 Welcome everybody to the meeting, we're dealing with H950, and Wendell, you're the first one, you're Wendell, Warren, I'm Warren, Warren Pullman, Wendell Pullman, yeah, he was a legislator. No, no, did you watch him or no? Some day. You want me to go to Guy and shoot him? Okay, yes, yes. I can be real brief. My name's Warren Pullman, I'm from MMR, I work here, we represent the Gulf Association. We did testify up in the house on the original bill. I think you'll see that the bill changed substantially and was narrow to deal with treated seats, so at this point the Vermont Gulf Association doesn't seem to be indicated by the current bill, so we don't have any concerns about the bill as it's reported. No, you don't. Yeah, and the only thing we've talked about in regards to this bill is we've had some discussions with Warren and Warren in regards to trying to get the people that manufacture these seats in. I think what we've heard and discussed correctly about the base of it, there's basically four major ingredients that go into treated seats. And there's only one, the higher one, that has an effect on the population. We were just batting in around the migrant, maybe, to help us in this, but we were thinking that we could get seats manufactured on the market. We sailed with that one missile, this whole thing would go away, and then we haven't had enough testimony yet to really figure out if that is accurate or not. But as far as the golf courses in the sprays, I don't think you'll get a dog in the place. Not as the bill's currently in front of you. We could probably find one to put in your dog. I'd appreciate it if you did. Oh, I thought you might want to earn your money. Oh, I am next door at some of your other committees, believe me. Well, thank you. I'll keep an eye on this. I will. If we move forward, if there's something you want to chat about. We'll just pay attention to it. Thank you for it. Good. I guess, Margaret, you're stuck up. I am. Maybe you could gouse a little bit about it. Okay. Yeah. So, I'm going to start with who I'm here that I'm supposed to be testifying for, and then I'll move on to the people that you actually might be interested in hearing from as well, because I've never sent hope. So, for the record, I'm Margaret Lagas. I represent Green Mountain Dairy Farmers. They are the dairy farmers in Vermont that ship to milk cooperatives. I went to all of the pollinator protection committee meetings over the last couple of years, and basically what came out of those meetings were that there were four or five main stressors to bees, and that this is worldwide, not just here in Vermont, but worldwide. But in Vermont specifically, the two big ones, the three big ones, were a lack of genetic diversity, which makes the bees more susceptible to individual problems if you don't have that hybrid figure of a diverse genetic background. Climate change is a big one with earlier springs. You know, snowfalls happening at bad times, very rainy springs, cool springs. Those make bees struggle. And another problem is a lack of early forage. And one of the big changes that occurred in Vermont maybe five or six years ago was that the research for dairy farmers showed that early harvesting of alfalfa, which has obviously got a clover, you know, it's got a flower, an early bloom, which was an important source of nutrients for bees. What the research showed was that if dairy farmers cut the alfalfa before the bloom, the available nutrients to their cows were actually higher and more efficient, and so farmers started cutting their alfalfa earlier, which kind of was taking away this early source of a high quality feed source for bees. There is research at UVM now going on to different types of those forages that you could allow to bloom and not lose the nutrient content. So we are looking at that. But one of the other issues is that we have all these new buffer zones coming in because of the now only two-year-old R&Ps, the required ag practices, require farmers that have any kind of a waterway near their farm to have buffer zones. Those are a great opportunity to provide early forage for bees as well. And now there is also a bill about solar farms and trying to use them as a source of forage for bees as well. And they have a pollinator-friendly solar-citing bill that's moving through as well. Veroamites have been a constant problem. I worked for the House and Senate Act committees in D.C. in the late 80s and early 90s, and that was part of the 1990 farm bill, was research money into Veroamites. And those are a little parasite that gets onto the bees and weakens them. The only way to get rid of them is to treat them with an insecticide. Obviously, bees are insects, and so there's that fine balance that's really good enough to try to control the Veroamites, but not harm any of your bees. And that has been an ongoing constant battle. There was a queen bee that was developed in Vermont by a Vermont breeder. And she actually, in her method of cleaning, she actually was killing the Veroamites, which other bees weren't. So they have taken her and are trying to use her genetics. There's a bee cooperative that deals with breeding and diversifying the genetics of bees, blue Tennessee, somewhere. And they are using her to try to get that genetic trait to carry out into other bees, which would be a way for bees to help protect themselves against these Veroamites. Like I said, climate change is a huge issue, and pesticides is another issue. These are insects, and they obviously can be negatively impacted by pesticides. So the pesticide that you all are interested here in this bill, it's neonicotinoids. There are basically four different ones out there. When a dairy farmer in Vermont buys corn seed, if you're not an organic farmer, you're buying corn seed that comes pretreated. And basically it has three or four different elements, whether it's a fungicide, an insecticide, or a largeside. There are a variety of different things. It's a recipe that different companies come up with. So the various different corn seed companies and corn sellers have their own private recipe, their own special ingredients, special sauce that they put onto seeds. And originally, some of these seed coatings at the time of planting would have what we called a dust-off issue, which is, you know, you pour a bag of corn seed into a hopper. And the way that it went in, there was an air injection system, and the air injection would actually cause some of that seed coating to become airborne, and that caused these pesticides to not end up where they belonged, which was in the soil. The secondary problem was that in order to keep the seeds from sticking together, they used a product, kind of like a talc product, like a baby powder kind of a product. They kept the seeds from sticking together, and they found out that it was just rough enough that it was also causing some of the seed coating to rub off and become airborne, which we didn't want, right? We want those products to be in the soil where they belong. That's where they're targeted to be. So the seed coatings and the planter boxes have both been changed over the years. Obviously not every farmer changes right away, but in Vermont, most farms hire somebody to do the commercial planting of their corn, and so those large growers are changing their equipment much more rapidly than an individual farmer would. So most of those pieces of equipment have been changed, and the seed coatings have been changed. They're looking into like M&Ms, where they melt in your mouth and not in your hand, and so they've come up with a coating that is not as susceptible to the dust off, and they use a different product to keep the seeds from sticking together. So they have tried to adjust both of those issues that they found, and what they have found is they're significantly less of the dust off issue, and so more of the insecticide goes into the ground where it's needed. And the issue of not having insecticide on the seed doesn't lessen the need for this insecticide. We do have these wireworms in Vermont, and the problem is... What does that do? So it kills wireworms, is what it is. The neomics are specifically designed. Same thing that bothers the bees. So this particular insecticide that goes after wireworms is one that is a targeted insecticide, but bees are insects, and so they are susceptible to it because it's what they call systemic. And so it gets into the main part of the plant and also shows up in the pollen of plants. And so you've seen that most annual plant companies, the big proven winners, anybody who goes out and buys annuals to plant in their gardens, the biggest proprietary owner of those patents are what's called proven winners, and they've gone away from using neomics because obviously all of their plants are bee attractive and so they don't want to use neomics on them. But yes, this particular insecticide can have an impact on bees. They're not entirely sure in small doses what that effect is, but there are a couple of different ones, whether it's how they find their way back to the hive or whether it's just a bit of an extra stressor along with the Varroa mites and the climate change and no easy access to a variety of forage. And there's a lot of different things that are all coming together, and so it's kind of a package deal. But if you didn't want neomics as a seed treatment, then we would go back to what we used to do, which is to apply those seed coatings on the farm. So it would be the same thing, we'd put them in the hopper box, you'd be mixing them on a farm, so you would actually have a better chance of dust off under that scenario. And you would also have much more kind of over-the-road shipping and handling at a farm of a pesticide, which now obviously none of those pesticides are in individual farms around Vermont, but if you ban them as a seed coating, then individual farmers would have to have them. The other issue is, you know, they've talked about know what they call prophylactic use, which would mean you'd have to prove that you have the problem in order to use the treated seed. There is, neomics are not effective once you see the damage done to your plant. Your plant has come up, and so there is no kind of after-the-fact treatment. It isn't like other pests that you start to see, like arming worms, you start to see them show up and you could treat and you could avoid significant damage to your crops. Wireworm happens before the seed corn comes out of the ground, and so by the time you see the damage it's too late, they're in the ground. And so the other challenge is that, as you know, we talk a lot about how much dairy farming practices have changed in the last 10 years because of water quality issues. So you'll see we're not tilling our soils, we're growing cover crops, we're changing the way that we plant things. We have a higher degree of organic matter in the soil. One thing to talk about is in regard to climate change, raising the organic matter in the 500,000 acres of tillable soil in Vermont or plant propagation soil in Vermont can absorb the carbon of about 240,000 trucks and vehicles in Vermont. And that is something that we're actually able to do over a short period of time, but it completely changes the soil by the amount of bugs and everything that's in the soil of farms because you've got a lot more organic matter in there, which means there's a lot more air, there's more root systems. And so all of that is kind of rapidly changing on Vermont farms and climate change is also significantly impacting Vermont farms. So it's harder and harder to really know whether or not you're going to have a wireworm issue in September, which is when you would have to get ready to order your seeds for the following spring. And so we don't support the idea of not allowing farmers to use this insecticide as a seed coating unless they can prove that they've got a problem. And you also might have, you know, one part of a field has a problem, the other doesn't, and then you're carrying multiple bags of seed out to your field and you can only put it in certain hoppers and starting and stopping them. And I think that what this bill does, what 915 does, is address the actual issues that exist in Vermont, which is let's take a look at, you know, aren't neonites showing up in waterways? What are the bee issues? Are there other ways that, you know, that we can use PSAs to make sure that homeowners are not using these products when their flowers are actually blooming because you don't want them to be doing that because that's when the bees are attracted to those flowers and things like that. And working with farmers on their buffer zones and what can we do to make sure that they don't grow up to a woody vegetation which is not as an attractive source of food for many bees unless they're the right kind of woody vegetation. So that's, and for everybody to remember, neonics, you know, as the EPA always replaces old chemistries with what are supposed to be newer and safer chemistries, neonics replaced organophosphates, which had a negative impact on humans. These are much safer for humans, and so we are always trying to get better and there will be new chemistries coming out. Obviously the bee issue has been a big nationwide issue and these companies are not immune to that knowledge so they will continue to work on either ways to make sure that those that their chemistries don't show up in places where they don't belong as in fixing the seed coating and the method of planting. So yeah. We, I don't know if we heard this in committee or if I was upstairs and they reported it to me. But it seems like we have two major bee companies, bee owners, and one bee owner has a problem or they have a problem with dying bees. But the other one, their bees seem to be healthy and fine. And they both work in the same... Once an asset, county, once a friendly county. Yeah, so the same quarter. So I don't know if they're here today but we're going to get most folks in eventually. And I think what that tells you is that there are a variety of stressors out there and you know, hive management is important and making sure that you, you know, talk to your neighbors and work with farmers. You know, I think farmers were kind of unaware that early cutting of their alfalfa, they were more worried about feeding their cows, not thinking about their robbing bees of an early source of an important nutrient source. So, you know, I think that there is that conversation and I know that dairy farmers are aware of this issue and are looking at those buffer zones and what they can do. So they plant in the buffer zones. And bear crop science is one of the companies that produces this particular insecticide and they are working, they have a bee program and they are giving away seeds of pollinator attractive seeds to be planted in and around spaces. They give them to homeowners. It's meant to bring you some, but I forgot. I'll bring you some in the next few days. But they like to plant in buffer zones? Yeah, you can plant them in your gardens. They're just, you know, trying to encourage the availability of quality forage for bees all over the place. Yeah. Questions from the community. Margaret, how often do the manufacturers change the chemical kind of formulas? Is there kind of an ongoing look at it? Yes. So it's always ongoing. To get a chemical through the EPA is a pretty extensive process. And to be honest with you, I actually toured the bear factory out in California a couple of years ago. And the thing that they're actually working on now is creating plants that basically protect themselves more so that they're, you know, everybody's looking to use less pesticides overall. And so they're looking at different ways to, not through genetically altering plants, but through breeding plants that have a stronger ability to withstand and encourage them, you know, a bite by a bug, which, you know, in a corn plant, if you get, if it gets bitten by a bug, there's the potential to get fungus growing in there and then as we get aquatoxin, which then causes abortions in cows. And so that's why we're kind of rabid about protecting our corn plants from any kind of bugging curtains. So is it pretty important to keep those plants healthy? Healthy. Right. Exactly. And the more that the plants can protect themselves, obviously that in the long run that saves farmers because, you know, nobody wants to be paying for pesticides anyway. But the new thinking from all of those companies is moving more into plant protecting themselves and being better able to withstand the problems that are associated with insecticides and, well, with fungus issues. You know, it's funticide, insecticides or denticides. You know, so there's a wide variety of pesticides. They all fall into that same category. So I just want to be clear. You're saying that from what you've seen, neonicotides are not necessarily a problem, but you are saying that there's bees that are less stressed. Absolutely. And I think everybody would agree that there are a variety of stresses. Pesticide use, not just the units, but pesticide use in general is an additional stressor. Right? If you use an insecticide, that has the potential to impact the bee. You know, it's an insecticide. That's what it's designed to do. And the way to