 this is a joint meeting with the Senate Ag Committee as well as the House Ag Committee. And we're hearing from the non-dairy people in regards to situations that we might be able to correct in an amendment bill that we're proposing to try to help more non-dairy agricultural people to participate in our COVID-19 relief funds. And we have a host of witnesses this morning representing most of the major players dealing with non-dairy. Some also deal it within the dairy business. I think it's real important to hear from you folks and for you folks to be sure and get to your membership and your different groups to really push them to apply for these grants because we serve them and certainly don't wanna leave money on the table. We wanna get it out to the farmers and to the communities to help them survive this disastrous time that we're in. So we're gonna run in like 15 minute blocks with the different groups and there'll be a couple of speakers within each group and sometimes maybe only one. But we should have a little bit of time for questions if they arise and we'll just work through it like we do our meetings when we hold them in Montpelier except for we can't see all of you in the room. Even though in our room, I can see almost as many on the screen as I can get in my room or our Senate Ag room. So it isn't a whole lot different than being in Montpelier. But Carolyn, did you have any comments that you'd like to make before we get started? Thanks, Bobby. I just want to thank you all for including us in this meeting. I'm glad you put this together. We've been working on making our recommendation to the FY21 budget and just wrap that up yesterday. So I'm really glad that we get this opportunity to hear from folks and do it in a really efficient way. And so thanks for including us. Well, I wouldn't want to miss you guys. I mean, you're a great help and we, you know, working together we can accomplish good things. And if we work separately, sometimes it doesn't always work out as well. Right. So I'm glad to have you with us. Are there any other comments from any of the committee members before we get started with our testimony? I don't see anyone that wants to have anything to say. And, you know, the only thing is we might miss you but Carolyn's Representative Partridge gonna be watching for Hans and Linda as well as myself. So we'll try not to miss anybody if you have a question. So I think to start with on our schedule and I think you all have a copy of the schedule that we put together. And I think all the participants also have the schedule so they can kind of follow along and we'll try to stay in order if we can but if somebody's missing we may skip to the next one and then back up. So Maddie, you're the first member up this morning and you're representing NOLFA and I wanna welcome you to the hearing. Thank you, Senator Starr. It's really nice to see everyone. And first of all, I just wanna really thank all the committee members for being here. It's really great to have all the House and Senate members together for this. And I also really am so grateful to all the producers who made themselves available today during what I know is a really busy time of year. So thank you all so much for being here to discuss and I'll try to keep it brief because I wanna hear more from farmers. Just to queue up sort of the issues that we'll be discussing today. I think you all received a copy of the letter that NOLFA sent to legislators along with rural Vermont and seven agriculture and working lands organizations earlier or well last month regarding some of the issues with the deadline and the eligibility for the non-dairy ag assistance program. The first issue is that we're just basically requesting that the deadline be pushed back from the existing deadline of October 1st to at least November 1st to give folks more time to apply and to give the agency more time to get these funds out the door. And my understanding from hearing from folks at the agency is that they would be supportive of that because we really haven't had a lot of time particularly with the non-dairy application that just opened on August 19th to start getting applications and getting funds out to farmers. So that's a hopefully a pretty simple request. And I would hope that your committees could prioritize working with appropriators to get that done sooner than later so we can make sure none of these funds have to be returned to the federal government. And then secondly, the issue that we're here to talk about is the fact that the provision that was included in S351 for the non-dairy program that was not included for dairy or forestry businesses or agricultural fairs which states that a farmer is not or a food producer is not eligible to apply for that program and the $5 million in funding that was allocated to them if they had a net profit between March 1st and August 1st. And there are a couple of issues with that. One is just that it's really not a helpful metric to determine profitability for the year on balance. It's really sort of an arbitrary time period that doesn't really give a good picture of whether a farm is gonna be profitable for the year. Ella Chapin testified to the Senate Ag Committee last week so many of you heard this but she gave what I thought was a really helpful example of a farmer for example who purchased who made a large annual purchase like their feed during that time of year that would really change their profitability picture for those months as compared to a farmer who didn't have a similar annual expense during that time. So we're just really concerned that it isn't a helpful metric to determine profitability. We also just are really not clear as to why that provision was included for these non-dairy businesses but it wasn't included for everyone. If the goal was to make sure that we're not giving money to people who are doing well it's possible in my mind that there are both dairy farms and forestry businesses who could have been profitable during that time of year but they