverage that money as well and then finally and I think you heard from some of the advocates for the land access and opportunity board that's a program that was initiated a new board that was initiated last year and the HCP to be the home for it and they're particularly watching tackle the challenge of helping marginalized communities come into farm ownership and come into ownership picture you see here is a farm where we in Randolph where we bought development rights I think probably in the late 90s it's operated for more than 20 years by the Bibleers and they've since sold it and the way the transfer was arranged was to add a retroactive option to purchase that value to their easement and that gave about the $40,000 to the income of farmers by adding that to it so while we in new easements we always put this option on when an old farm comes up and once needs to be transferred we sometimes add it and it adds a financial way to make the farm more affordable we'll talk about that more as we go through the slideshow but that's a farm in Randolph that's benefited from adding that option these are all farms in the last couple years that have been the subject of buying development rights and transferring and I think Liz and the viability program has also worked with some of the landowners and Tracy you may want us you will know more than I do about any of these so if you want to jump in okay but the one in Rockingham is on the Williams River that was actually transferred from grandparents to grandson and we'll talk in a few minutes we'll show you slide about how much it's reducing overall cost compared with full value briefly we are matching dollar for dollar development rights a federal program every year and next year through the inflation reduction act we're told that will actually be much more than three million dollars available if we can find the match we provide support to organizations and we'll show you a slide of all the organizations that are working on farm transfers includes the Intervail Center UVM extension as we move through but the picture the Schringer farm is one I've shown you a different picture in the past of what that farm looked like and when he took over knowing the development rights were gone he basically said I need to my number one value is soil health and he has been an all-star NRCS co-operator this year we nominated him for the New England although we have all the work between one which actually came with a cash prize and his plan is to transfer the farm he took the farm organics we helped him through development rights by a neighboring farm a few years back and his plan is for his son Matt who's very active in the farm to take it on as his farm and a few that's guy Tracy's numbers are going to be a little different from the ones I'm showing you because the Montlant Trust with philanthropic funds has conserved more farmland and more farms than we have so these are the numbers with public funds or private investment but there's some that have just been conserved with private funds about four out of ten deals now have been specifically around the issue of farm transfers right now others are anticipating a transfer sometime in the future and I know that at least two of members of the committee worked for many years with Sam Burr when he was in Ledge Council and he's somebody whose farm was conserved back in the 90s he actually carved off a piece that Habitat and others built some housing on and he's in the midst of transferring his son stylist so this chart is just showing you what the before about the blue lines or what farms on average are going for as they're appraised and the yellow line excuse me that orange bar is showing you what the value is after you want developer rights and so through the pandemic the value development value has gone up we left one farm out of this as a liar that's that's a farm it's so that senator Westman will know the Ricketts and what happened there in the pandemic just to speak to them where our real estate market is NRCS requires that it was an appraisal is more than you know they have to do so and I've never met Kenny I'm sure you know he's a very shy man I know his sister but it the appraisal got to be more than 12 months old we needed to do a new appraisal the new appraisal came up out 15 months later the value of development rates have gone up a million dollars million dollars yeah now that's still we're entrusted a huge amount of fundraising and a man who spent his life who has made the biggest bargain sale that our organization's ever been a part of as well I think he's happy with his retirement assistant tells me but that just speaks to the pressures in the real estate markets so as an outlier but in general what you're seeing here is that real estate values in all parts of them are going up and going up dramatically this is a slide Tracy's organization put together but it just speaks to all the all the organizations that are working on the question of land access and with a large inventory of conserved land that either has a right of first refusal or an option to purchase an ad value on it they are often candidates for helping young farmers get onto farms but and the viability program is a thunder as I said a moment ago of no for Vermont UVM extension the center for an economy the aerial center along with land for good which specifically works on farm transfers so they are a funder of all that work we also provide a specific grant but it's not the only funding and the Vermont Land Trust has just done an incredible job of raising money to be focused on transferring land from Tracy will talk about more than that madam president well thank you for having us here today really appreciate the time and interests in our work and again my name is Tracy Schell and I have actually worked for Vermont for 25 years spent a bunch of that time running a Rose in the Northeast Kingdom as project director they are developing conservation projects with farmers and forest land owners and communities and have been working in statewide leadership position since 2014 and now serving as interim president as well as vice president for the administration I know that I think the LT has already been in the room so colleagues my Abby and Al I think we're here so I will just you know quick touch point to the PLT and our work to unite land and lives through land conservation in recent and that's through largely conservation easement work on private lands farms forests and community lands in recent years also focused on land acquisition by community groups municipalities the state and also restoration education and equity as places to invest more deeply