lessen that stress is to properly use that product and to use it, you know, to manage it properly. And I think that there are other things that Vermont can do, and this bill envisions that, to try to remove or bolster the other stressors that are out there. Any other questions for Margaret? Well, I don't remember that question. I don't remember, because I only saw it once, but whatever it was called, the committee that was put together. The pollination committee. Yes. Came up with a variety of recommendations that obviously didn't end up in the bill. I was just wondering if you could speak to that at all. I don't know if you went to those meetings and what some of those recommendations were. I'm not saying you agree with them. Correct. So, I mean, I think that those recommendations were fairly broad, and they are some of the things that I've talked about, which is to work on better availability of forage for bees, work on the issues of genetic diversity. Certainly that one of their big recommendations that I don't agree with was no prophylactic use of neonates that you'd have to prove that you have a problem if you wanted to be able to use the product. I think that those are really the big ones. What's involved in proving that? So, you have to do soil tests. You'd have to go out to your fields, to all of your fields, and do a variety of soil tests, and you try to find if you have the early stage of the wire worm in your field. And I think that that used to be a more precise thing before climate change kind of hit us, because wire worm is significantly impacted by wet, cool springs. This is the perfect kind of weather for them. We've had more cool, wet springs lately, and so we've had a larger amount of those early stages survive in the spring than we used to, so it's much harder to predict with a potential negative impact of those fall available that you can test for in the fall. Anything else? Any other questions? Thank you. Ross Conner? Yes, sir. Good morning. You have 18 feet. Densey D. Gardens is the name of my company. About your headaches, and how these are affected? Well, basically what I do is try to make the world a better place, not just for myself or other people, but for all living problems. And I do that by working with pollinators and the incredible relationship they have with the plant community through pollination and collecting pollen in the nectar as well as water and tree resins. They give back through pollination, so there's all kinds of fruits and vegetables, nuts and berries in this food and abundance, brilliant sex and animals and all of us. And so as a result, I'm a beekeeper in Middlebury. I have a relatively small beekeeping operation because I try to do it natural organically without the use of chemicals and pesticides, antibiotics, artificial diet, that kind of thing. And to do that effectively, you can't be too large. You can't have too many hives as it takes extra care of you. And so I want to... My name's Ross Conner. I want to thank you for having me. And first of all, you need to know that the best data we have, bees are definitely the best data. This past year, 2016 to 2017, according to the Bee Informed Partnership, which does a nationwide survey of beekeepers, Vermont lost approximately 48% of their honeys that year. So what year was it? It was just 16 to 17, 2016 to 2017. That was the most common information we had. We lost 48% in Vermont. Nationwide, the average is 30 to 40%. That was unusually high. But as you heard, there are a lot of stressors. The weather's a big factor. Carage, disease, pests. There's a lot of issues. Pesticides are definitely one of them. Neonicocenoids in particular because they are the most widely used of all the insecticides. In particular, the seed coating, that's probably the biggest issue just because the most farmers don't realize what's on these seeds. They plant them, they grow like crazy, it's great. They're not told they don't understand. But the reality is that a neonicotenoid caught the end of it. And it is 10,000 times more toxic to insects than DDT. This is according to the research. 10,000, so it's very effective. It kills insects like crazy. Not so harmful for people. So it's very popular. Unfortunately, some of the breakdown products are also just as toxic as some of these neonicotenoid breakdown products are just as toxic as the actual. And the other issue is that because they're systemic, they're water soluble. As the water gets on the seed, the pesticide dissolves in the water. The plant, as it grows, takes up the pesticide. So it goes throughout. It's in the pollen, it's in the nectar. The bees get exposed that way. But only 3 to 5% of the pesticide actually gets absorbed by the plant. 95% or so percent of the pesticide on that treated seed goes into the soil. And it can last for years. It's water soluble. The water will dissolve it and it will start to move with the water underground. Other plants pick it up. And so we've had issues with trees on the edge of a field and dead mummovies under it because that tree is now highly dosed with the pesticides that is picked up inadvertently through this drifting of the pesticide through the water in the ground. And they're super toxic. And also the evidence has shown there's a clear correlation that exists between dramatic increase in honeybee losses and increase in neomicotonic uses. So I do want to kind of stress that as a beekeeper, yes, it's an extra issue for the bees, for my bees. But depending on where you are and how you manage your bees, it can be somewhat mitigated. Yes, it adds to the cost for beekeepers extra labor, extra work to make up for the colony effects of the neonicotinoids. But overall, you know, we're managing because we're trying to stay in business. We're working extra hard to make up for it. My real concern are the native pollinators, the wild bees, the bumblebees, the moss, the butterflies, all those other critters. That's a real issue. Our department of agriculture is starting to find these neonicotinoids are turning up in our waterways. We don't know what it's doing to the waterborne insects. And then the domino effect of how does that affect the fish and the birds and the bats that feed on these insects. So there's some real issues here. Specifically, I'd like to just make some comments addressing H915. Farmers, I think, do need to have the option to easily be able to purchase untreated seed. Right now, for all intents and purposes, they don't really have that option. It's really difficult. And so, they're having to use pesticide on their land, whether they need it or not. Extra costs, extra impact on the environment, even when it's not necessary. It makes no sense. We need to do something. Another thing that has been brought up by the Pollinator Protection Committee, which I was a member of, by the way, and one of their recommendations is that consumer access to the anicotinoids should actually be eliminated if not reduced, at least reduced if not eliminated. So what would that mean? Basically, you can't apply any anicotinoids unless you're trained, for example. It turns out that the concentrations of anicotinoids applied by consumers can be hundreds of times that an agricultural setting is applied. And so, that's kind of an easy one. Other states have done this. Maryland has passed a law that doesn't allow a consumer to lose an anicotinoids. In Oregon, cities of Eugene and Portland have passed laws that restrict consumer use of anicotinoids. That's because, I'm sorry to interrupt, but that's because I might, I don't know if I'm saying this right, but I might buy some of this stuff and use it in our train. They think a little is good, so maybe a little more is better. They worry, they won't protect their plants. And you can have pretty delicious effects, side effects, especially the anicotinoids. You need to know that, in my opinion, H915 should refer to all systemic pesticides, not just the anicotinoids. It focuses on the anicotinoids, because they're the most popular in Oregon, but it's kind of a loophole. History shows that whenever regulation or legislation impacts one chemical or classic chemicals, then the industry simply creates new chemicals or classes that do the same thing and often has the same problems, and this just requires you to go back and revisit the issue again, because you only are dealing with me on these ones, and now there's these other classes. And in fact, there are other classes already available that are causing problems for these. Fepromil is a phenylharazole, and sulfox, sulfox, sulfoxalfluor, excuse me. What are they used for? I don't know offhand, but they are similar to neonicotinoids. They're systemic. I'm sure Kelly could probably fill you in. And then they act in the same way. They bind to the same receptors in the nervous system of the insect, and they don't break down readily, so they clog up the receptors and cause serious problems, even at low doses. Another product is Floppy Rataforan. It's a substance manufactured by Bayer, and it's under a class of insecticides called utenolides, and according to the Pesticide Research Institute, Floppy Rataforan acts just like neonicotinoids as a very similar chemical structure, despite being classified as a butanolide. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. Like neonicotinoids, Floppy Rataforan is systemic, so plants absorb them, distribute the toxin to the stem leaves, pollen and nectar. It's highly water soluble, moderately persistent in the environment with a half-life of five months. So I would strongly suggest the wording of this bill be changed to apply to all systemic insecticides, not just neonicotinoids. Also, the wording in Section 4 makes it impossible actually to reliably evaluate the impacts of treated articles on pollinators, in my view. The Secretary says, you know, Secretary of Agriculture shall assess the effects of neonicotinoid treated seas and on the loss of pollinator populations in Vermont by independently reviewing claims of pollinator losses by neonicotinoids. Sounds reasonable. Unfortunately, the ability to evaluate the effects of neonicotinoid on hunting bees can only rely on ability to be done through testing in a lab, to test for the actual chemical residues or the breakdown products in bees, pollen, hunting beeswax, in that order, in a million pollinators. It's really difficult to know whether your bees are weak and are sick because of a pesticide or, you know, maybe it's nutrition or something, it's just really hard. And we don't really have the infrastructure in place to do regular testing on a wide mass scale as far as I know, at least I know we don't probably have the budget for it. The other problem is limiting the agriculture departments to reviewing claims of pollinator losses by beekeepers allows the department to totally ignore the impacts on the native pollinators. Right now, we've got an army of people out there caring for hunting bees, feeding them, giving them a place to leave, treating them when they're sick, taking care of them. No one's out there caring for the wild pollinators and the bumblebees and all the other pollinators. And all the indications are they're being decimated. You used to drive down the road and get insects all over your car and windshield, right? Have you noticed that doesn't happen much anymore? There's a reason for that. It hasn't happened much this winter. Well, not in the winter, that's for sure. It's summer though, when it's supposed to happen. Right? And so, the other thing 9.15 talks about is tracking. Well, actually, it doesn't, and this is the thing. I think it should. It turns out that Vermont, I think, needs to start tracking the use of all treated articles that have the potential to impact pollinators. The first step in understanding the impacts of treated articles is to track their sale and use them. We know the level of treated articles that we are releasing into the environment on a yearly basis. Right now, we don't really have a good handle on that, I believe. Vermont legislature has brought authority to regulate pesticides in the state, including treated articles. The regulation of treated articles includes authority to use the Vermont pesticide advisory council to develop best management practices for the use of treated articles. And the best management practices should include tracking, use, and sales not only of neonicotinoid treated seed, but also of nursery and bedding plants that are treated with neonicotinoids. I thought a couple of years ago the legislature passed a bill that told the right way of putting it, the pesticide advisory board to develop regulations around these neonicotinoids. Why is that correct? My understanding is it just gave you the authority to do that, but it never actually and if it did do that, I don't believe it's been done. That's right, so we can't do it. Not that I know. In fact, the last I heard the Department of Agriculture wasn't even sure if bedding plants and nursery plants should actually be classified as a treated article. And I pulled up 40 CFR 152 0.25 which is the FIFER regulations and it says that an article or substance is part of the definition of a treated article. An article or substance is treated with or containing a pesticide to protect the article or substance itself. So it seems really clear to me that those should as well as seeds, nursery plants, bedding plants should be treated as treated articles as well. I thought we had testimony that corn and soybean were the two main treated seeds here in the state and that like garden seeds and those were not many treated. Kara, did did you report on that or no? Somebody. That sounds accurate, but what I'm talking about are the bedding plants and the nursery plants, not the seeds but actual, you know, we had some of the bigger box type stores that sell plants that are good for pollinators. It turned out there was a big hell of a loo when we found out they were treated with these systemic pesticides so people wanted to help the pollinators they buy the plants at the store they plant them and they're toxic to the pollinators and it's kind of an issue especially because there's no labeling I mean there was no way for them to know it was a consumer so we got some issues here for sure. Were some of those plants that you talked about were they treated with the endocrine or just with the other plants? Exactly, the endocrine ones, yeah. I brought some copies of basically the points I just covered for each of you. Thank you so much. Do you have any other questions that are happening? It seems like we're here I think it's obviously because the last witness seems to be saying that it was one of the advantages of the way it's used now is that the seeds are put into the soil so it's not floating around into the atmosphere. What you're saying is going into the soil is not necessarily a solution because it's water soluble and it goes back up. The dust issue in Vermont is not as bad as out west where they still use the air pneumatic planters but yes that seems to be the issue because it's water soluble and it persistent in the soil it can last for years in some cases in the soil, especially clay soils which we have in Addison County where I'm from it can last a long time and it can spread through the water and then the other plants just pick it up so that's one of the problems we talk about only mitigating the problem but only like applying in a way that's not going to hurt the pollinators when they're not flying or something like that it doesn't work with the systemic plants about systemic pesticides because once it doesn't matter when you apply it or how you apply it, the bees are still going to get exposed because it's systemic and it's in the pollinant nectar and any pollinator that visits that plant after it's been treated gets exposed so you can't, you know, it's the idea you can only apply it when there's no bees around or that kind of thing it applies for the other pesticides that weren't systemic that worked it doesn't work for the systemic ones and that's part of the issue so as corn grows and gets 3, 4, 5 feet tall if a bee or an insect lands on that corn they could protect it well technically yes through the pollin but corn is not a major forage plant for honey bees they will go to it on occasion but it's not like a primary thing yeah, clovers alfalfa basswood black locust are big here in Vermont the big ones are dandelions clover, alfalfa and goldenrod those are the main honey flows and the problem is bee keep bees I should say honey bees are they're generalists they'll go to any flowering plant that has nectar and pollen so they'll go to the garden they'll go over and inevitably they get exposed so like in the spring most people either grow plants or grow live plants to hang them out on the porch or wherever at their home and I know at my house the ones hanging around the porch you'll see bees there all the time how does a homeowner know if those are those plants have put neonium I think the only way they would know is if they talk to the person that grew them and ask them about the labeling there's nothing to prevent companies from treating no laws about it so it's not easy I've never seen any bees die off it takes a very high dose to directly cause acute toxicity for them to die right away that doesn't happen