are still eligible for assistance to cover their losses and their expenses under the same legislation. And I'm sure you'll hear more from producers about that. I spoke to a produce farm in Burlington several weeks ago who sells primarily to restaurants. And as you know early in the pandemic a lot of restaurants were forced to shut down and that caused significant losses to farmers across all different types of businesses who sell to restaurants from dairy to non-dairy. And Diane Botfeld gave an example of a cheese maker who sold primarily to restaurants who lost their markets and they were able to amazingly as so many farmers have done pivot and set up a farm stand at their farm and under the dairy assistance program that cheese maker is able to get those expenses covered while a vegetable farmer who's in the exact same circumstance would not be able to get those same expenses covered just by virtue of being a vegetable farm. So I thought that was kind of a helpful way to think about it. And then just in terms of the application I'll just say a couple more things. We are working to get the word out and actively encourage farmers and producers to apply for this program. As Senator Sara suggested that's really important and I think all of the organizations on this list are really actively engaging with our communities and helping folks with the application. And in some ways the fact that the agency combined the working lands funding, the 3.5 million from the two other bills with this 5 million from S351 is great. It kind of expands the pot of funding that folks are theoretically eligible for but it also unfortunately serves to kind of obscure this problem because when a producer goes to apply they may be in fact eligible if they were profitable for that period of time but it is likely because they're eligible for that working lands pot of funding that doesn't have this criteria attached to it. And that pot of funding in working lands is actually a smaller amount. It's 3.5 million as opposed to 5 million. It also has a higher cap. I think that the cap for each grant is 50,000 in that program versus 20,000 in S351 and both are first and first served. So it means that this, the working lands funding which has a higher cap and less strict eligibility might get used up really quickly and then that 5 million that has this known at profit provision attached may not really be accessible and we're concerned that folks aren't gonna be able to use it and it will just sit there essentially. The last thing I would just say is to that I would encourage legislators to actually take a look at the application and see how this criteria is being included. My understanding is that it's basically a checkbox on the application. So I think it's just important to think about that when we're considering the possibility of getting this changed. It would be great for legislators to take a look at the application and understand what it currently looks like in practice. So I'm happy to answer any questions. Otherwise I'll leave it to everyone else. Yeah. Well, thank you, Maddie. And we've worked on some of the issues that you brought up about fixing them. And so it's a work in progress and we're moving forward. Is Jan Miller with us? Yes, right here. Hi everybody. I'm gonna keep my camera on for introductions but I'm operating with a hotspot right now. So I'm gonna pop it off to ensure that it don't freeze up during my little spiel here. For those of you who I don't know, my name is Jan Miller. I run the farmer services program at NOFA Vermont. So we're providing business planning and technical assistance to farms across the state. And we work with all different types of farms, both dairy and non-dairy. Prior to becoming a service provider I had extensive experience working on vegetable and diversified livestock farms. So I come at this with that perspective as well. So thanks for having me here. I'll try to keep it brief because Maddie said we really wanna get to the farmers but I wanna try to set the stage with a little bit of testimony. So forgive me for having to turn off my camera while I talk. Yes. So I think that the talking to a lot of different farmer I think that the significant increased demand that we've seen for local food, farm, vegetable fruit, livestock producers has potentially skewed the perception about the financial health of these farms and their expected net profit at the end of the year. I think in general, I'm gonna give some general examples. I'm gonna let the farmers you're gonna hear from provide the very specific examples because I want their stories to stick with you more. I wanna make a few key points. So I think most importantly, if a farm is cash flowing now, it does not mean that they are or will be profitable for all of 2020. So the farms that they're benefiting from this increased demand for their products are also simultaneously incurring significant expenses that were not budgeted to ensure that they can do all they can to protect themselves, their employees and their customers from COVID and to pivot their marketing and distribution strategies to ensure the continued viability of their businesses. I've talked to some larger farms here and CSA packing and they're incurring additional labor costs in the order of like $1,025 per week to cover additional handling, packing, distribution and it's no small fee, but I'll circle back around to why this is not gonna work from this March to August timeline to really get a sense of where they're gonna end up profit-wise by the end of the year. The increase in demand also means that like these farms are not necessarily experiencing a cash flow crunch right now. I think that gives kind of a skewed impression to the general public that all will be well but the impact of these additional expenses will likely mean that they end the year with significantly reduced profit and otherwise projected. We're also entering the fall and winter and it seems very likely that there's gonna be more investments in invasions required of