to really maximize our impact on the land and really ensure that the promise of land conservation for everyone in the state is is met and just for some numbers we've been around since 1977 at this point helped to conserve about 100% of the state over 620,000 acres we steward over 2300 easements at this point and I think it's safe to say that that is one of the largest orchard portfolios in the country by easement numbers in one of the smallest states so a lot of experience now with easement stewardship and have 46 staff statewide just to drill down a little bit more into our farmland protection work as Gus noted our numbers are a little different because we pre-existed the HDB by a few years and we also have used other funding mechanisms to augment the state's very significant investment in conservation so this is a word that I have struggled with but we hopped the 101,000th I could tripped up but we went we passed the 1,000 mark on farms conserved in the state in 2022 it was actually the rickets and farm and stow that was our 1,000th farm that we have conserved that covers about 216,000 acres and protecting about 12% of Vermont's ag soils in that conservation work we have directly supported over a hundred I think the numbers like 115 now successful transfers of farmland a lot more conserved farmland is transferring but our development and we'll talk about those strategies today has been supporting about a hundred and is that from VLT's original farm owners to new farm owners or is that regular farm owners switching it's both both yeah and we'll talk about that's a lot of what we're going to talk about today so it's different strategies that farmland access getting folks on touch you know the goal of securing access to affordable farmland you know there's there's a lot of ways to get at that and a lot of strategies necessary because there's there's a lot of challenges and I think you heard you've heard of some of the challenges and it had direct testimony to those challenges yeah so I think I think some examples that we're going to bring will show the different ways and so when we say VLT has helped support a hundred and fifteen transfers those have been through the examples we're going to provide of using conservation easement purchases at the time of transfer to bring down the purchase price of farms to look back at the conservative lands portfolio and make additional investments to again bring down the purchase price and then also to directly play a role in land ownership and on an interim basis to also help to transfer farms so some have passed through our ownership many have not and and then just the really strong partnership with farm force viability is a key a key aspect I actually remember two-thirds of our about hundred and fifteen farm transfers have been direct easement easement purchases mostly with BHCB in support of a transfer at the time and really fueling a transfer and about a third have been through another mechanism either our ownership or the again stewardship portfolio in the retroval path which will dive a bit deeper into and you didn't add anything I'm happy to add a little on family go back to the picture yeah great photo really reflective of this time of year I think so this is a great example of a farm that we worked on together through the LTS formula and actors program the HTV's conservation easement dollars and the farm and forest viability program sometimes all those things happen at different times and sometimes they all need to happen at the same time it can be quite complex to work through different scenarios so full valley worked with us on a business plan to access the land they have been farming elsewhere and we're really looking to buy their own place and expand and an existing farm was getting out and looking for new owners who would continue the really excellent operation that they had built up so a really great success story they grow a lot of strawberries veggies and a great example of beginning farmers access land this is in Muckton that is I don't know if we tagged where that is it could be a lot of different times yeah it's a great example of my parent lovers and the water quality work that we do I think yeah we just wanted to kind of set up a bit around the challenges and the opportunities ahead of kind of talking about what's the toolbox that we've been employing to get folks affordably on onto farmland recognizing that there are a lot of challenges around the availability the timing of the real estate market the challenges of the real estate market in terms of farmers needing to compete both from a financial standpoint but also a timing standpoint with other buyers and being able to be prepared to be in service to that the affordability challenge the slide earlier about the escalation in land values and the challenges business viability and this can talk about this more but being able to have a business that can afford to own land and operate the connection between between the two different ways to have security on land whether that's through fee ownership or durable leases or we'll talk a bit about some of the alternative tenure and ownership models that folks are working on as an answer to different ways to own to own land collectively and then equity just recognizing the structural barriers that members of the king of marginalized communities face that are above and beyond those that may be entering with more of a leg up from either their circumstances their legacy of land ownership and really trying to think differently about the tool so that everybody has has opportunity this morning this morning I was meeting with an individual in regards to our sustainable food supply and from the Northeast region and they estimate that in New England we need if we were going to sustain our own food supply including me every it would take a million acres of crop plant and basically in New England it's got a the bulk of that's got to come either out of Maine or Vermont so it's a good thing we're keeping our farm land how much fireman what is the total yeah I was gonna ask that so what are the totals right now that what we're using yeah how much egg land there it's about 30% it's being used to meet our food supply but we're only meeting 30 at the most 30% of that it could it should be a lot more and then yeah just listening sort of you know as we think about the tools how they're supporting new beginning farmers and they're interested in getting on to farms and the partnerships that we need as well as the new partnerships and new and different just a story to sort of illustrate some of those challenges opportunities I think that equity pieces interesting