too often I believe the problem is my handout points out some of the research shows that there's sublethal effects so they get exposed to a little bit and it may weaken your immune system makes it harder for them to forage in fact research has shown that when bees go out exposed to neonium they forage they take longer in the field to collect nectar and pollen when they come back they come back with less than bees that aren't exposed it seems to affect their learning ability it affects fertility and so you don't see them die right away we just see hives that are kind of weaved they're not building up that grade we have to do extra things to support them and feed them extra and there's extra work so we're keeping it the reality is the number of bees has declined overall cause every summer we take our survivors and we split them to make up for all the losses in winter as I said unfortunately the wild pollinators are being decimated all the indications are there's serious problems there's an imbalance going on we're seeing some pollinators while pollinators populations are increasing but other ones we're not finding them anymore when they used to be very common just 15 years ago and so it shows that there's something that's causing an unbalance of disturbance in the population numbers and so some of the pollinators I guess that maybe have less sensibility like pesticides are filling in the niches that are being opened up by pollinators that are dying out that's my understanding so Russ I'm just going to try to understand Margaret listed I think four things that affect bees you mentioned that we've lost almost 50% of the colony here if you had to rank whether it's lack of diversity lack of forage for them climate change and pesticides I think for the four are the pesticides the most likely to have caused that loss? I know they're interconnected to me pesticides and climate change are the two top issues because they aggravate a lot of the other issues of pests and diseases and forage problems I mean pesticides are one of the pesticides that are herbicides that should clean out a field of all the weeds and we lose a lot of forage that way as well so that's one of the problems that the pesticides aggravate disease problems because they affect the immunity of the pollinators so they're more likely to get sick affects the forage not only their ability to forage but the amount of forage it affects actually pesticides have been shown to cause in honey beehives their development time from egg to adult to take longer than normal and we have a mite that is affecting the meat of a rolling mite and it feeds on the baby bee as it's developed so the longer time it takes for that baby bee to develop the more the mite can raise its young successfully and more mites can get raised so it aggravates the mite problem and so not only are pesticides a problem in themselves but they aggravate all the other problems so that's one of the reasons why to me it's one of the biggest problems the other issue of course is climate change not only as we heard plants blooming at different times abnormally times than what they used to and not only do we have extreme weather events that can directly impact heavy winds or floods that can impact hives but it turns out scientists have proven that in a high carbon atmosphere plants on earth produce a lot more sugars and starches and less protein and they've established that in goldenrod pollen the level of protein in goldenrod pollen is much less than it was 40-50 years ago today because the plants just aren't producing as much so there's a nutritional problem there again it weakens the bees they're less able to deal with things like pesticides and all the other stuff they have to deal with it's a very kind of complex because everything's interrelated but the thing about the pesticides is the one thing we have controlled over we produce them we put them in the environment we make them and use them and we can do something about that it's hard to do something about diseases and pests and the climate we don't have direct control we can actually do something so I really encourage you to do something we've been talking about this issue for quite a few years ago I came and testified at least over in the house and nothing has really been done yet so please but we need to do something here really I strongly encourage you to do something any other questions? I don't want to open all can of worms to this but this conversation is making me wonder about what we would market as organic honey seems to just make that hard well it's already extremely hard as I teach you can manage your bees organically without the use of pesticides and antibiotics or artificial diet what is hard is keeping them in a location where they're not going to forage on anything within a couple of miles around in every direction that is treated with chemicals or synthetic fertilizer which would affect the organic integrity and so as a result the only appreciable amount of organic honey needs to be one beekeeper in Vermont that was certified again but he's not doing it anymore and there's not much honey in the forest so the only organic honey in the United States really comes from Hawaii where there's an island that's kind of isolated and you can do it otherwise it all comes from other countries that's available last thing you said maybe the state of Maryland did the consumer thing yes I meant I didn't have time to was it Connecticut? I knew there was one other one I think Connecticut they did the consumer thing yeah just for consumers where consumers really can't don't have access to it anymore that's at least the first step that can be done and hopefully I'm talking with farmers like I said just trying to educate them more about the issues because we know there are other ways to control wireworm we have organic growers that are doing it and as was pointed out you can sample the field in the fall to get an idea what kind of infestation rate you're going to have in the spring and therefore know whether you need to use it or not so yes it's extra effort but as a beekeeper I've been making an extra effort for quite a while to make up for the problems of the pesticides that other people in the agricultural community use and I understand we're all trying maybe living and I don't blame the farmers quite frankly it's the regulatory process that's broken in my view and they're not doing their job the EPA we're counting on them to make sure these things are actually safe for the environment and for us as far as I can see they're totally asleep at the wheel anything else if not thank you you're welcome to stay hang around maybe for a little bit but I do have other things I have to give to you so I appreciate you making some time for me today thank you my my sir thanks for inviting me I want to make sure that I address whatever questions you had for me because you did ask me in which I appreciate and I just wanted to say thank you for having this topic on the table in the first place that's not a given everywhere you go so my name is Mike Bald in Royalton I run my own company about weeds non-chemical invasive species management and I've been doing that since 2010-2011 thank you you testified in our hearing I did you endured that I applaud your patience thank you so I testified to the house in February and I read my testimony because that's what keeps me on track I can't necessarily put you through that again but I would happily read some pieces I know the bill has changed maybe I would omit one or two points that no longer apply but before I start I want to echo what Ross said and Margaret earlier this all is very complex I want to make sure I don't forget to talk about buffer zones that's where I make my living buffer zones and we have no clue what we're doing in the buffer zones I got the pictures on the laptop we can talk about that till the sun goes down buffer zones are critical and we have no idea what we're doing and if NRCS wants to come in and we can go head to head I'll break out my pictures and demonstrate what we're doing that it's just not getting done and then the point made about me Ross championed the it's not just honey bees it's the pollinators the nation had a rough winter by the report that I saw the wild pollinators basically bugs in general they're having a rough bill whether you measure it by the windshield or Germany's lost 60% they documented so it's a very complex world to answer your question on what is the number one of all to me it's cumulative effects I mean all the different chemicals out there but glyphosate alters honey bee navigation so if they're already having trouble with the neonicotinoids and they're coming back with a lighter load of pollen and nectar if it takes them longer to get back to the hive that's not helpful I mean we all know how long it takes to get anywhere in Vermont so if you're a honey bee and it's just adding on to the time that's not helpful Atrazine is to me is one of the things why are we doing dicamba and why are we doing atrazine I mean I'll mention that at my points here but I've asked organic farmers because I've worked for a couple I'm the only guy that can find who can put his head down and dig potatoes until the sun goes down nobody else knows how to do that kind of work so they call me so I asked them once I said atrazine how do you grow corn without atrazine they said it's easy Mike you just have to cultivate you've got to know your land you've got to get out there and you've got to actually use machinery and you can grow corn without atrazine just got to know how to farm ooh that was kind of a tough Mike, is there an acreage limitation you do two acres is it no longer feasible at 200 or 2,000 acres no, if you don't have a set of equipment you can farm you can grow corn without atrazine so I've heard that from multiple people that's not my world I've mentioned how complex things are I have a hard time managing a garden the size of this table so I'm not bringing that particular expertise but I wanted to echo those points that the previous speakers made so again I thank you for the opportunity to comment I want to say I'm here today as a taxpayer number one because every nickel counts I'm here as a parent and a citizen of the community I don't go off I do not farm I do not work in the world of grant funding and I don't stand as far as I know I don't stand to gain financially from the outcome of your committee proceedings although I do eat daily I thank you for creating a short-term pollinated protection committee that was a big deal a good thing again not everyone not every state does that so that was a positive you met that need in 2016 and I want to thank all the people that served on that committee many of them were on their own time I believe the PPC did good work it opened a lot of good discussion the membership was professional and I will kind of sidetrack to say that the Vermont past society advisory council is also an excellent organization well-led great discussion it's not a council that exists in every state so we have that here I will then say the original intent behind forming PPC on the protection and the Vermont past society advisory council the intent needs to be served I don't think that it has been served because the original goal was reduced pesticide usage that has not happened so great council brilliant minds at the table there could be more minds at the table but reduction has not happened that's a problem and that feeds into the cumulative effects I do just say that the general public today has no more of a clue than they did 30 years ago regarding the impacts of everyday pests I've used I'm just here really to call upon you to elevate the pollinated protection and the VPAC I call you to set the bar high and achieve the highest possible standard so one of the very first charges laid out for PPC was the causes and occurrences of pollinated decline that mission quickly became side-boarded into an era focused on the eonicotinoids to me that's a fail it was certainly logical and necessary to address the eonics and we've heard the need and the hazards this morning I see it I get that but in leaving out antrazine, dicamba and glyphosate we have cleared a path for continued use of these products even accelerated use in the case of dicamba which is heavily used in the Midwest this is again a fail not to include those chemicals so while I see some real positives in the legislation here today I also see a need for broadening and improvement even Secretary Ross back in 2016 called for full exploration of all causes of pollinated decline when he attended a committee meeting when we omit something from the conversation we set the table for all follow-on actions and discussions just omission by itself is putting it off the table and it seems passive but it's a conscious decision we pick and choose again sometimes subconsciously but once a precedent is in place by inclusion or omission those decisions tend to dictate future focus areas I'll keep moving why is full exploration important dicamba, I'm going to go into dicamba and bring it back to bees dicamba's effects on insect populations is uncertain and with industry making profits tied to sales of the product we shouldn't expect a rush to identify impacts on insects it's all about marketing it's the lead over science so marketing comes first beekeepers in Arkansas last year noticed serious hive issues in areas where dicamba treatment had occurred this is documented and these are not hobby beekeepers these are people with thousands of working hives the bottom line is that dicamba use essentially shut down flowering from miles and miles around position bee hives there was no pollen no flower, no pollen and the use of this chemical really erased all viable habitat no pollen means no protein no protein means the queen of the hive stops producing young I don't know the mechanics of that but there are people in the room to do no protein, no offspring the same businessman noted that regions without dicamba use actually had a pretty good year last year why is this important to Vermont over the past two growing seasons a company in central Vermont has begun offering treatment services to manage bed straw it's a big deal I intended to bring one in today I grew up getting in my yard because it's everywhere it's a little pasture plant field plant, it's in a deep forest Randolph flood plain forest under ostrich ferns you still find bed straw, it's everywhere we're not going to get rid of it we tolerate it, it's not what we want but it's there people ask me, I say forget about it we have to deal with the other ones first so here's the problem every hayfield, every pasture what's the point in trying to manage it if you're not going to succeed, why spray or why treat, why apply the chemical the argument for using is that you're going to succeed, you're going to successfully manage but if you know you're not going to succeed or it's just going to come back in what is the point, there is no justification there most hayfields do have blind meat, buttercup, bed straw and a variety of others and we learn to live with it looking around tractors and equipment and deer and woodchucks are running back and forth that's our world and we have to accommodate that so I'm just making a point there senseless use of herbicide is ridiculous and I guarantee it comes back around either indirectly or directly to pollinators so I'm pushing and I've actually asked the pesticide advisory council to just stop with the dicamba this year just stop, Arkansas did after April 16th no more dicamba Minnesota said after June 15th no more dicamba because of its effect on broadleaf plants in general it volatilizes out of the soil and drifts to the next farm or the next state and it comes down in rainfall so during the growing season which is starting let's say today that rain out there is carrying up to 10 herbicides United States Geological Survey that's not my bulk data that's USGS that's all they do dicamba is that on treated seeds it's not on treated seeds it's not am I right or wrong on that it's not a treated seed what I'm saying is in this world of cumulative effects I'm trying to broaden the perspective of this bill if you make an argument for neonicotinoids I mean it's hard to look at every inch of your pasture and determine if you've got worms here weevils there you say I need neonics okay got it I mean I'm all for mosquitoes spraying get rid of it I don't want triple E I don't want Zika spray them I get it but if you're going to spray for mosquitoes and you're going to use neonics or glyphosate I mean how toxic do you want to make the soup okay so I'll move on from that the forecast for this year in the Midwest is for a doubling or tripling of dicamba use and that will make its way to Vermont in some form the PPC is not given the above situation any consideration in my opinion whatsoever because it chose to focus strictly on neonicotinoids I could voice I've already voiced concerns about nitrogen and glyphosate the glyphosate one really interested me because it was first patented as an antimicrobial I'll move on and I'll skip over this just will point out though that glyphosate there is no legal limit for round up glyphosate in honey yet FDA is finding it in the majority of honey