these farms to ensure the safe distribution of their food in challenging weather environments. For example, they're not gonna be able to rely on their outdoor locations to drop off their vegetables. All these creative solutions that have served people really well are gonna take more investment to make sure that they continue their sales increase over the course of the winter, especially if farmers markets can't move indoors. And so the way that those expenses are not, they're gonna come September, October, they're not gonna be encompassed in this profitability window either. The way that this bill is written additionally means that if a farm, that usually nets $50,000 in profit, if they get down to $10,000 in profit, they still don't qualify for assistance which sets them up for a cycle of struggle. There's not gonna be enough left over for family living debt services and startup costs for 2021. So I'll end with a few examples of why this March to August window claiming a net loss is not gonna give an accurate picture of profitability for the year. So looking at, these are just general examples. Again, hopefully you're gonna set the stage for the farmers that are following because they're gonna hit all these different categories. So CSA Farm, they're gonna accrue the bulk of their expenses January to March and sign up the bulk of their customers April to June, talking about vegetables here. Expenses are clearly not gonna be offset with the income in the period identified as the bill. Grass-fed beef, winter feeding, boarding expenses incurred January to April. Feed expenses will go down when animals go out in pasture in May and they may have, based on their sales model, they may have increased summer sales at farmers markets through the summer months. Again, expenses are not gonna be offset by income to be able to have them show a net loss and qualify. Maple expenses, including the vast majority of labor incurred January to March was sales starting in March and April. There's also the example thinking through like was similar to what Ella had said. I've had a couple of farms, like one farm happened to invest in a new delivery truck February to March, February. Farm B, which we had a recipient of one of our resilience grants helped purchase a delivery truck in May as a COVID response distribution strategy. Farm B might qualify, be able to show that net loss because they happened to purchase their truck in May. Farm A, same expense, but they purchased it too early to be examined in that net profit window. So I think I'm always happy to take questions, but I think all told, it's not a logical clause to include in the bill. And my hope is that it can be removed to support as many of these farms as possible. Yeah, thank you, Jan. Any questions? If not, we'll move on to Ryan. Hey, can you hear me? Yes. Okay, my name is Ryan Fitzboschamp and thank you so much for inviting me to speak to the committee. My wife, Cara, and I run Evening Song Farm. We're a diverse vegetable farm. I've been in operation since 2011. We have four acres of vegetable production and about 10,000 square feet of high tunnels that we use for winter greens production. We have four full-time seasonal employees and our farm nets about 200 to $250,000 in gross sales annually. So I just wanna paint a little picture of our farm and how it has, how we've responded to COVID and specifically talking about ways for our farm that the metric for evaluating net profitability doesn't give an accurate picture of our farm's annual profitability. I think a lot, and a lot of it will be emphasizing points that Jen made. I think one of the biggest ones is where almost all of our non-label, the timing for almost all of our non-labor expenses, things like seed and fertilizer and equipment, greenhouse supplies, packaging supplies. Most of these we purchased in December through January, December through February at the beginning of the year. And then the timing of our income as well since before COVID, almost all of our marketing or the bulk of our marketing was through farmer's markets. Since COVID, we've stopped, we've discontinued both of our farmer's markets and instead doubled the size of our CSA responding to demand from that. So that means that for this year, we've had about 50% of our farm's income comes in the months of March through May for those summer CSA signups. So our farm's expenses are heavily skewed to the late fall, early winter months and our income is skewed to the summer months. So the months of March through August would give an inaccurate picture of our farm's overall profitability. I think the other question that I have as a non-dairy producer is it's unclear to me why the profitability restriction would apply to, would apply only to non-dairy farm operations and not also to forestry or dairy operations. Our farm, I don't know yet if our farm will be profitable this year or not. We've been able to switch a lot of our marketing and capitalize on a lot of interest in local food, but we've also incurred a lot of expenses to upgrade our facilities here to greatly expand our CSA distribution in response to dropping farmer's markets. So I don't know yet if we'll be profitable, but it has been very challenging to adapt to these changes and I think that's all I have to share with you. I appreciate your time very much. Well, thank you, Ryan. Are there any questions from the committee members? If not, we'll move on to the Vermont sheep and goat association and Dave Martin, are you with us? I'm here, can you hear me? Yeah, loud and clear. Technology is great. I just want to appreciate the time and energy and effort you folks have put again to taking this testimony today and I do understand that there are some really complex issues that need attention and I just appreciate your effort to do this. I'm president of the Vermont sheep and goat association, mostly small members, but many of our members have agricultural enterprises that are small scale but are genuine in their effort to make a few bucks. My main