and sorry I'm actually reading this as equity in terms of like financial both are challenges but the example of you know young farmers who want to get into farming many of whom would have been working on farms as employees as family members some of whom who've been doing it in a volunteer capacity people who are really engaged in the food system but not farming like there's not a lot of opportunity to build a down payment to build any equity in any business that you're part of such that when you go to purchase your own land there's there's not a lot there and I think that slide on the easement value compared to the purchase value of those huge differences in that bar graph really shows both like how incredibly critical a tool of conservation easement is for new beginning farmers particularly and how it can really be one thing that addresses that financial equity piece that being said if you're still looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars that's you know what is that like a two thousand and three thousand dollar a month loan payments back when interest rates were like three or four percent much higher now so when you look at like a monthly basis for young farmers people without a lot of money it's really significant even at that price point and I think like a beautiful tool a really needed tool doesn't erase some of the financial hardships of agriculture but I think it speaks to the business viability partnerships and helping farmers you know build build a business that can sustain that sort of debt and be successful because just getting on the land well isn't isn't enough and that's where the wraparound services and that diagram showing all the partners is so critical and I think we're from eyes you know working hard to really fully support and how many how many acres does it take for a person starting out like growing vegetables to be able to meet their mortgage and has that ever been figured out really depends on the crop that they're growing on you know what kind of debt they might have debt load is like one of the biggest indicators of future business viability the lower your debt the more opportunity you have to succeed and reinvest in your business and not be thrown aside by big risks but we see diversified direct to market special book producers like you can get started on an acre if it's really good land and you're managing really intensively but that doesn't give you room to rotate your crops it doesn't give you room for a farm stand generally you need actually quite a bit more space for a dairy or beef farm it's you know gotta be more like hundred why why I asked that question is we had commissioner and they have crop damage from deer right and this vegetable grower and he said it's all been checked and double-checked to verify but they had three different plots that the deer went in and ate the veggies it's over two hundred thousand dollars in damages that because they have to cover it and so we've been looking into that but it didn't sound like it was a great big farm like 200 acres that was a small operation but had over two hundred thousand dollars in damages so it doesn't take a big waddle way to grow a lot of high value food yeah yeah yeah I'll speak a little bit about the farm and forest viability program which was started at BHCB 20 years ago so far we've worked with over 900 farm food and forest products businesses we added the forest part about 10 years ago right around when the working hands enterprise board was also starting you know we were part of the statewide effort to really recognize both the farm and the forest and how those working landscapes are important and tied together so we begin working with forest products businesses then as well I'd say you know we made this slide a couple months ago it might be a little closer to just under a thousand at this point I'll have to keep talking about that and practicing it's hard but yeah in 2022 we worked with 154 different kinds of businesses and when you put all those folks together all different kinds of production from dairy to livestock to vegetable to produce to value added to forestry ranging in scale from that really small scale to occasionally we even work with alipose it it can result in a lot of jobs so over 450 jobs and almost 35 million represented by that just to highlight that transfer planning aspect and both you know within families and outside of families we are sort of in a period of heightened transfers we knew it was coming you know that average age of farm and forest business owners is nearing retirement and that we the current period we're in is a heightened period of generational transfer about a third of the people we work with in any given year at some point in considering that transfer whether it's starting to plan for it or actively going through it some of the impacts from the program we see a lot of people enter this program to help grow their business and particularly increase their take home that income last year I think we had 13 people who entered the program losing money with their business and nine of those 13 exited the program having moved into profitability so we work with people who are both really kind of struggling to make that work and figuring it out and people who are at a different more mature stage for their business it's really all over the place then you know these are some economic impacts accessed almost three million dollars in loans and grants 70 percent increased sales but the sort of softer side I think is even more important and people see increased satisfaction with their business and their ability to generate income for their family from their business and increase satisfaction with work-life balance which we consider to be one of the biggest points of this program sometimes people enter and they're like my goal is to figure out how to take one day off a week and that's a major metric of success I also just want to say that with the one-time funding in FY 22 and 23 from the legislature the viability program has been able to grow really significantly we hired an additional two almost two full-time farm and forest business advisors to our house to the interval center and union extension so now we have like 16 or 17 people engaged that's not all people full-time but it's the several that are including those new positions that were added as a result of the one-time funding so and I should say last year those of you on the appropriations committee you've increased our base funding and we increased the viability programs budget we basically doubled it to a million to two million dollars the governor's budget seeks to reverse that the house budget