samples that it started testing in 2015 most honey your chances are better than not if you buy honey off the shelf it will contain glyphosate USDA stopped exploration of other food products they didn't want to know if there was glyphosate and other food products and there was an article I think VPR glyphosate is in pretty much all beer and wine sad news for those for the beverage crowd a lot of beer drinkers that's probably why there's some bad I'm not going to go there but there could be there could be a relation yes so I will say PPC did as much as it could in the time that it had the members explored issues in depth and they arrived at meaningful conclusions some of which you have in the bill I believe there was a request to extend the life for the committee I think that happened I would argue that the PPC needs to exist on a permanent basis in some form that cannot happen without funding which brings me to registration fees Vermont state registration fees for economic poisons term used for pesticides the registration fees are ludicrously low doubling the annual fee would be completely reasonable and would offer funding for a standing committee in some degree of enforcement I can sit here now and tell you the lack of enforcement on many fronts is a serious concern in Vermont we can look at photos I have them on the laptop if you want to see photos of herbicide misuse if you want to see white Perian zone just ignorance and destruction situations I've got them on the laptop I'm not in the world of enforcement but I will share whatever you ask me to share if, so my point if Vermont has had a high functioning pesticide advisory council pollinator protection committee both people and pollinators would be much better protected than they are today this is why I call us to raise the standard pesticides are dangerous it is brilliant that Vermont has a VPAC in the meantime there have been vacancies on that council and I guess it's a dart if they want to dart at UVM college of medicine I've never seen them attend a meeting I've looked back through the notes college of medicine in Vermont never attends as far back as 2011 a seat on the pesticide advisory council sorry to bring that up and I'm sure they won't like me saying that but that's the way it is why is that if UVM was truly dedicated to furthering things like integrated pest management and understanding the complex issues they would attend meetings I guess I'm sure they don't have time for funding it all factors in I will say again UVM had a land stewardship program this is what I do I work landscapes UVM had a land stewardship program brilliant what is stewardship I asked this question everywhere I go what is stewardship and I get all kinds of different answers I have my own answer all five of you here would say something different what is stewardship well I call it presence on the land in Ireland the students call it continuity intergenerational continuity engagement commitment to managing the resource I mean that's what it is but we cancel our stewardship program in Vermont did that from according to Dean Wang who responded to my email he said it was canceled in 2016 for business for financial reasons a university decision thanks for your questions I'll just put it in perspective University of New Hampshire actually supports financially a stewardship network University of Massachusetts is doing great stuff University of Michigan Michigan and Maryland are two incredibly progressive states all these other states are moving forward on the notion of stewardship how to manage buffer zones and I feel like we've stepped back I will move past and get into the next point here any questions so far who pays registration fees any manufacturer that wishes to register such an article in the state has to pay that every year or every second year every year there's an annual fee 100 bucks and California is 750 something like that yes annual for registration I just want to move past what I've learned from looking at that stewardship program and what we do at the university level I did actually challenge the idea of more study and that's not in the bill and we need more study but I'm a fan of no more studies at university level that involve four verbs that's it, that's all you ever see assessments, inventories, surveys and monitoring and maybe report at the end there's no doing stuff reports I looked back through eight years of reports and there were always assessments and surveys there were always sunny days and shiny happy people taking and measuring how many birds do I see how many insects what's the compaction of the soil but no blood sweat and getting after it we need doing stuff and I'll stop at that point I am impressed that the golf course representatives were in hand for all the meetings again I think that the pod interpretation committee meetings had good public participation and the interested parties throughout the state I think they all have a place in this I don't agree that the bill as it is says that some people should walk with you you're no longer involved, no you are involved and we need a habitat everywhere because it's complicated and if you're farming, if you're chopping hay or chopping the field before the outfoul of flowers I get this question all the time when do I cut my field when do I cut the roadside when do I cut the bobble ink so I want to do the birds I want to preserve milkweed for the monarchs but I got to get that outfoul while it's the most nutritious what do I do Mike that's the way it is you got to do patchy you got to be out of the land you got to be present and you got to micromanage but it's so complicated people don't want to damage you can't cut that field you see where the nests get mowed over and people are doing good things but it's so complicated that's my point, we need to start supporting people doing good stuff I would argue that if you have a buffer zone that is dysfunctional and you're not getting it done then you forefigure right to use pesticides, neonicotinoids and to get subsidies as far as I'm concerned if you can't we know buffer zones are important and that goes into the river that's important land if you're not doing it right that's where filtration happens and erosion control if you're not doing it right give right and come back next year and talk to us if you want money or support let me illustrate this is new if I'm facing north roughly and you're facing south senator I've said this before it's a state folks I've walked the white river the south facing bank is covered with Japanese knotweed which bees love it's an invasive species and it actually is pretty destructive in terms of erosion and habitat loss just for its monoculture it suppresses biodiversity so you're on the north bank facing into the sun you get full sunlight that buffer zone in order to get rid of the invasive species that buffer zone should be 100 feet long that's where I live the sun comes at the east and sets in the west right so most rivers though many rivers in Vermont think about the green mountains up the middle many rivers flow east west so that means there's curves there's sinuosity but there are banks that face south and there are banks that face north that's the predominant theme I submit that north bank buffer zones need to be huge they need to be heavy 35 feet doesn't get it done on the north facing bank so south facing out of the sun the sun never hits the ground where I'm standing it's got to come over the shoulder of the hill at a funky angle it never actually hits that soil this ground is 20 degrees cooler than your ground over here on the south but you don't even need a riparian zone for the most part 10 feet so it's just this understanding to drop the model onto every your land, my land it's got to be more in tune and that's what we have people on the land doing real stewardship okay, I'm bringing it back around here where am I? I'm on IPM you're almost out of time I know, alright you shut me right down and ask questions do you have any questions at the moment? I'm going to make a point about IPM I'm doing good upgraded pest management all tools are on the table I have agreed with chemical use in some settings I cannot to this day see how you can manage railroad corridors with people safely so when they spray the rail line I get it I get the argument goats, I said we could use goats but nobody wants to run over a goat okay, I can see some use for pesticides and chemicals at the same time, Michigan uses a ton of fire they run wildfire all the time across Michigan cutting, pulling, harsh language goats, all the tools that I use they're second class compared to the use of chemicals as the first choice so I submit that if we actually had a clue about integrated pest management if we knew what we were doing we would do this we would remediate contaminated soil most of our soil we would have Burlington where they're trying to do projects and they've got contaminated soil do we remediate the soil or do we truck it, ship it to Coventry and throw it in another hole why? it's right there treat it, fix it, we know how to do it plants will do it why are we doing that we would also know where our soil came from so again, White River, Route 14 Royalton, maybe we built Route 14 I do invasive species work in several locations right along Route 14 I'm on it, I'm on top of it except where they rebuilt the route Route 14, because they brought in soil and I respect student mentor for answering my question where did the soil come from when you guys rebuilt that route well my cheapest bidder I don't know where it came from, it was a little bit well they brought in six invasive species and that little 78 year old farmer now has to pay $800 a year to manage that that's not fair that hurts we're working around that issue gender confused fish how does that relate to neonicotinoids and insects because we aren't reading, we aren't knowing our history knowing that the gender confused fish we saw in Lake Champlain in 2016 north end of the lake there were male female and everything in between fish well what do we do about that, what's going on they observed that in the UK in the 1980s and here we are we're 30 years behind that blows my mind if we were on top of all this the pesticides and the environmental considerations the Vermont 5 year cancer plan would have included pesticides as one of the contributing factors and it's 18 points apparently we can all go outside and the only danger to us, the only risk is sunshine and radon gas that's the only thing out there that could cause any cancer throughout your lifetime I just agree with that but it's the disconnect is what I'm trying to get at where is it keep moving the legislature needs to unify some of this stuff there was a hearing last year on anthracy this year is pollinated protection there have been bills submitted or proposed on glyphosate and they're all different they're all on their own track Rachel Carson noted in 1962 silo thinking is a problem for our mindset 1962 we were thinking in silos she saw it, it's in the book silent spring, page 23 and here we are in 2018 and we're still in our silos we've got a must out with a box I think I'm almost done I just want to go back to the point about cumulative effects you would never know if I didn't come in here and say I asked about glyphosate I asked about anthracy I didn't make it into the committee notes and I didn't make it into anything related to the bill why? Terry is here at the Department of Agriculture as their representative and he'll speak to you intelligently about all these chemicals but the point is it all needs to be wrapped together and there's many more questions beyond just the pollinators so my final point are there organizations already doing much of this groundwork yes on pollinator protection, habitat good stewardship, yes King Arthur Flower the city of South Burlington wants to manage 210 acres that drain directly into the lake they hired me, not that I'm here to self-serve and I've told them send out every kid on detention every prisoner, every person that needs something to do you send them out and we'll put them to work 210 acres that drain into the lake we'll carry no chemicals into the lake that's brilliant give them 20 grand recognize cities and towns and certified B corporations that are doing good work King Arthur Flower gets complimented all the time for their lovely kind of wild chaotic space which is great for pollinators and my job is to keep the wild parsec and the wild charcoal out which is hard but we use the native plants like Burdock to help us out so I just want to give recognition that people are doing great progress I already talked about Rachel Carson I made the point about buffer zones and it's complicated stuff I appreciate your work I guess at this point I would welcome your questions thanks again I just want to for your information let you know that earlier in the year submitting a bill my bill asked to ban pro-paraphos and dicamba we did discuss it here in the committee and the agency came forth and they agreed not to register pro-paraphos anymore so that the the substance is working its way down smaller all the time because they're not producing it they're not manufacturing it so that's going to end sooner rather than later in the state because of the cooperation we had from the agency of agriculture dicamba that I found out is used very little here in the state of Vermont mainly on golf courses of course we've grown no virtually no soybean here and I think you probably know it's the drift that's the problem that's the danger and it's an economic impact it doesn't have any physical impact on humans but the economic impact of filling a vineyard or stuff like that that I'm worried about that we've had some agreement with the golf course owners to be careful with that and to look for other chemicals that might work as well but the drift the drift is not controllable so I mainly wanted you to know that we are familiar with some of these chemicals I'm glad to say that we're seeing a long story there we could have a good discussion on that but they are also things we've given time we are I wouldn't say we're doing research we're not doing research what has been done and trying to read through it you know the the fact that Berkeley kicked out the main researcher there 20 years ago has a lot to do with our looking carefully and not taking too seriously his initial findings because he lied so of course that did a lot of damage to whatever conclusions we might draw I'll stop there because we are away over time but we are investing time and trying to find out as much as we can about these I don't doubt that I'm just trying to tie it all together so thank you for that economics is the driver to me not the science that dawned on me like 5 years ago it's all about economics I just glad to say getting beer because we're spraying the material all the hops and grains we're spraying it with glyphosate to dry it out not for weed control but just to accelerate the drying and then that gets into beer so this little things like that little steps trying to get preemptive and stop things from practices that make no sense when even getting into our state in the first place there is great work happening here and I'm just pushing hard because that's what I do thank you any other questions thank you thank you for coming out thanks sir appreciate it Terry Mike Chuck Ross at the extension service do some studies on this do some studies I love real world application good morning good morning shall I start right in I think I was supposed to say who I am so I'm Dr. Cairns Bradshaw University of Vermont special one of my title research assistant professor specialty crop production fruit and vegetables and I was chair of the pollinator I did chair that thanks Chuck recognized that task so as I said about a month ago when I testified in that house that was the fourth time that I've testified on some form of neonator pollinator bill and I hope that each next time will be the last one I don't think this will be the last one because I think this bill is not the last bill that's going to come out so John down some thoughts here and I was specifically going to stick to what the pollinator protection committee put out in our recommendations and how it relates to age 9 15 I'm going to try to stick to that framework so the bill that I saw which has changed fairly substantially from the 688 I think it was at the time a month ago is quite different and seems to it's obviously for political purposes things have been cut out you hope the best of the bill is going to carry through and that's what's going to pass I think the goals are laudable in the bill but I don't think they really get at the intent the core intent of the pollinator protection committee so the pollinator protection committee when we put forth our recommendations it was very iterative it was very open many of the people in this room have been there from day one and I think they would agree that we spent a lot of time taking this through the general goals and this was highlighted in the report were protect pollinators, number one focus on manage and unmanage pollinators wild bees kept bees that was unique in Vermont we were one of the few states that actually expanded our scope to look beyond just honey bees