product is lamb, I sell lamb and one of the issues that impacts me from COVID is an issue that started before COVID. I used to have a fairly good deal in a steady market for my lambs. I used to sell like 140 lambs a year and distribution and handling was all taken care of. And then the processing facility I used announced that it would no longer process lambs because as the manager told me, any day that he processes pigs as opposed to processing lambs, he makes 50% more money. So if he can fill his day up doing pigs, he makes money. It makes more money than he does processing lambs and it was a purely a dollar and cents business decision. I have no ill will towards him. He's running a business and from a business perspective, it makes no sense for him to spend a day doing lambs when he can spend that day doing pigs. So I lost that really dependable well-paying market and I struggled to replace it. And one of the issues I tell folks is I have no, there's no issue with my being able to sell my lambs. I absolutely know that I have a market for my lambs. The issue I have is how much will I get for them? That's the crunch. And last year, I started to sell lambs out of my freezer. I got a license from the state, a freezer in my garage and I learned that I was able to make a pretty good return. I was really surprised about my investment and how much money I was able to make. And I had planned to do that again this year. However, when I called in to schedule my lambs for processing, I couldn't get a date up and I think I'm scheduled now for January 21st is when I can take my lambs in. And part of that is my fault. I should have called earlier because I know there's always a crunch but I thought I was calling early enough. COVID-19 really changed that. So that market, I mean, I will not have the lambs to sell out of my home. So that's a loss of money to me. And I've heard from three other VSGA members who have reported the same issue that slaughterhouses that they've dealt with for years no longer want to do lambs because I think at the end of the day for a slaughtering facility is how many pounds of meat are hanging on the hook? And if a slaughterhouse can fill up their time doing beef and pork, that's what they're going to do. Again, nothing personal, it's just a purely business decision. So that's one of the things I struggle with and I do not know what the solution is but I see that as a real issue for me as a land producer. So other members have developed systems where they can, they process the wool into fiber and sell the yarn and sell knitted products. And I think sometimes folks lose start of the fact that wool and yarn is also an agricultural product and is part of the agricultural economy. And most people are really aware that in the middle of the 19th century, there was more money made on wool in Vermont than dairy by far and that has changed over the years. And the one VSGA member expected to lose between eight and $10,000 because the sheep and wool festival was canceled and Rheinbeck was canceled. And those two events generated a fair amount of her income. And because of COVID-19, that income has gone. And so she's having to struggle to come up with alternatives for that. And that's pretty much my testimony. Does anybody have any questions for me? Well, yesterday, Dave, our committee had Allen killer in for testimony in how things were going there with them. And we got into the processing of meat quite deeply. And it seems that we actually need a couple of more processing facilities or could use a couple of more processing facilities in Vermont here. And I, you know, we just heard this yesterday and but it's something that we're really gonna have to deal with, I would hope in this next legislative session. And it costs a lot to put a processing plant in. Where is it gonna be located? What type of animals are they gonna be able to harvest or slaughter? So we've got a lot of issues. A few years back, as you probably know, we did prop up the processor slaughterhouses and did quite a lot to encourage them to expand and grow. But we've heard that, you know, this summer that the dates have gotten pushed out so far that beef cattle can't be processed, chickens as an issue there as well as of course sheep and goats. So it's something that we as a group, all of you folks that are on the hearing today to testify along with the two ag committees has got to work, trying to develop a procedure and help for a more advanced processing facility that should be able to handle all types of our agricultural animals. Carolyn? Thanks, Bobby. We just developed our letter of recommendation for our appropriation committee and I'm about to send it if all of my committee members get back to me, guys. At any rate, as a sheep farmer myself and somebody who relies on those, you know, the sheep and wool festivals and the sale of lamb, I can really understand what Dave's saying, but one of the things we included was a request that as you probably know, the governor's budget, his recommend was set the working lands enterprise initiative back to $594,000. There's a lot of money in there for COVID related things but COVID related does not include large infrastructure. So for this ongoing problem. So we requested and we know that things are really tight. We know that the balancing point is with the state colleges, we appreciate that but we also understand that the slaughterhouse situation is a huge problem as is that matter, the processing facilities for the wood product. So we included that in our letter of recommendation that if at all possible, they find some more money for the working lands enterprise initiative. So we hear you, we've heard some of that testimony too and hopefully by some miracle, they'll be able to find some dollars for the base working lands projects. Yeah, I would like to- That's good, Dave? Yeah, I would just like to say in terms of a lamb processing facility or small ruminant, it's not enough just to have that facility. I think work needs to be done in terms of