we get from the house maintains it but our ability to continue at the level we're currently at depends on a larger base budget rather than one-time funding so in that house put that in house put it back to what you did last year increasing our base that's that makes it easier on this yes here that was yep I hear that and and just Lisa McDougal pictured here is a great success story from perspective she was leasing land and animal for I think a decade before she was able by the farm was it that bomb that VLT made available through the farmland access program you want to talk about how that process works yeah so a farmland access from all interests we have a firm and access director Maggie donan but really our firm and access antenna is up across the organization and both the folks that work on new conservation opportunities as well as our stewards who have deep relationships with the conserved lands and the conserved farms over a thousand of them also always looking for opportunities to match make to look for farms where the timing of a conservation easement sale could help bridge and create a transfer opportunity we also occasionally get more deeply involved in the matchmaking in terms of recruiting requests for proposals from farmers and more directly connect farmers with new land opportunities sometimes we are in ownership of those sometimes we're not and yeah Lisa McDougal and the opportunity to help her land on her permanent farm situation is a great example when when a farmer sells their wants to get out and sell the property and a young person of course would like to purchase it do they do those the farmers selling like to get all their money half their money you know because of tax purposes or are they any and any of them willing to spread it out over a given period of time I think the transition planning work kind of helps landowners figure out what their needs are yeah yeah it can be very different in terms of whether there's the opportunity to and whether it's a family transfer and sometimes those are harder or easier I think depending on the family dynamics but in some cases you know there's that ability to spread out a sale or bring someone into ownership when it's two parties that don't know each other you know giving them the support to think about those different options and the financial needs what has become more and more difficult for small farmers and young people to make the transfer and do the transfer I don't think we ever imagined 25 or 30 years ago as we put this together that farmland itself would be assessed and people would be paying the values they're paying now and to when it's a minimum of $3,500 an acre in you know a town like mine for the farm portion not the develop you know the development rights are gone it's very hard for anybody to come yeah that's a fair criticism and it's not meant to be pretty no no it's a reality that we're all standing with and it's I don't know if we've figured out the solutions to every I don't say the problem is I'm sure we have but I know that we want to work hard to figure it out and some of it maybe you know you've put a lot of work into what is now Vita back and some of it is how people finance their operations what's their operation going to be but clearly it's a bigger challenge and the more valuable the land the more there needs to be whether it's philanthropic help or private private resources or public resources we need to work at that and you might want to just begin the top and I would say I forbid it some and I'm not all that religious but you if it's besides somebody that's wealthy that's come from out of state that owns a big house and they want a protection next to there none of us can afford it well we'll speak to the affordability option and some of the ways that that helps some of those situations of escalating farm values and real estate values and some ways that it doesn't quite get there we should talk about small and large farmers and beginning farmers and just some of the ways we're starting to think about you know I think a lot of what we wanted to show today was like here's the tools we're using now there are multiple because there are multiple ways to get at the problem and to solve some of the challenges and we're also learning over this 20 years of doing this where we need to add tools or iterate on those tools because they're not quite getting there as we try to disrupt you know the forces that are working against really far-line affordability not for all the reason you know all the examples that are even given so we're going to launch into a couple and I think this this first example I do want to say that we chose some examples today that are what's great about them is they are real time in that these are like this year's PhDB investments of dollars it means that some of them have not fully like crossed the closing line and so we're always sensitive to that and recognizing that these projects are still kind of working their way through but it is a great opportunity to talk about some some really great examples of our key tools and that are showing you right now what the legislature has invested in in terms of moving forward so this first example is in that bucket of using the sale of a conservation easement time to create a transfer and access opportunity so Mike and Tom Odette Odette have owned in multiple generations lejhaven farm in Orwell Jonathan Lucas has been renting the farm for about six years and the timing is is finally right for a transfer of the farm and in this situation where the conservation is you know center start you asked about like what what do people need you know in this case it's typically the outgoing landowners the outgoing farmers need to be made whole for the value of the property and what the sale of an easement at the time of transfer does is it really brings that full purchase price from two from two places there's the conservation easement purchase that's tied with that sale of the farm that brings the development rights value which means that the incoming farmer does not need to finance the full value is really that bar graph showed it was a great example it really needs to finance that underlying conserved value and so they need to find the financing and the support to to bring that to the table and then often these are simultaneous closings or right one on top of the other and I think that this example this is a great conservation opportunity it is almost 400 acres a block of growing conserved farmland also adjacent to ecologically important lands that the Nature Conservancy and Vermont Fish and Wildlife have protected so it's growing a lot right near near Lake