we were very clear that we wanted to focus on all of the stressors that are affecting pollinators partially one of those many being pesticides but habitat loss I'll probably go into a number of these climate change, introduced diseases coming from managed bees and there's so many different factors that we really wanted to highlight we highlighted as I said before we wanted to bring the best knowledge not one of us at that table is a pollinator specialist Lee Richardson is a pollinator specialist entomologist but even he recognized he needed to bring in the best information I think we did and we highlighted a few things out of there one is we found we looked at the research we identified gaps in the research and we highlighted that we need to do more and there was a really important component of that which I think is really gets the goal of this which is to develop some kind of mechanism to have somebody carry forth this work at extension or at the states or for somebody who's tasked not to be a corn specialist or an apple specialist but to be a pollinator specialist so that frames this so seems a little bit strange in terms of the three particular planks that were picked out of that they didn't really cover the overarching goal and in terms of the specifics that were being put forth in terms of changes that are proposed to happen don't seem to be the big either the low hanging fruit or the big guns that we wanted to approach so I wanted to focus on that a little bit it seems like as has happened when I first testified in the form of what this bill has become in I think it was 2010 it was a neonic bill we were looking just at neonic and neopesticides and now evolved into a more comprehensive pollinator protection bill and that's what we came off of in the committee and now we get back to it to the neonic which is important without question and it's a common theme there's something we say in my world I do a lot of science communication I'm now teaching the ag policy class I work in the conventional ag and organic ag with a foot firmly in both buckets there's I pay attention to a lot of different aspects I also grew up on a dairy farm premium mix in the last century the common theme that I would say all of the committee sort of felt or maybe a common thing that came up with me or I would say that the theme that came with me that changed my mind a little bit of thinking was the data that came out in that chamber I was here I think last week showing some of it I assume he showed some of his data with the the neonic residues from Pytotrains that was something that I think all of us in the room realized that there was acutely toxic amounts that were coming out of these drainage ditches so there was an obvious problem in that particular use of this material does that mean that all the work the pulmonary protection committee should focus on that drainage ditch no we should also focus on the drainage ditch and so looking at the first recommendation which is to offer non-neonic treated require that non-neonic treated seed be offered to farmers absolutely without pushing I think that's a low-hanging fruit if a farmer doesn't want to use these they can't and so we need to find a way to help them do that but that doesn't get anywhere close to teaching that farmer whether or not they need to use that how to use the tools to determine the need for that nor the tools that are needed to manage the surrounding habitat so it seems like there was kind of one piece that's a low-hanging fruit I think is laudable but it doesn't it's not the end goal the next piece was and I spoke to this last time when both the current secretary of ag and the former secretary of ag were both in the room and I said so this is the reference to the secretary of ag carrying out the assessment of treated seed and pollinators neither one of those individuals nor their staff and I give full credit to both of them they're both smart individuals has the expertise to do what this bill is asking them to do nor is this bill giving them the funding to do that which is to empower or require that they conduct some kind of assessment above and beyond what the professionals are doing and when I say professionals I mean people around the country who John Tooker, David Binder, Leif Richardson our own there are people at USDA at research institutions that are doing this work that we need to be paying attention to them so if we're going to actually make a legislative mechanism to ensure that expertise is coming in and we're adapting policy for that we need to look to the experts and we need to fund either bringing someone in Vermont funding someone in Vermont who can do that on a local basis to empower others to help us do that work and I think that the current and former securities that I would both say yeah we don't have that expertise to do that so again that's another piece that needs to be brought out if we're going to empower someone to do this work we need to fund someone to do this work and then finally this kind of taps off of that the last one the educational program that's proposed a lot of excellent that's something that we were strongly recommending within the committee but it was one part of a comprehensive pollinator protection plan which would be conducted by somebody who is science-based who lives and reads this and again a Vermont pollinator specialist I don't know what the funding mechanism and it all comes through how things get appropriated but my guess is my understanding from what's been proposed might look like it's not even close to the comprehensive education that's really being asked or expected of what it would take for farmers pesticide applicators community land managers to get the work done that they need to get done I guess that's my specific comment on that bill I'm open to talk about the committee in our focus in general again I respect that this bill had made it this far as far as it's made and it's great and some of the I think each of these three provisions with some tweaking would make sense to pass but really to really get at what we're getting at in these three more comprehensive and I would say that to be more comprehensive we really need to look at the funding mechanism to fund a professional in this state who can from a science-based perspective conduct real research and conduct real outreach programming and it was mentioned multiple times in the recommendations to fund a pollinator position at UVM extension I know that extensions get some funding difficulties the state's got difficulties funding states, agrily, projects but this has been identified year after year after year it's a pretty critical component of what we need to make this move forward What were some of the other recommendations for the pollinator protection committee that you think could be doable? Yeah, it was so I brought out the recommendations list so it's important that I think you know that most of the recommendations pass unanimously what we call it by consensus and a lot of them were changing language and focus within existing programs so a lot of discussion about ANR and to what extent we can work with NRCS and other programs to encourage pollinator habitat as one of the components when we manage state lands when we offer grants that's easy to do to include that language to empower people who give grants who give loans who manage lands to expressly state that this is an important thing so I think that's an easy thing to do that would have kind of a long-term trickle-down impact it wouldn't cost any money aside from changing it some of the other items that think of like some other items that I want to cover a lot of discussion about very specific educational requirements and it was more than this bill went into in terms of who we want to educate we need to educate SSI dealers SSI applicators, the people who train SSI applicators homeowners, consumers, land managers you're talking about golf course you're talking about apple, you're talking about multiple factors and there's a lot of different specific mechanisms or educational mechanisms we're talking about that would make sense but it's going to take more than a couple of sentences to cover another one that was not well I should say I'll stick to the consensus stuff in terms of we'll get to the UNIX one of the consensus material I think really the only consensus recommendation was some kind of moratorium on what was called ornamental uses of UNIX and that made with certain provisions that were made that allowed the greenhouse industry to screen their greenhouses and whatnot that we presented that and that made sense to the committee that the greenhouse guy agreed to that but nobody was calling for outright ban of them so if I'm going from consensus to general agreement the next level had general agreement and that I think still has strong agreement not just among the committee but among others that we stick to them is the classification of UNIX as class A material restricted use materials so I work in IPM I just morning was drafting the mail that I always send to my great growers start thinking about I make recommendations I even recommend UNIX at times I don't think anybody should be using pretty powerful pesticides without having some licensure in training so making UNIX or actually we suggested I think it was any materials that are classified as highly toxic to bees that produce materials is a low hanging fruit so would that go back to the conversation before about they call it ban of consumer use so class A would essentially ban for all kinds of purposes would ban consumer use I mean any consumer can go out and get a license and become educated and you hope that that process the whole intent of that process is to educate people about the appropriate use of them it also screens out the people who are just going to pick up something at home veto and ever re-collable anyway and not cross the threshold not even put the effort into it to take the exam and get it so I think that's a low hanging fruit that I was surprised that this bill didn't cover it seemed like a pretty simple one yeah I don't know we had Harvey over to explain this I think generally brought that up but I wouldn't think of that I mean the other real consensus material so that's the big one I mean when you come back in 2010 when this bill was one sentence the state of Vermont shall mandate use of the and it can make pesticides in the state that that goal was I think overreaching but it got to the heart of the matter which is we need to use things responsibly we really need to think about integrated pest management we need to use everything on cost but not just economic cost environmental cost farmer cost and the solution came to be overly simple so that was one of the suggestions was to class A the highly toxic to bees materials another one was and this bill included it offered farmers the chance to not use neo-nixie because if you plant corn or soybean you can't and then require that farmers have some sort of quantitative assessment of their fields before they use the material which is fairly this would be similar to RAPS issue so you can't use a phosphorous fertilizer unless you measure your soil and determine which phosphorous need we recommended that not on a consensus but I think on a strong what the term would have been it would have been a split opinion favorable but we can't do that unless we have somebody in the state who can help provide that information and teach growers how to do that Sid Bosworth is probably going to retire very soon, one of our agronomists Heather Darby is doing a million things and can't be tasked with this unless she's given funding to bring someone on to do this that would be the kind of role for either agronomist or a pollinator protection person I think that's really at the end of the day what we came forward with is this is a complex issue it needs to be based on science and we need to hire or bring in a scientist who can see this through one sentence and two sentences bills aren't going to get that not saying this is more involved in that that kind of makes your question I was reading this morning the John Erickson yeah he did a study on precise feeding right it seems like if you can get money to do that type of a study which I don't know who that's supposed to benefit right I see it like a stick in the eye type of study why we can't find money to do something like this pollinator protection so I read the press release on John's study I haven't read this if you say it came out this morning and be careful with studies I publish studies and sometimes they look at the not even the trees not the forest when you hand that to Digger he loves to throw dirt at stuff farmers what are they expected to do but throw dirt right that's why it's more important and I agree with what Mike was saying to just commission another study to get anything but to commission a person to look at the breadth of studies and then take those to someone that's what extension is about to farmers and say look this is the best science John Tucker is a classic one down in Penn State who would studies the use of neonics amongst many other things specifically on the agronomic crops and their effects on insects and other soil ecological parameters but it's very Pennsylvania specific but he's out there doing that and he's working with farmers and he's actually one of the people who sort of first raised the flag from within you know this is the agronomist guy he says once you thought we're digging their heels and saying let us keep doing what we're doing this doesn't make sense under this condition with this crop and we need more nuance to that and to actually rather than commission a study hire someone to evaluate the studies makes sense and so I'm not going to dig into the legislature's pockets to do this but it's going to take some money and some commitment to do it right is that a year long thing or? I'm talking about a permanent position absolutely if you've got a vegetable specialist you've got an agronomic specialist you've got an apple specialist you should have a pollination specialist well I know and that's what the committee recommended that's a legislation that needs proper attention so we got this bill from the house we haven't actually had a presentation on the on the recommendations from the committee from the committee so we need to do that minor on other issues we've had good cooperation from minor they generously share with us their results no cost and Kate is a good resource for us too right and she was on your committee she was I wonder if they would be helpful I think they could be I think that again this is the furthest I think it's the first time that this particular bill has crossed over in terms of actually taking it crossed over to create the committee in terms of a bill finally making it to an action stage so a lot of work has happened and we've had so much fun I had to put it on my faculty workload the number of hours that have been spent and I don't think that we're scared to come back across and transmit some of that information over now that it's on the senate side recognize that the recommendations were in a 67 page document the recommendations were I think the pages but there was a lot behind it I mean I'm open to the committee by statute dissolved you know it only existed until February 17th I think it was last year many of us have come back I don't think anybody's legislative are required to but I don't think anybody's really scared to if we need to come back for some more testimony I would be careful not to try to rehash the whole process I have a guy who claims to be the biggest beaker in the state in my district he claims that there's no problem there have been no losses and then the other thing I mean I could just make things the state but you don't have to respond but the other thing is you mentioned the results I can't remember if you said minor but it was coming out of the drainage pipes they found these neonicotoid chemicals in there did they come to you with that or did you just discover that? Nat used to work for the state for the agency back and he does water quality monitoring and that's some of the data that he had pulled out and so he was I don't know if he was invited or he stepped forward to protect the information was that the guy we heard from? yes, he was with the state so that wasn't minor he was with the state when he was doing that work he was an agency of ag chemist yeah so when we talk about bees there's a bee is not a bee is not a bee and that's one of the differences with the Vermont process compared to other states they have just looked at apismalifera honeybee and we are looking at we looked at a more broad pollinators in general which includes everything from a butterfly to a certain fly species so that's one thing to note and the impacts that are being seen are being seen very differently on different certain wild pollinators the populations are increasing many of them are decreasing honeybees I know Mike and I know his take on things and I agree with a lot of his take on things it's much more broad than just neonics and whether honeybees are being exposed to them and there's a lot more involved with honeybees especially habitats and how those bees are managed so that they're passing viruses