ensuring that there is a supply of product to that facility of high quality product that producers have to have support to produce a consistent high quality product to provide to the processor because the processor is just one piece of the system. There's the producer, the processor, the person who does the aggregation and distribution. There are a lot of small producers in Vermont and I would like to say a system that helps aggregate numbers of high quality product to bring into a processor and then a system to help get that product out to New England and New York, which is a really great market for lamb and goat. But it has to be part of a system and as we, I think in the past, there was a grant to create a small ruminant line at the Royal Butcher for lamb and goats and that operated for a while, but that has closed down. And I think one of the problems was that the enable to provide a consistent high quality product to the processor. So I just want to put a plug in for that. And I also that the farm to play in our agency of agriculture are working on lamb and goat production. That's an ongoing issue there. Thank you. Bobby, can you see the little blue hands? I have two committee members. There's each member and I don't see them. Okay, well, if you're a co-host, you should see them. So Sharon's hand is up, John Bartholomew is up and so is Senator Pierson. So Sharon. Bay, you had your hand up first, I believe. Okay. Is that, no, I think they haven't had her hand up too. I'm here also representing Vermont sheep and goat association with Dave. And I want to thank Dave so much for addressing a huge issue that is ongoing and even heightened with this COVID issue. But I also wanted to kind of bring back a little bit and focus on what the members are experiencing now and direct relationship to the COVID because I don't want to lose sight of that either. And I have, what I did was I have a kind of a description of what a member said to us as far as what she's experiencing this year due to the COVID. And I thought I would just take you through that timeline to kind of get an idea of how that is and affecting folks. Is it possible, Bobby, is it possible for folks who had questions for Dave to get their questions answered and then to have Baye give her presentation? How would you like to do that? Yeah, I thought Baye had a question and that's why I called on her. We'll back up to, is it Sharon? Yeah. Next. We'll get back to you, Baye. Thank you, Senator Starr. Always good to see you again. I guess my question is I'm thinking about, Vermont Technical College or some of our agricultural support infrastructure from an educational perspective, maybe UVM Extension, is there any way to stand up a program that would provide some slaughter and processing? And I realized that this is thinking outside the box quite a bit, but if there is a program and I'm exposing some of my ignorance about whether or not that exists, is there a way for us to do that now so that we don't end up with a whole bunch of sheep and goat farmers that are really stuck going into the winter in a bad hay year with livestock they weren't able to process with a lot less hay than they need to get through what they would have normally had in the barn over winter? Well, we do have a meat cutters training program at VTC. I don't know if that would include training for slaughterhouse people, but I know slaughterhouse owners try to hire meat cutters to work in their facility. So we do have that program. And we heard that, well, I knew it was there and we heard about it again yesterday, but we didn't get a report on how many students say they have had go through the program. So we're still checking on that to move forward. And I could see with the infrastructure already there because it's expensive to set up a meat cutting operation that maybe it could be rented out so that it's functioning full-time instead of just on student schedules, just a thought. Yeah, thank you. John? Just commenting on the profitability of slaughterhouses and the way they work. One of the issues that has come up for our farm is when you're dealing with small ruminants and also swine, everyone wants to do their slaughter after the end of the summer season when the animals are coming off pasture. And that's one of the roadblocks I've always run into is there just so many animals, it's not just a profitability thing. And even if you're using a private type or a more specialized processor like Green Mountain Smokehouse, then you're competing with all the deer that are coming in from the hunters. So I don't know, is there any solution to that timing other than overwintering animals and paying for hay? It seems like there's no solution to me to deal with that glut of animals in the fall. I don't know, unless we can change the weather, how that's gonna happen. Maybe global warming will take care of that. This is Dave. One of the issues with lamb is the seasonality, which is the nature of lamb. And lambs are born in the spring, they're ready for the market in the fall. There are some breaches sheep that will breed out of season and you can have a lamb ready for market at other times of the year. That requires a pretty major change in how you manage your sheep. And you tend to not have as many lambs, but you get a much better price because the market price for lamb is higher when there aren't as many lambs around. But the seasonality of lamb is certainly an issue, a struggle, which is why I think it needs to be part of a system and every part of the system needs to understand how they interact with the others and need to create a system so that everybody in it, everybody makes a few bucks and shares in the process. Thank you, Dave. Chris Pearson, Senator Pearson. Yeah, thank you. Sorry, I'm running around today so I can't be on video. Can't hardly hear you. A little, little bit. How about now? How about now? There we go. You're loud. Okay, sorry. I'm running around today. It's like I can't be on video, but I'm listening closely and I wonder if it would