Champlain includes important tributaries to East Creek and the opportunity to buffer buffer those waters as well as wetlands and there's also archaeological significance on parts of the farm so standing alone it's an awesome farm conservation opportunity together with the transfer it's a really awesome outcome 250 cow dairy to be able to have that farm stay as a as an owner operated 250 cow dairy I don't know all the business terms between mr. Lucas and the audits but I do know my god that song and I know money and I would guess that the business arrangements over these last six years or such that mr. Lucas could build equity and you know so though it's not a family transfer and I'm not going to say they're making a bargain sale but they've had an arrangement that allowed mr. Lucas to come in this position that's maybe easier when it's a family situation we have seen a huge amount of generosity from farmers even when it's not a family situation over the years my guess is that it was a favorable lease and that brothers wanted very much for a long period of time we're hoping it would work out yeah I didn't know that was a family member no this is not family and I think what significant there is that John John has been there for six years so having that opportunity to build some equity to build cow ownership you know to that that isn't can be an easier situation that yeah a farm is suddenly on the market and someone needs that quickly and so we have been in conversation with them for years Al Carnaz are a long time for a project director in the Champlain Valley well aware and knowing the audits for a very long time and it's it's exciting to be this will be closing later this fall but really exciting that all the pieces have come together the availability of conservation dollars the willing seller willing buyer and yeah yeah you buy a 250 cal for on your day car so this is and we had a couple slides about that the option to purchase that I value gusted a really great job of kind of set I think setting up that tool which is now in starting in about 2004 was really started to be added and replacing the right of first refusal that had been historically retained at the time of farming conservation in VLT's conservation portfolio at this point 556 farms include the option to purchase that value so it's an important number to remember for like the next set of the next example because it means half the concern for portfolio includes the option and you know it it was first used in Massachusetts as they started to start to see a state buyers out competing farmers for land in the 1990s and then was adapted and brought to Vermont and incorporated and I remember no one knew if farmers would accept this tool and there was a lot of trepidation and it was it was largely accepted wanted it brings additional value to the conservation but also as a bottom line farmers really embrace the idea of seeing farm on a state and farm ownership and having a tool to help do that and I think the way we think about it is that the opav really encourages a limited free market it's really a free market for the farm community and trying to disrupt those non-farm buyers from having having the opportunity to buy the farms with this deep state investment in conservation just a few kind of nuts and bolts about how the option works it is not triggered by a sale to a family member or to a farmer in and so the Vermont Land Trust the H2B we only have the opportunity to consider exercising the option if it's a non-farm buyer and for the purposes of a legal document and that what is a farmer it's it's determined one of two ways anyone to qualify a farmer which means they they meet the IRS definition of a farmer which is that they make half of their gross income from farming are just automatically exempt from the option so it's not triggered and any family family sale is not triggered either if the buyer is not a family member or a farmer by that definition then the owner needs to provide the person sales agreement of an offer that's been made and the buyer needs to produce a business plan to the easement holders so we can assess even if they don't meet the IRS definition of a farmer is their intention to farm the land do they have the supports in the background to be successful is this really a farm buyer and if so what then we can wave the option if it if the buyer doesn't meet that criteria we have the opportunity to consider exercising the option and the goal of that is to redirect the farm back into farm ownership so that's an example but just to give you an idea of how this options played out in the last 20 years we have only exercised the option once it is largely a deterrent tool it is largely meant to direct farmers to market their farms to farmers to avoid the possibility that we will exercise because that is generally not a fun experience to disrupt a sale that's already underway and I guess I would just say before we began to use this option we actually had three public hearings around the state of the farm community and as you can imagine farmers generally express trepidation to anybody interfering with the sale and so we came to this with the idea as we as we worked on what the legal document would say and the policy would be that was where we determined that okay we should not get ourselves in the middle of a sale between two farmers and I think that was that was very intentional on our part and in terms of the feedback the farm community gave us at that time that you know so there are people in the farm community that can outcompete the young farmer for land and what I meant is it's a continuum problem but that was the feedback we got from the community please don't interfere in sales from farmers to farmers right and because farmers with this restriction and even generally are marketing their farms to other farmers we have began only had to exercise once we've provided three notices of the potential that will exercise and those in other cases have redirected back into the farm community we've waived the the option over 200 times so that's an example of a buyer that comes that may not meet that IRS definition of farmer because they're new in the beginning because they just don't have that track record yet but they have the supports they're involved with the farm force viability program they have farm experience and they're and then we we waived the option to enable them to buy the farm so and so and yeah so big for the example do you want me to walk through that you so so the option is set up that the farm a farm the base value of the farm as a as agricultural land is set in the conservation easement from the original