back and forth they the Varrova Mike is number one I would say in terms of stressors on them so I wouldn't say that actions should be taken solely based upon honeybees I also wouldn't say actions should immediately be taken in a hammer be brought down because we've measured something in a ditch but I was surprised by the levels of neonics we're talking parts per million high parts per billion but they were biologically active on this and made me think that we need as I say I personally low neonics and tanks at times recommend to farmers how to use them in apple and grape situations I don't do anything with corn but there's certain aspects that when I saw that data made me think to get back at the core of what I do with the integrated pest management you can't rely on that jug to be of whatever material is to be the first defense and when we have treated seed that is the only seed that's available farmers don't even have a chance to use another option at the same time on the flip side we are making great headway in what we call conservation agriculture particularly with the use of no-till crops no-till cropping systems and that I think moves the needle on sustainability in farms far greater than anything we do to manage pests and we know that when you plant corn, soy, whatever it is into a killed sod system your likelihood of having problems with some of the pests that you need that neonics are used for is higher so we've got these competing interests do we shift to conservation and no-till agriculture and have more pests that neonics can help to manage or we keep plowing that's a very good way to get rid of those pests but we certainly don't want to just sit there and plow, we recognize that that's a major issue other questions for your chair well I certainly appreciate you coming and giving us your time but we got we got a lot to handle you've got work to do that's right is Judy here yes sir Judy's up next good morning thank you Mr. Chairman and members of the committee I'm Judy Villiers I'm a volunteer with the Vermont Chapter the Sierra Club and also co-chair of the National Sierra Club pollinator so let me start by saying that age 9 15 the reincarnation of age 688 is a shell of the original pollinator protection bill and in our view needs to be significantly strengthened in order to truly begin to protect pollinators and we believe that restricting the use of neonicotinoid pesticides or neonics is a good place to start as you know the 2016 legislature created and appointed the pollinator protection committee to evaluate the causes and occurrences of pollinator populations in the state and to recommend measures the state can adopt to conserve and protect pollinator populations that's what the bill said one specific charge was to evaluate best management practices for application of neonicotinoid pesticides in a manner that avoids harm to pollinators so that was a specific charge that they had they submitted their report that you've heard about and in 2017 last year and 9 are almost a third of the recommendations related to extremely toxic and widely used neonic pesticides so first I'd like to talk a little bit about the scope of the problem and then go into what other jurisdictions have done and then talk a little bit about what we think we're not going to do there's a global concern about the use of neonics I've got a graph here that shows the number of studies that have been done on neonics and you can see it's gone up significantly well that's 2005 right there and that's about when neonics started being widespread use so and the top number is 350 so and these are different studies on soil on residues on bees nationwide yes so anyway there are a lot of studies because of the concern about the environmental impacts so in 2015 30 scientists from around the world looked at 1100 studies and collaborated to produce this report the worldwide integrated assessment on the impact of systemic pesticides on biodiversity and ecosystems and their conclusion was overall a compelling body of evidence has accumulated that clearly demonstrates the wide scale use of these persistent water soluble chemicals is having widespread chronic impacts on global biodiversity and is likely to be having major negative effects on ecosystem services such as pollination there is an urgent need to reduce the use of these chemicals last fall they updated their report because there are a bunch of new studies and they concluded that their original conclusions were verified by existing studies and even strengthened existing studies the scientific and academic community I don't want to show up on the test who commissioned those studies these were independent scientists about 30 scientists from around the world who came together and with various expertise and put together these reports based on studies that research university was cutting at I don't possibly some of them are from research universities I know Dave Goulson from Sussex in England is a bubble bee specialist he has a section in these reports so they were all had expertise on these I can certainly provide you links to these reports do you want to look at them? the one that the second one you showed us that confirms the first one would be probably the most important one is there a summary to those? there are executive summaries I can provide those as well the second one actually goes into more you got to hand out at your previous meeting about the fact that treated seeds aren't necessarily that effective and that was based on this second report because a big section of this is alternatives to using neonix so the scientific and academic community in Vermont is aware of the serious problems with neonix 44 individuals signed onto a letter supporting H688 the House Bill urging members of the House to support restricting the use of neonix they represent fields of agroecology agronomy, biology chemistry, ecology ecotoxicology, entomology and sustainable sciences among others the Xerxes Society which was founded 47 years ago and I feel is the preeminent NGO working to protect beneficial insects puts out reports based on science and the sign of their credibility is they often partner with federal agencies such as the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Transportation to develop management guidelines to protect invertebrates and their latest report is how neonicotinoids can kill bees the science behind the role these insecticides play in harming bees they look at existing studies on neonix and they have a list of clearly documented facts from the studies inferences from the studies and knowledge gaps and so in the House they were questioning whether neonix are really bad for bees so I thought I wanted to present you some of the facts that the Xerxes Society found in the studies that they looked at and there are 23 clearly documented facts including neonix annoyed residues found in pollen and nectar are consumed by flower visiting insects such as bees residue concentrations can reach levels that cause sublethal effects through a variety of application methods including use of coated seed and in some situations can reach lethal levels neonix can persist in soil for months or years after single application residues have been found in woody plants up to 6 years after application untreated plants have been found to absorb the residues of some neonix that persisted in the soil from the previous year neonix applied to crops even as seed coatings can contaminate adjacent vegetation including the attractive wildflowers that's a problem with buffer zones if you're using neonix that can contaminate adjacent vegetation products approved for home and garden use may be applied to plants at rates substantially higher than the maximum label rate approved for agricultural crops direct contact from foliar applications of the most toxic neonix has caused bee kills additionally foliar residues on plant services may remain lethal to bees for several days and bee kills have been caused by legal applications to neonix to linden and basswood trees and some of the applications occurred weeks to months prior to when the bees visited the trees honey bees exposed to sublethal levels can experience problems with flight and navigation reduced taste sensitivity slower learning all of which can impact foraging ability in high productivity obviously neonix are highly toxic to bumble bees exposure to sublethal amounts can significantly reduce queen production tens of millions of acres of neonix are planted annually in the US and Canada and when applied systemically have residual activities in plants for months or years and they're persistent in soil for months or years and the water issue they can move into water have been found in a range of water bodies where they persist they've been found in river streams wetlands, groundwater, puddles and also been detected in irrigation water so the conclusions of the Xerxes Society from looking at these studies is that existing research demonstrates how many of the current uses can cause lethal and sublethal effects on pollinators and other beneficial insects and applications should be limited until we have expanded data on how they can how the plant can be treated and provide pest protection without exposing beneficial insects to lethal levels unfortunately neonix are used in Vermont just as they are everywhere else the agency estimates about 8,300 pounds are applied through treated corn seeds it's an estimate because they don't require reporting of the use of treated seed another 15,000 pounds were used by commercial applicators on lawns, golf courses and ornamental trees and shrubs in 2016 and that's up from 8,600 pounds in 2013 and no one knows how many pounds the homeowner supplied I have an example of a product, a homeowner product for rose and flower care it's made by bear, it says systemic so that's a tip off that it's got a neonicotinoid in it it's got imidacloprid in it so what does that mean, systemic? it means it gets in the entire plant the plant absorb it and it's everywhere leaves, blossoms yes, pollen, nectar even guttation fluid which is sometimes you see little drops of water on leaves gets in there out of California bear, they're based in in Europe so there's five grams of imidacloprid in that container five grams and you'd have to read it to know it's toxic there's no evidence that it would be toxic to bees but in the container those five grams are about a teaspoon is enough to kill 1.25 billion bees or 275 tons of bees and that's because the units are so very toxic can I peel this back? sure if you want to I know there was anything back there oh, it's in Spanish I mean I still can't see where it's from produced by bear at Bear East post-office drugs Triangle Park, North Carolina and a lot of bees still near and those are granules I haven't opened it but you just put them around the plant you know, it doesn't say what's actually in oh, yeah it does active ingredients imidacloprid I'm sorry, it won't necessarily say what's in there because it's not made for internal use I'll mine a little loophole imidaclopricid imidacloprid it's one of the three main neonics Mr. Bruxel it's the one typically in homeowner products so that is a neonic somewhere I'd like to list of all those things that are classified as neonics is glyphosate natusine and that stuff they're not those are herbicides not insecticides okay, so right, so you could go to the hardware store and get those products and typically homeowners wouldn't know that that would be toxic to bees my understanding is maybe some of the products have a warning on them but this one doesn't and possibly only the foliar products I don't know how that works but the ones I looked at in my harvest store did not have bee warnings on them did you just buy that how much did you ask for the cost no, it was about a year ago maybe ten dollars we can check I hated to buy it and give them money but for any example so that was ten dollars that's the whole year the whole season I can't say for certain that's how much it was and I didn't look at the application rates but it says it's good for three weeks or something you didn't buy that I'm not going to use that that's why I have it sealed so nothing gets out of accident so I have a pollinator here so the last part of my testimony is about action in other jurisdictions and then what I think we could do here so far Vermont hasn't taken any action to restrict the use of these killing chemicals but other jurisdictions have seen the light in 2013 the European Union banned the use of neonics on bee attractive plants their scientific body has just released a new report confirming the dangers of neonics and it's expected that the 2013 ban will be extended and possibly expanded Ontario now prohibits the use of neonic coated seeds unless the pest problem can be verified and Quebec is following suit with that policy Ontario also bans the use of all cosmetic pesticides 120 different chemicals which includes the three main neonics coteanidin, emidoclopridin, thymothoxam I lived in Ontario for 10 years and there was no apparent outcry from consumers when these products were banned I think most consumers probably won't even know what they're supposed to be a container like that which the picture on the front tells me it's for rose bushes and ornamental plants so that's what that sand would affect what am I going to do about the asian beetles they're awful they there may be other products that work on those but pollinators are pretty important so I would argue that there are other options out there that these could be phased out without in 2014 the US Fish and Wildlife Service decided to phase out the use of neonic pesticides on national wildlife refuge lands because of the concern they make whole plants including the nectar and pollen toxic in 2016 Maryland and Connecticut banned retail sale of products containing neonics we heard that earlier here in Vermont there's been no such action between 2010 and 2017 there have been five bills introduced in the legislature to restrict the use of neonics but none have passed this year age 688 was introduced and it got 40 cosponsors in the house the agency of agriculture has conducted tests on honeybee pollen and tested soil and water samples and has found neonics in each of them and by the way 70% of wild bees live in the soil so if soil is contaminated with neonics that means they're getting a really good dose of very toxic chemical legislation has been passed to evaluate neonics to give authority to regulate treated seeds and to prepare reporting pollinator protection but none of these has resulted in reduced use of neonics in fact the use has almost doubled on ornamental plants as I mentioned above so we hope that the pollinator protection committee recommendations can spur some action in Vermont again many of their recommendations involve neonics, pesticides and no other issue received this kind of attention in terms of number of recommendations the PPC recommended banning the use of neonics on ornamental plants unanimously by vote of dying to zero that means even the representative of the agency of agriculture supported it because they had a representative on that committee the PPC voted 8-0 with one abstention that all pesticides that are highly toxic to bees should only be available to trained farmers and that's the restricted use class A so you have to you couldn't just buy it off the shelf the Xerxes Society does have specific recommendations for policies that state local governments can adopt to better protect pollinators from the use of neonics and those recommendations include halt the use of neonic products by backyard gardeners and other unlicensed applicators and halt aesthetic only uses of pesticides they suggest that the high residues levels in ornamental plants may pose more blatant risk than agricultural use because as you heard those you can apply them at higher levels and the plants remain toxic for months or even years in some cases they have an example of a road that's toxic for eight months or something so we think the recommendations of the PPC are consistent with the advice from Xerxes and we don't see the need for more surveys or public service announcements that may or may not affect behavior we think we need some definitive action to protect pollinators so we would urge you to strengthen the legislation by adding provisions that the legislatively appointed PPC came up with to prohibit the non-essential and non-agricultural use of neonics Did you sit through the deliberations in the house? I did and do you have any idea why they didn't offer the bayon or home use or was that discussed? The only discussion I heard was and I wasn't around when they put together 915 I missed that meeting but on the discussion of H688 there was some discussion about a ban people could go over state lines and buy it somewhere else but I don't think the bill builds and I don't think people are even aware of what's in there so I don't think they have any reason to go across state lines to get the products I just had a couple of thoughts even if we were to follow the other two states example and make it so that folks couldn't retail that product there are truckloads and flatbeds coming in all the time in the Home Depot situation wouldn't we still have a problem? That's