be appropriate to ask Representative Partridge, you mentioned your letter to APPROPS. As we've talked about it in Senate Act, we're all, I think it's fair to say comfortable with this removing the net profitability clause on the application. And that seems pretty important to me, certainly. And I think to our committee, and I'm wondering if that's, if it'd be fair to ask if that's part of your recommendation as you're sending it over to a bill that might tweak, you know, might move fast. That's what we've been talking about is how to get that done and done quickly. And I wonder if your committee is comfortable with that idea. So Chris, we were really just asked to make recommendations about amounts of money or places where we could add some money and not so much for policy. One of the things I think we really have, I'm not opposed to this and in the interest of full disclosure, I just submitted my application for one of these grants yesterday. I think one of the difficulties is how this is going to work because a number of people, and I don't know the number off the top of my head, people have submitted their grants, you know, based on the no net profitability between March 1st and August 1st. I'm not necessarily opposed to it, but then I just think it's complicated in terms of how you figure this. You want money to go to people who have had losses or expenses and have ultimately, I would say lost. And that might be a question you want to discuss. But, you know, and in terms of, somebody asked a question about why was this included and it wasn't included in the dairy in the forestry. Well, in dairy, we knew the original proposal was for a big chunk of money for dairy. We knew that farmers had all taken a hit, you know. Maybe organic was doing a little bit better, but everybody who was doing conventional dairy had taken a huge hit in their milk checks and were getting paid way lower than the cost of production. So I think we need to have a discussion about how exactly this works. If they change the parameters of this grant, then do, you know, does everybody have to reapply part of the concern? And I don't have a problem with moving the date to November 1st. And I'm not speaking for my committee, I'm just telling you how I feel about it. But part of the challenge here is that this COVID money needs to be dispersed and spent by the end of December. So, you know, I'm all ears and I'm willing to listen and I understand the situation because I'm in this boat myself taking a huge hit, losing the sheep and wool festivals. But at any rate, I, you know, I'm, if we can come up with a solution, I'm, you know, I'm happy to talk about it and consider it. But in turn, the direct answer to your question is, no, we didn't include that because we don't have the details. I mean, this is the first discussion we've had about this and I think it's complicated. Chris, are you all set? Yeah, thank you. Yeah, what our answer is to that issue, Carolyn, and for the members that are listening, we've talked the non-dairy and working lands has been put together. And our simple solution that we've talked about in our committee is to move some of the money that's in the non-dairy section to working lands and then the applicants, as they come into the Ag Agency, if that profit deal does not work in working lands, that's not a criteria. So then they just move the application over to the working lands portion of that joint program and everybody is allowed in. So that's just a quick tip. So let me respond to that, Bobby. If you do check that, you know, that you have had a profit and they bounced you over to the working lands part of the application, I believe this is true, that you need to have an employee. So all sole proprietors get bounced out. We, I don't think we have any employees, but we can check that out, you know, once we get by the hearing here today, we'll, that's a good note that we'll check out. Well, this is what I heard from Andrea Stander and she's up at 10 o'clock, so we can listen to her then. Yeah, Bay, we should get back to you because we're using up your time. Well, I think Ruth had her hand up, but. Yeah, so I guess she did. Ruth. That's okay, I can wait for after Bay and then I'll ask my question of both Bay and Dave. It's been waiting patiently. Okay, I just didn't want to get left out without coming to the table with something anyway. Well, no. But and it'll be quick and it's reiterating a lot of what Dave and you all have been talking about. Of course, slaughterhouses are a big kind of crunch point for many of the small ruminant farmers here from those farmers that have five in their backyard to those farmers that have a couple of hundred in their backyard, it doesn't matter. Some folks have to ship their sheep out of state to get processed and some just ship them in general to get rid of them this spring. But one particular member that kind of kind of put it all together to me in a nice timeline and this particular member had, she does a specialty product of sheep sausage with her collies in the spring and she had a slaughter date set up and ready to go in May that got canceled, not from her, but from the processor. So that date was canceled and she was stuck with a lot of collies that she couldn't keep going. She couldn't feed and make that profitability would suck up all the profitability of farms. So she did ship those animals and took a 50% hit on the profit that she would have gotten from the sausage. It also gave her no product to take to market to the farmers market, which is where she usually gets her income from. She does do an extra income with that sausage of yarn products and wool products, but they do not sell well in the spring and hot summer days, especially this past summer in a farmer's market. So they opted not to do the farmer's market at all and took that hit. They did live off their savings and they made maybe, I think their sales, I think she said her sales were about 20, well, maybe it was 50% down in that time of the year with anything. And