appraisal when the development rights were purchased the appraiser sets what that value is based on comparable sales and if we were to exercise it's that number plus a factor for inflation plus the value any buildings that have been built since since conservation so this example farmer you know buy it for 200 they got under contract for 410 but 315 is actually agricultural value at the time and so we have the ability to exercise at that 315 and that would be the price that the successor farmer that we would recruit would pay so it's again trying to bring the price down from the non-farm sale years when the farmer acquired the farm and this is just like a round numbers example I don't I don't know what in this one case it was probably five to six years I don't I don't I don't know but short period it can't be can be depending on the market yeah what I was getting at is they made a living must be from that firm but they also gain that 115,000 over that right right six or eight or even if it was 10 years you know they made 10 15,000 a year just on right well and some of that could be the value of improvements as well so one of the key things is to recognize that if farmers invested in infrastructure that that is part of the resale value of the of the property because that is the hard cost of being being passed on so yeah I just wanted to give a little background on on the option the purchase of that value so we I noted that about half of the conserved farms in the state at this point have that option invented in their conservation use but because we started to add it in 2004 about half don't though and so another really important tool and Gus mentioned this is the purchase of that affordability option at at the time of transfer from a farm that was conserved years prior so this this example is Woods Market Garden on Route 7 in Brandon and what's fun about talking about this this example current project is that this is really farmland access 2.0 the purchase of this farm in 2000 by John Sats from former representative Robert Wood and his wife Sally was if we talk about 115 farm transport we supported that's probably number one or two in our in our tally it was one of our first farm access projects and really gave birth to a much more robust program of teaming up conservation either purchases and and farm transfers so John Sats bought the farm used conservation proceeds to make the farm affordable spent 20 years building a really vibrant business and a beautiful family there he sadly passed away to 2021 of cancer and his widow Courtney decided that she couldn't maintain the farm and it was a second opportunity for us collectively about land trust VHCB to work on finding the next opportunity for that farm and so the purchase of a retro OPAV so adding that affordability option was teamed up with John had actually bought 65 additional acres after conservation so he bought 82 acres in 2000 he'd added 65 and did not conserve them so we were able to buy a kind of group of fund and we haven't quite closed yet but purchase an easement on 65 acres purchase affordability on the whole and that dramatically brought down the purchase price for the new farmers who are now on the farm and continuing what has been a very long legacy of a well loved and successful farm business the purchase of retro OPAVs is a really critical tool we're doing two to three a year really appreciate VHCB support and the setting aside funds for this really important piece of the land access toolbox it's also an opportunity to look back at older conservation easements that were developed at a time where the focus on water quality was different the set of tools in our easements to address water quality concerns were different and so what we do when we go back to an older easement to add affordability we also take a new look at water quality protection opportunities add buffers to streams add wetland protection so we're not only helping again to bridge these transfers and make them more affordable who are also strengthening the overall conservation outcomes and that's very much the case here there's a large wetlands that's being protected some of the buffers that are also associated associated I believe Dan and Elise moved here specifically to move on to this farm they have been living out west and we're trying to move to Vermont to farm for quite some time it just weren't finding the right piece of land to meet their needs and so it's really a beautiful story of people finally finding a spot to land and the find viability business advisors were able to work with both the exiting owner Courtney Sats and different advisors working with that trying folks to help them figure out those complex like what is each party need to make this really work for everyone yeah that that couldn't have been a cheap sale exactly and because of the small size of the parcel the successful farm business the ability to buy down some value and get real state you know it's a great state investment it's affordability for the future it's water quality protections and it's bringing new farmers on to land so just for the old folks in the room who worked with representative you may remember that when he became chair of the institutions committee we had a colorful very colorful speaker at the house who made conservation a priority which was not representative woods priority at all and we actually and we held a board meeting in Brown in one year and my board chair invited Bob to come with me said you know is there anything we our staff isn't giving you need more information and Bob said our problem is not your staff our problems philosophy and when we did the conservation deal Bob did not sell development rights he sold to the Sats's at fair market value and simultaneously the Sats's sold but about two years after the sale I was in the state house and I said Bob how are the young people doing and he said I just wish they'd let me so I think he'd be happy with this outcome though philosophically he didn't feel like the government should spend money on this I get money out of that but I think he really cared about the land and all of that and the people that piece of land was the world yeah and I'm just saying there wasn't not just the land but his heart went to the farmers so these couple examples we've given of the tools there they're largely timed with the simultaneous sale of the farm and conservation restrictions and the ability for a farmer farm buyer to you know be able to bring financing at the same time as the conservation dollars or in pretty close proximity to make a deal happen one of the things that we've learned over the last 20 years is that that