my first question and secondly are you aware of any other states that have made that sort of not happen I don't know how you would do that actually if you said Home Depot we're not going to take anymore of the treated flowering plants that come into the state and I'm not necessarily just kind of general question no I'm not sure how that would be accomplished but banning the retail sale of off-the-shelf products is pretty simple because you just make it a restricted use and they can't put them out on the shelves I understood but it wouldn't necessarily we wouldn't go from 100 to zero because there would still be stuff coming in right? if they're bringing in plants that have been treated with neonics this is true and as well as the treated seeds which do are there manufacturers that don't treat seeds I mean are they available? they are I looked online and found a place that had a list of about can't remember maybe 30 different varieties of soy and corn seed and specifically listed which ones had insecticides and which ones didn't so you can't get them without insecticide I think there were about a dozen different varieties of corn and soy that you could get without the insecticide included are the prices comparable? well they're big companies like Bear and Monsanto so I'm assuming they would be and I've also and Kerry has said but I've also seen that adding neonics costs six to twelve dollars so additional so I think the untreated seeds could be the seeds without neonics could be available pretty easily but let me just say in Ontario they mandated that the untreated seeds be available when they said you had to show that you needed to use neonics by digging a hole and putting some pieces of potato on the ground and then in the fall and then looking to see if there were wireworms at a certain level then that verified you needed to use neonics but they also mandated that seed dealers had to first of all advertise that the seeds were coated that some of the seeds were coated so the farmers knew that and they also had to advertise that they had untreated seed available for people to buy it just says treated seeds have to be available which means the dealer has to have the ability to call up and order some so I would say that's not enough public notice that the seeds are available I would like to see more public notice so all they need is a bag one bag of seed to have some available yeah, Ontario specified but I'm not sure I'm not sure to check on that I guess they go by the count a thousand seeds per bag I think the bags are sold by the counters other questions yes you kind of documented the letter signed by 40 people who supported the restriction of the access to the neonic charge but the one I read the bill I don't really see the bill as restricted access to the neonic charge that was that was related to the original bill, the house bill that letter that letter spoke to the house bill but it just shows that there are people in the scientific and academic community that see this as a problem we need to have some research yes so I can provide for some reason the bill got switched to 9.15 to you know from 6.88 it was the committee bill it was a committee bill so they didn't do anything with 6.88 no 9.15 is the committee right thank you thank you based on what I saw heard in house committee of ag when they were considering this the reason they went to a committee bill was because they were facing the crossover deadline and 8.688 was not going to make it because it was a more comprehensive bill they were going to be able to take the testimony and get it through the calendar so they made it into a committee bill and this was what the committee upstairs was willing to pass in the time that they had but I think there was a sense that at least by moving it along through the process and giving your committee an opportunity to spend some time with it that there might be the chance that this action is here so you guys are all betting on us betting on the whole legislature so we all got to go around it at some point you have a mind if it's helpful to the senator in common words question people do people do run across the river and shop at the big stores we don't need to name them they come back so I guess I'm curious to know I just checked with guys farming yard last week because I always say good things about them they got their 2 or 3 they're redoing they're redoing a new layout guys farming yard refuses to carry for philosophical reasons they refuse to carry round up ready grass seed and I say good things about it because I say that's the last thing we need is everybody around Lake Champlain plant your lawn with round up ready because one of the atoms in the molecule is phosphorus so when I talk about economics over science or marketing over science and even over legislation it's like to make that point of you've got to stand for something and I just salute them and I think gardeners is also I didn't visit them yet so there's leverage with the guys farming yard and the gardeners so my question is when you figure out the wording where people could just go across the river or would you ban the use of because you can control it at the transfer station when somebody brings that in it's like hey no one's going to bust them on the spot it also seems to me if you have a problem and you garden with some kind of pest there's other products you can buy you know I could say gee I want to buy some of the oedicatoids that we've got in New Hampshire to do it you go to Agway and you're going to say what can you do for my Asian beetles the product that's not the oedicatoids it's one thing to say you're going to go buy some big item in New Hampshire to avoid something but I don't think I don't see people go across same borders to buy that stuff because they're not going to know it exists it's not even going to know it's there so I would go over there they're going to go on their local they're going to ask what to do about the pest and the person's going to give them something to do to do it with just to further clarification I think there are two issues here one is the direct application of the pesticide the other is people buying plants, ornamental plants for the most part that have already been treated with neonics so the whole plant itself is toxic and that's the part where I think there was discussion that if Vermont said we're not going to allow the sale of those treated plants anymore that people would go across the border to the other home depot or whatever to buy their ornamental plants which was part of the reason that Carrie Jigar testified to the fact that the agency is committed to this public service educational program because a lot of people don't understand the nature of these plants they just know they want this particular plant in fact the irony is that people are buying flowering plants that they think are going to attract butterflies and bees and stuff but they're actually buying the ones that are treated with neonics which in fact represented a toxic thing in the garden so there is a lot of lack of knowledge out there but it is two issues in terms of restricting the use of the application of the pesticide versus restricting the availability of these plants that are already toxic there are alternatives obviously Carrie testified to the fact that they are disinclined to go for bans the agency is disinclined to go for bans because they feel that just pushes people toward other products and that the marketplace the agrochemical marketplace will come up with something else that can be used and I just wanted to answer your question Senator Braynigan Bayer is a global corporation their home turf is Germany they have a U.S. corporate headquarters in New Jersey and 56 locations around the United States where they make things operate things so that must be everywhere the address on there was North Carolina right well they have 56 locations in the U.S. where they are making things but their corporate offices are in Jersey but their global headquarters are in Germany German Corporation I've spent the time just reading the label and the suggestions on the label and if I'm not mistaken didn't we here with your testimony and with other testimonies that we're trying to ultimately have the concern for the bees as an example here that it is the insecticides and pesticides and that kind of thing which is directly or indirectly killing them our intention was to grow a nice rose but not mess with the bees but through various ways that's happened I wish and I'm not being funny now I wish I was able to talk to my mommy for just a little bit she's now deceased but all I can think of is a trellis about the size of this wall and about the height of this wall during growing season of her roses and I don't remember any bare advanced or anybody else's containers there's a way and if there was some kind of way for us to get it back do you remember a 30 minute jar of kerosene bugs oh the bugs what's her name I don't you had to have healthy plants I don't remember that and again not trying to be funny but she was one who believed in talking to her plants and you could see a difference if she brought somebody's plant home and how it started to thrive versus whatever she got the plant from back she's gone you can take something out get them rejuvenated well she could follow business she just she liked it thank you Judy we gotta get Maddie she's got two bills stuff to say yeah my name is Maddie Hechner and I am a policy advisor for NOFA Vermont which again is the more East Organic Farming Association of Vermont I actually would love to just pick up on your point Senator Brooks that as an organization that represents and works with organic farmers I think that's one of the key things that we think about in terms of this bill is that there is another way there has always been another way there are 620 as of the end of 2017 certified organic farms in the state of Vermont who do not use neonicotinoids in any form whether topical applications or treated seeds so I think as an organization we understand and appreciate that there is a variety of farming practices and methods on farms in the state we are never the ones espousing that all farms in the state should switch to organic as much as some people might assume that's our position but we do often stress in these kinds of discussions and we stress the same thing with water quality and soil health and it's especially true in the case of pollinator protection but there are lessons in organic agriculture that can be widely applied to other farms in the state as I said these farms have found a way to get by and to be successful producers without the use of these chemicals so as I said we know it can be done the pests targeted by neonics I think others have probably testified to this fact they are not widely and consistently present in Vermont as Judy mentioned there are ways of testing soil to actually affirm the presence of the pests that neonics are there to target so I think a more targeted approach is definitely appropriate in terms of these chemicals and I will echo what a lot of folks have said this morning that the current bill as it's currently written is not enough it is a shell of the former version H688 and I think it's really important and I know you all understand this is a serious and important issue that we need to be actively protecting pollinators and not just trying to slightly reduce our harm year after year and I think as it's written this bill is really barely going to reduce harm I think we need to definitely take a more active approach as I mentioned I know that you understand the seriousness of this issue and I think it's really important to remember that protecting pollinators is not just the sake of beekeepers or fruit farmers or to give us the warm and fuzzy feelings it's really a critical ecosystem service that serves everyone in our state and the just in terms of economic benefit the amount that the state drives from pollinator services dwarfs any amount that the agency of agriculture receives in pesticide registration fees it's really a critical service that we need to protect so in terms of specific recommendations I have will echo a lot of also what's been said and I think what's said in the house side to my understanding I think that there are specific aspects from 688 that should be put back into this version of the bill and those include registering the amniotic itinoids as class A restricted use pesticides that should only be available to farmers and licensed professionals that doesn't feel like I need to harp any more than has been stated already that these chemicals don't need to be in the hands of licensed professionals homeowners are using these at much greater application rates and without instruction or training which is really dangerous as compared to farmers and licensed applicators I think also we definitely support the recommendation or the requirement that folks selling treated seeds also offer untreated seeds and this is an area again where there's a lesson in organic organic farmers are not allowed to source seeds coated with neonic itinoids on their farms and again there's 620 producers in the state who are able to buy seeds that are not treated in organic farmers there's kind of there are some specific requirements where they are required to do at least a certain amount of searching to find certified organic seed which is not necessarily always available so in some cases certified organic farmers are forced to use conventional seed but they are not able to use seeds treated with neonic itinoids so again it's important to remember that these untreated seeds are available at least to some extent already and I definitely think that they should be more widely available and again I think as other folks have stated along with the availability of those untreated seeds needs to be this educational campaign that H915 does begin to get at and I also think that we would support Ontario's approach as Judy mentioned that the sellers of the seeds have to make it clear which seeds are treated make it clear that there are untreated seeds available and that there be specific thresholds for the amount of untreated seeds that they're selling so that it's not just a service to that idea I also had supported in my previous testimony on H688 on the house side Terry's suggestion that there be a permanent position for a pollinator specialist in the state I think that's a really important approach and that's kind of an active step that the state can take in not only voicing and support for this issue but you know writing it in in a more permanent fashion so that we are being active on this issue year after year going forward and not just continuing to study the issue without a significant result I think that's it I didn't have a lot of additional specific recommendations beyond what's already been said but I'm happy to answer any questions Carol do you know if we ever had this position before of the pollinator person in the last 10 years we've cut a lot of positions out of the agency they don't like so now not Terry you know he looks active he's got anyone over there that's capable or if he asked to have him in person I don't even know if he works long or if he's got a crew yeah my feeling is that there I don't know that there would be the capacity within the existing agency staff to really focus on this issue in the way that it needs I know that Cary focuses on agricultural chemicals but this and I think Cary does know a lot about this issue and focuses somewhat on it but I think this position needs to take a different approach and I think we really do need to go beyond just assessing chemical use on this issue too I mean I know that as Terry mentioned a lot of the and as Judy mentioned a lot of the pollinator protection committee's recommendations were tied to chemical use but the only thing that we should be doing and I think having a pollinator protection specialist position would allow a person that can sort of look at that issue from a higher level and approach it from a lot of different angles including education and outreach and also making recommendations on chemical use did you say you have 600 different points 620 as of the end of 2017 sort of ever any producers and they're getting by okay yeah and about 20% of the state's Cary farmers are organic also and they're not utilizing these chemicals also I'm a home gardener and I was seeing the tip that we've heard about agricultural use is mostly corn and soybean and so do you have any idea what the difference per acre of corn near folks harvest a year I don't know but I could certainly get it for you it would be good to see I mean if there isn't much of a difference between treated seeds and non-treated seeds you know why would we use treated seeds especially in such a broad based kind of prophylactic form you know I think right now since there aren't other options for producers that's what's being widely used and of course that makes sense that that's what's happening right now because there aren't other options but I think education and just the availability of untreated seeds could go a really long way and I also think that's still going to be just a first step where everyone might not switch over right away obviously farmers are used