then going into the fall, so their main income comes in August, September, October through the festivals and the markets at that time where people are looking for those wool and yarn projects and fiber and also where she can sell more of her sausage and meats. She again does not have that sausage and meat, but she does have the yarn, but the festivals that normally she would attend in New York and Vermont have all been canceled and gone on to virtual festivals, which means she's expecting that she'll only make eight to 10% of her total income as what she did last year. So that family who that's off the farm income is currently living off savings and whatever small income can come from those sheep. And so it's for her to say right now, this is how much I'm making for the year or not, but it doesn't happen and it's too seasonal. The product of going into this kind of farm or any diversified farm is more of a seasonality thing, which folks have mentioned already. And yeah, and so going forward, I'm not sure. I think also I want folks to realize that when dairy farms go out, they become something else. And part of my day job is supporting and being with dairy farmers. I work for a VOF, so I work closely aligned with dairy farmers and by no means am I wanting to get rid of any of them. But we just down the street from me, there was two dairy farms that did go out on a conventional, well, I'm not sure if they were conventional, but they went under last year and there has been a family that moved, bought the property is now setting up, it's acres and acres. I think it was like a $2 million purchase. They came from out of state. They have four children and they're setting up a sheep farm. And then there's another farm just down the road actually there's two farms down from the road for me that have increased their sheep production, I think two or three folds in the last couple of years. So this is not kind of a fad or it's, I just wanna really press home that the small room and it isn't something that's gonna disappear. It was once a really mainstay of Vermont and we may find that with the decline of the dairy farms, this may become another really great enterprise for Vermont. I think time focused on it and funds put towards it is just really important. And to take these, what's happening now with these sheep farmers is a really good time to really kind of see what's indicative of the future and where our needs are, where the pressure points are. So that's it, talk fast enough. Thank you, Bay. Where are those new farms being set up? Addison County, the land of clay and pasture and grazing. Yeah, well, that's good. And it's important to know where the numbers are. If we're gonna talk about additional slaughter facilities where they should be built and where it's convenient for to get to and all that. So thanks a lot. One mention too on the slaughter facilities that a member brought to point, which made good sense because this conversation goes around a lot on the listserv of ESGA, as Dave has talked to. And is that the next processing facility for sheep should really be looked at or the next processing facility should really be looked at building a processing facility for goat and lamb, for small ruminants. And Mary Lake has testified to the fact that the large ruminant processing facilities just are not set up for small ruminants. And so part of the cost is the fact of the inefficiency of it. And so if you have an infrastructure set up for small ruminants, you get a much better and more efficient system and therefore they can make more money and perhaps not charge as much on the other end to the farmer. Cause right now it costs anywhere from depending on where you go, $100 to $135 per lamb or per goat. It doesn't matter how much they weigh, it's just per animal going through. And so once you get 25 or 30 pounds of finished meat back, you can figure how, as from the farmer perspective what you've got to charge in order to make money. So I think that's something to consider is if you build a processing unit specifically for the animal that needs that processing unit, that maybe we can create some efficiencies that will cut back on the expense for the farmer. Yeah, thanks Ruth. You had a question. Yeah, thank you. And this is either for Bay or Dave. We've talked about meat processing and wool for small ruminants. And I'm just wondering if your members have had luck success with applying for actually for the dairy portion of the program that we set up. We made sure to include sheep and goat dairies in the dairy grants. And I know we're not talking about that today, but just quickly if you know of people who have applied and been successful at getting their application approved and getting that money for sheep and goat dairies or sheep and goat cheese processors. I don't know. I'm not sure Dave may be able to speak to this. We don't have as many dairy members as we do meat and fiber. The cheese council holds a lot of those members. But I did ask Dave about that last night. We talked a bit. So I don't know, Dave, if you have any more. I'm not aware of any VSGA members who've applied for the cheaper goat dairy. OK, I did talk to several goat farmers in June when we were setting all of this up who were interested in applying. So I can circle back with them. But I just want to make sure that those farmers are taking advantage of that program because we were explicit in making sure they were included. So I will check with them. But if you can check with your members to make sure that those who would qualify are applying, that would be great. Thanks. Yeah, thank you, Ruth. We'll move on to the Vermont Grass Farmers Association. Bruce, are you with us? I am. I am with you. And I will join you by video here. Yeah. Thank you. Great. I think I'll join you by video. There you go. First of all, thank you so much for all your hard work in responding to these unusual times and really appreciate all the efforts that you're making. So my statement is really reflective of many of the other