isn't always the most successful way to set up a farm business for success and some farm businesses some farmers need a longer on ramp to ownership either to put together the equity build the equity they need for financing develop the farm business that's really tailored to the particular piece of land and that these simultaneous transfers well it's still a lot of what we support and do aren't always possible and if we really want to serve the full breath of interesting and exciting opportunities for farmland access having longer on ramps for farmers is is needed and so one of the things that Vermont land trust has done we have we've always used interim farm ownership and interim land ownership as a tool in our box it's been a pretty small tool it's been a pretty hit-or-miss like case-by-case situation and often when we did it in the past we had we had to have the end game in mind and if we owned it it was we were going to get out as soon as possible we were going to get out as soon as conservation dollars became available we've always believed in private land ownership as a really key stewardship goal and strategy in Vermont but we have been building the farmland features fun with the intention of staying in longer in some properties in order to support the next generation of farm ownership thinking you know focused on underserved and underrepresented farmers opportunities to expand water quality improvements during our ownership and also to to help the farm community develop some new and interesting ways to own land in collective ways at this point we've and for us the look having low-cost capital in order to do that and to to bridge and have a longer term ownership in some cases up to five years I was really important and so I developed an evolving set of funds about 10 million through the state's clean water state involving fund five million that senator Leahy got through got for us through USDA rural development or energy that's excuse me and another two million from the Vermont Community Foundation and high meadows fund right now we own 10 farms and as as as far as go out of our ownership and into farmer ownership more farm will come into our ownership and what we do is we lease those farms and affordable leases we focus on the background services that are so critical and then time the sale out really to meet the needs of the farmer in particular and this example is is one that's underway right now BLT currently owns this farm is 34 acres and buried that is leased to Matt Cisto and Kim rich it's going to be added to their 12-acre home farm very successful small organic vegetable operation and eggs they could not this is one of those situations where the sellers could not wait for conservation the buyers could not bring the full financing without the conservation even sale timing BLT was willing and able because of the Farmland Futures Fund and the work we're doing to really develop that program more robustly to serve in this interim ownership role we have done fit so the picture on the left there is a large riparian buffer planting that happened last spring so we're doing the work during our ownership to really establish trees and shrubs in the buffer so that the farm as it moves back into private ownership has water quality protections in place develop the lease that Matt and Kim can work with and then we'll tie the sale out with the conservation proceeds putting trees in there that's a big volunteer day we had folks removed some a whole bunch of volunteers it was really fun fun day last spring this is also a farm that we are undergoing a new program at USDA NRCS called the biophysic protect sell program we don't always like to be the first in the country to try things with federal money we keep finding ourselves doing it and we are in this case and it's it's painful it's painful but i think also we're helping lead the way to find the find the challenges in that funding and give real direct feedback to the farm bill work that's underway about how to improve that program so we're trying to buffer the farmers from the pain pain points we're trying to help the rest of the country hopefully benefit from the experience and we are at the least heartened that the that USDA NRCS thinks that bioprotect sell these these interim transitional ownership situations are worth conservation dollars and calling us i'll just add that this old tele farm is another example of where we went the farm forest liability program worked with them simultaneously to all of this so we started working with them a couple years ago when they were still just on their initial 12 acre farm which i think only have that an acre for vegetable production their ultimate goal was to grow so that both of them could be farming full time and so this property will get them closer to that goal we ran a bunch of different financial scenarios figured out what could they afford how were they going to scale up to support two people full time making a living um we also have a small program um small subset of our program where we make grants to help people implement their business plans so folks who have recently been through the planning process and identified some really key investments that need to get made um BHCB will do up to 10 000 for a small infrastructure project so they uh last year got ten thousand dollars to help improve their barn which is where the farm stand is um and currently that's in the works then looking really good is that your referring to the 12 acre farm veggie farm this is no is that for yeah so yeah yeah the whole farm is on 12 acres and then the 34 is adding to it it's just it's just yeah yeah yeah yeah so great opportunity um I think um I think the one other piece to hit on on this um this area where BLT is serving in longer term ownership is also allowing us to create pathways for some some new and different tools creatively arrangements that are performance based that um look at um not just the financial you know viability farm but ways to build um build soil to protect water and really value those things um in in a way that helps farmers to affordably get on land and create the conditions for for better you know better outcomes also creative land holding models um and affordability tools so just a quick example um this farm um was the former Chapman farm it was actually conserved as a working dairy farm in 2017 and it was a farm transfer opportunity where a sale of an event made um no partners there able to affordably um own the property unfortunately they um did not make it as a farm and decided to sell and and get out of dairying what emerged was this really interesting um collective of farmers and