to purchasing what they're used to purchasing it might take a while for folks to switch over but I think you know what we find a lot in kind of shifting farmers practices is that once even a small group of people kind of takes that step farmers really learn from each other and if folks are able to be successful using untreated seeds word will spread that that's a viable option On that point in Ontario after this went into effect where they had to dealers had to carry untreated seeds the first year they found that 24% fewer acres were planted with treated seed in the first year so that once the treated seed was made available they weren't doing enforcement people farmers were buying and it really reduced the acres right away I was thinking if I mean I don't know where we're going to call this but you gave it like a four year or five year phase in to get people used to having to order untreated seeds and the other question of course that I have to ask is you buy untreated seed they're going to buy products and go home and mix it in a wash tub or something mix this corn with these chemicals and dump it in their planer and go plant we got to get that figured out too because that might be worse then the treated seeds our first or second witness said that now they're putting some kind of a coating on the seed so that these additives will stick better so you don't get the dust and the air you know but this is you know it's not an easy problem to solve you know we got to tackle it well I don't think I think especially in terms of agricultural uses it's a little bit of a secret time and it's a more complicated issue in terms of homeowner use to me that doesn't really seem very complicated it just seems crazy that people without any training are able to use these chemicals and I agree with what's been said that I don't think folks will even miss them once they're not available and that just getting them out of the hands of homeowners will reduce the issue significantly that's fairly common there's a lot of things that are class A that consumers can use right, yeah I believe so and you have to talk to Carrie or someone with more knowledge of that list but I'm sure there are other things that are restricted in that way and this seems like it definitely fits in that category to me and the pollinator protection committee felt the same way yeah I just have to tell you that a person that doesn't grow much of anything grow grass yeah I do grow grass and I've heard you complain about that but I would go to without mentioning any particular big box store I'd go there because my wife liked to have stuff that looked good hanging on the porch but it never even dawned on me that there would be anything in there I mean there were little things that I thought would make miracle grow or something and so I think you're right and others have testified that way that I think 90% of the consumers have no clue that these are in there they buy them and they hang them up and if they look good that's all that we wanted anyway yeah but you have to bring home what you're told to bring home well yeah I got that part really well understood Senator Brooks made that Senator Brooks made the point you gotta go out and tend to your roses and actually put the time in rather than just buy it and hang it done correct? it's about putting in the time and also I think supporting local nurseries and I know there are some folks up where I live in the oil county who run pollinator nurseries who specifically are kind of small local businesses that are on an organic farm for example who also have a pollinator nursery and they're not using these chemicals so some of that could be improved by just more education but I think we need to go beyond that and I think in a hard way but I'm oing that's in Wolcott yes Wolcott they're in the oil and they're an organic seed producer so they don't sell nursery plants but they sell organic seeds yeah and they're becoming pretty large you know national forests in terms of organic seeds also non switch gears if you're already in ready do you have copies of 903 I brought one I brought one this is in regards to the Vermont environmental stewardship okay so on this bill on age 903 I'll start with sort of an overarching overarching comments one is that my feeling overall on the issue of you know soil health and regenerative agriculture is that we're sort of circling a lot of different ideas on how to approach this issue and how to really improve our you know carbon sequestration and our soil health and our water quality in the state but I don't know that we've kind of hit the nail on the head yet with the fact approach that we should be using and I personally also have been sort of in a learning process and we I know have been in a learning process trying to learn from different states and different initiatives the approaches that people are taking that have been effective I feel like this bill is a good start I think the best thing about this bill and about the environmental stewardship program is that it could make a lot of good progress on providing baseline data in terms of some of these metrics that the program includes and I think that should be a key aspect of any bill that we pass in terms of working toward regenerative agriculture I think starting with certain measurements to provide baseline data is really important so that we know where we are now and we know we can see progress based on you know whatever approach that we do decide to implement and I think last week Peter Donovan came in and testified or at least was on the schedule to and I think he's someone that has done a lot of work on gathering baseline data and would be a great person to get input from if you haven't already in terms of what those metrics should be so in terms of environmental stewardship program that this bill would put into law I think again that it makes good progress on developing that baseline data I think that I really appreciate that it's inclusive and that it would include a variety of farm scales and type and geography as I testified on the house side regarding the previous regenerative eye bill I think it was H661 we don't think that the states approach should be limited to only targeting one particular type of farm even though you know we obviously support organic practices we don't we do think the states approach should be broader and more inclusive and kind of bring everyone along so that's definitely something that we appreciate about this program some questions that I have about the environmental stewardship program it's unclear to me whether it will facilitate you know real direct financial support both for farmers who are already implementing these practices or what exactly the level and the nature of support is going to be for farmers that need to implement conservation practices my second question is and this isn't in the bill itself but it's in a document that describes the VESP program on the agency's website it lists and this may be a question for Ryan Patch it lists other incentives beyond just financial assistance through NRCS which include something called CEAP and a BNP challenge and I would love to get more information on what the exact incentives are again that this program would offer to farmers because I think that's a really key part of what could make this effective or not effective and my last question I guess in terms of that is whether the state has considered paying farmers directly for ecosystem services that they're providing that's something that we often hear from farmers and I'm sure you've had conversations about this that you know farmers a lot of farmers are already doing a lot of providing ecosystem services they don't even get a thank you well they did after our winter conference this year actually we had people write love notes to farmers thanking them for their work again you ought to send those to the digger we should actually I think that's a good idea they do something positive for us we know that and we really do understand that farmers are struggling in crisis and that they are feeling really bad right now so actually that kind of brings me to my first concern about the BESP program in reading through the program and its details of how it would be implemented it seems to me like it would really adds pretty substantial paperwork and burdens around inspection without maybe providing sufficient incentives especially during this time when farmers are in crisis for all kinds of different reasons and while farmers are really struggling to meet new regulatory requirements I think this this program as much as I think it's intended to be and it is voluntary and it's intended to be incentive based but it reads a lot more like a new regulation to me than it does a really strong incentive based program I'm also one of the concerns around this program and other efforts to incorporate regenerative ag across the state is the potential to see even more increases in herbicide use with wide scale transition to conventional no-till agriculture obviously tillage is a huge problem in organic farmers till maybe more than anyone so that's something that there's been a lot of increasing research on on organic farms in recent years is how do organic farmers till less and since organic farmers are not able to use chemicals like life-sake to kill their cover crops there's a lot of research and I think really productive progress being made on organic no-till methods that use mechanical means of killing off that cover crop and I wanted to recommend Gabe Brown as kind of an expert in that area who may be able to provide some insight Who is he? Where is he? Gabe Brown? Yeah, Gabe Brown he's been kind of on a speaking circuit around a lot of the different NOFAs and organic farming conferences educating folks about no-till, organic no-till practices so I can find more information about him if that's helpful and then I guess in terms of specific suggestions related to those concerns I think it would be interesting to explore what other direct kind of financial incentives can be provided to farmers to kind of get them started on this on this path I think a pilot is a good approach I think that starting small makes sense in kind of seeing what the outcomes are with these 10 or 12 farmers in the first year would be good but I do think more financial incentive or other types of incentives might be needed to really get farmers on board and then again like I said about the pollinator issue farmers learn from each other so I think if we can begin to the state can really invest directly in incentivizing farmers to move toward these practices which often happens in organic agriculture once a farmer transitions they really see oh this actually is an economic benefit to my farm to transition to organic not only because of the higher market value they can get for their crops but because certain practices like cover cropping and crop rotation actually save them money on inputs and it increases the health of their soil over time which is a really critical investment to make in their farm so again I think starting with more direct financial incentives would be great because I think farmers will then see those economic benefits for themselves and they'll learn from each other why these practices are beneficial without the state having to continuously pay farmers necessarily to do these things so again one of my recommendations would be to explore and invest in organic no-till practices to avoid increased water pollution from herbicides which has been a documented result actually of the uptick in conventional no-till practices we've seen increases in herbicide use following that that switch which is tough we do want to see less tillage but then there is kind of that untitled consequence of increased herbicide use so I think we should be considering that lastly in terms of suggestions the regenerative farming definition used in the bill actually in the VEF program includes increases biodiversity and ecosystem health and resiliency and I think that it's important also and this really details in well again with the pollinator protection issue how can the state assist farmers to invest in biodiversity in addition to soil health crop rotations and crop diversity on farms should be considered as part of this effort I think just the basic rotation from corn to soybeans and back again may not really be enough to be called regenerative agriculture even if we are reducing tillage and making improvements in other ways I think more diversity both in cropping and in terms of pollinators and other habitat that's being provided on farms those things really need to be considered if we have a true commitment to regenerative agriculture or regenerative practices and then in terms of kind of going back to just sort of four year information NOFA and several other groups in Vermont that are participating in a healthy soils policy incubator project right now that was started by the California climate action network and the goal of that project throughout this year is to explore and really create a community where state leaders or folks working on healthy soils policy can learn from each other and share experiences in terms of what's been done in their states what's been successful what has not been successful and there actually are several of those similar initiatives going on right now where states are really working hard to share amongst themselves what's been working to help inform healthy soils policy across the country because there are a lot of folks working on this nationwide right now can you give us some contact information for the CalCAN here in Vermont for what those state or those nationwide networks are yeah absolutely and that is all I have I'm happy to take any questions do you see the question that sounds like you got to rehash what you just said and that's not what I mean generation programs are farming can't fly to any farms would you agree with that statement I think we would think of it as sort of a we tend to think of farming practices as kind of a spectrum and I think our goal at NOFA has always been not to be kind of strictly team organic and only supporting organic but to support farmers moving along that spectrum sort of to support organic practices and in some cases even beyond what is specifically required within the organic standards because there is it's possible to go beyond that so I think it's possible for any farm to move in a regenerative direction but I don't think there is a very clearly defined you know set of practices or outcomes that are consistently defined as regenerative I think there's a lot of work that needs to be done actually around clarifying that maybe I could turn the question around a little bit are there any farms that you could not go to a regenerative farming method I think there are a lot of farms that I would not call regenerative as they are being operated now I think for some farms again it really depends on how you're becoming regenerative a lot of people you know some people include farmer and farm worker justice issues in the definition of regenerative in addition to you know soil carbon sequestration and more issues focused around soil health I think the most common definition of regenerative agriculture does circle really closely around this issue of soil health and building topsoil year over year as opposed to losing topsoil which is what a lot of our conventional agricultural practices do right now I think that's the most common way that farms can be viewed as regenerative is really increasing their topsoil and building their soil health and I'm not trying to put you in any category or so consequently using your definition that you just mentioned a few moments ago dealing with soil and the health we have here five farmers all having what you would say are five different farms in the sense of what they produce how they produce it there's nothing to stop them from going to a regenerative process if they aren't at the moment there's nothing to stop them from working toward that again I think it's a spectrum and I think there should be an entry point for any farm from where it is now to become more regenerative by telling less or by putting in pollinator strips or buffer zones again I think it would be hard for me to point to any one farm and say that farm is regenerative because by whose definition is it regenerative there's a lot of farms who are further along on that spectrum in Vermont than others but I think there should be an opportunity for any farm to enter that world and move toward those types of practices I'm not trying to dodge your question I just sincerely don't feel there is one standard well until I become emperor there's only one should we get there we're all going to enter off to start working on drafting that now we took the main thing down Monday of the dog we're going to put him back we're going to get that you're going to be the emperor of agriculture here in Vermont right on the dog that's another permanent position we need and for a thing and what I say goes with that anything else Maddie? no not for me any other questions I was always supposed to listen to her thank you very much thank you very much I appreciate it thanks a lot every day for coming this morning so I guess we'll call it in the morning