community members who approached the the the Chapman family but also Vermont land trust with an idea to try to build a community land trust model and collective ownership I don't know if you've heard of agrarian commons that's another entity working on these collective ownership alternative tenure models where there's not one person owning a farm but it's a larger group and um it allows um it allows for a you know a collective ownership so Vermont land trust owns this farm um it um and are working with that we bought the farm in 2021 and we're working with the white river land collaborative to support the what they're doing around developing their their ownership model developing their collective of farmers who are using the different parts of the property they're also working with the local avanaki community on an adjacent forest that's part of the farm um and um and then the fundraising to eventually move the property into into their ownership and I think what's what's key here is um really supporting farmers who want to explore pursue different ways to approach land ownership and giving time for that to and getting this land off because it went on the market in 2021 which was right at the time where their Vermont suddenly became a really desirable place for people to come and so um us stepping in built built that time yeah is that so you've only had one year a couple years yeah so so um we have a lease arrangement with white river land collaborative and sort of a ramp for them to eventually transfer the farm and really moving to some of you moving at their pace um and that's what some of these longer-term ownerships are moving at the pace that's needed for success so you see that as working is it going to work out or is it still kind of new to judge that I think um I think we're optimistic I think you're seeing models like this built across the other parts of the country agrarian trust is a great example we're also working with bread and butter farm on some work they're doing around these sorts of models also similarly owning some land up in south burlington I think you can't go into this unless you're optimistic not not every venture is going to be successful all like you know the intervails had people who succeeded wildly at the intervail and they also had people who said this is for me so whenever a group of people need to get together and figure out how they're going to work together yeah you know we had a young woman that's a challenge we had a group of people in last week I think it was one day and we had a young woman saying how she just loved to get into farming gut couldn't make it because she wasn't a previous farmer well we sort of knew that that wasn't quite accurate but I can see where something like this a young person that has no experience could have a plot of land that may be next to somebody that has real experience that they could learn from that maybe could be successful yeah the incubator farm model we think the intervails a great example and we're just really interested in supporting the explorations into these models because as we know there's no one-size-fits-all we are up against prevailing forces that are challenging and so innovating and iterating and is is sort of where it's at right now knowing I think gusty said well not everything will succeed but we won't know till some things get tried and just wanted to clarify one another thing is more and more we're just seeing the price points of unconcerned farms being wildly unattainable for beginning farmers so I think that sort of highlights the need to keep innovating and exploring different models within conservation because if concerned farms are going to be the main place of viability for beginning farmers we need to be able to look at different options and try trying things I think existing concerned firms are out of the reach in many cases sometimes they can be which is no I think we've got a better chance if you're starting out new and buying the rights and packaging something together now then then the stuff that we have concerned some of it and some of it's going back and doing those retroactive affordability purchases because they're bringing more farms up out of that portfolio into into the at least the farmer to farmers sales yeah and again a lot of the firm farmland I'm seeing in my community is going to existing farmers but it's going to large farmers yeah those guys I know up north some of the big ones are buying up a lot of well they're expanding their operation because there's more some cases more family members joining the operation yeah but that seems to I think work without you folks well I think you will find it I think this is one thing Senator Westman is saying is that sometimes large farms are buying concerned land you know we've worked with Fairmont on a number of occasions now one of the things I heard Richard Paul say at a community meeting when he was buying another piece of land he's more clear and somebody was just being critical about large farms he's saying well this is its own 200 acre parcel. Fairmont's going to own it for the next 20 years but then it may be a 200 acre farm again. So one of the things you did a few years back that we didn't succeed at was I think this will need to come back to this at some point as you passed legislation through the senate that died in the house that allowed for easement amendments and while I think permanent easements are good the other perpetuity is a really long time and so there are some large farm ownerships in the big farm counties you know where we can serve 500 acres as fall into an easement and farms are doing two things right now they're either getting bigger or they're getting smaller and we may want a tool that's going to allow us to take some of those larger ownerships and break it into smaller ownerships and that's going to require easement amendments which are really hard to do so yeah that's going to take a lot to so the big guys can chop it down to smaller things when you take a lot of the money there's not so much or a lot of carry a lot of paper so now we really appreciate your time well we're happy to answer your questions either give these chairs or in other conversations yeah well you've always been very good at work with and basically easy to work with compared to some of our projects and uh it's great to have you in and we really appreciate your time and that person we'll um we got another project that we're in the work of songs and but we'll see how how that all works out and and you know if we need to be of assistance you know where to find this song thank you and we will especially as you move out we get down the other