statements that have been made. We are also disclosed that I finished my application last night. And I guess the first thing that I'll say is that that application itself is going to be a barrier to entry for, I think, many farmers. I found it exceedingly difficult to navigate, well, especially with the uploads of documents that people are looking for. And I was able to complete it, but it took quite a lot. It took quite a lot of computer savvy, which I thought I had before I started, but it was extremely difficult for me. So I agree. Many people in the Vermont Grass Farmers Association, many members, are folks that are doing grass-fed beef. And those folks have entered into a time right now, particularly starting in May, when they're grazing their cattle and not buying hay. And that's a time when, especially when we've seen increased local buying sales for Vermont Grass Farmers, that they may be seeing a month to month net profit during that time. But then when they get into after November, so when they're not going to be grazing anymore, they get into much higher costs. And they end up not being very profitable for the year. I think also each of those folks, many of those folks have had to pivot from one business model that was working more on a wholesale basis to a model that was more focused on direct-to-consumer sales. And that's been exceedingly difficult. We were certainly involved because we had just installed something like that for our farm. We were involved with bringing in other grass-fed beef producers to help them sell on our site. Or we were buying directly from them to keep our site supplied. Because many, many of us, and I think this would be true for pretty much all members, were quickly running out of product early in the pandemic and had trouble keeping inventory and supply on hand. Lots of costs involved, lots of additional costs involved with that. So I think it's very difficult to know the condition of any farm right now as they move forward through the end of the year without, it's very difficult to know whether they're going to be profitable or not, given all the changes and conditions. So I just put that out there. I certainly hope that I don't have to do another application. So hoping that any changes that are made or do not require a reapplication process for farms that have already applied. Yeah. Thank you, Bruce. Are there questions for Bruce from the committee members? If not, we'll move on to, is it Nicael? It's Nico Horster. Hi. I'm also on the board of the BGFA. Nico, yes. And I own a company called Shire Beef in Berger, Vermont. We are a beef producer. We supply restaurants, or did exclusively, pretty much supply restaurant skinny pancake, Worthy Burger, and a few others. Our sales went from 97%, 95% to 97% wholesale to absolutely zero within about 10 days. When this all started, we had to hire an extra person to deal with orders. We had to implement a whole new software program to deal with credit card sales. And we went from three wholesale orders every two weeks to about 40 or 50 orders a week. So completely different fulfillment inventory tracking, different cut lists, wholesalers buy different cuts than retail customers do. We had boxed beef for stew. We had whole chuck rolls. This is not something you're going to take home and put in the oven. It's 30 pounds of chuck. So we had to discount our backlog of commercial inventory to get rid of it. And again, the stipulation of proving what my profitability status is, month to month, is impossible. We are a seasonal business, as Bruce just pointed out, in that the heavy aggregation of costs all comes over winter. And so if you're looking at a window from May to July, it's completely unrealistic to want a producer to be able to prove profitability or not. It's simply not possible if you're not on an annualized basis of your cost accounting. And so if I exclude the costs of winterizing and of overwintering animals, and it takes two years to get a beef animal to slaughter status, so my invested cost in an animal goes two years back and to have to prove whether that was profitable when May or not is impossible. It's just not realistic. And I've heard this from a variety of other producers, and then to exacerbate the situation is now we have a market which has been very fickle, by the way, as soon as the stores open back up, our direct retail customer sales plummet it while the restaurants were still closed by the order of the governor. And then slowly the restaurants are opening again, but nowhere near to the capacity of demand that we had before COVID hit. So now we're sort of in a limbo state in between where the consumers are happily shopping at the supermarket, the restaurants are not operating at anywhere close to full capacity. And so now we're struggling, we're actually having the most struggle in terms of our processes right now. Thank God for farm stands and CSAs, they're keeping us in a reasonable cash flow right now, but in, again, speaking to profitability. And then the whole remarks that Dave Martin brought up earlier in Bay as well about slaughterhouses, there's no quick fix. This is something that the state has neglected for a decade and it's coming home to roost and we will have to have a better plan to get infrastructure that is accessible and appropriate for different producers. Somebody said, oh yeah, and we have a meat cutting program at VTC. Well, that ended in 2016. There have been workshops in 2019 at VTC about meat cutting, but there's no targeted apprenticeship program in the state of Vermont that gives us the skill sets. Why are we surprised that we see immigrant labor? Well, they're the ones who know how to cut sheep at goats. And we're in the fortunate position that we have a regular slaughter date schedule every couple of weeks to get animals processed, but even with that, we cannot get any slaughter dates for the next three months. So I'm stuck with the inventory that I have as of September 15th, all the way to mid January. And so even if I could capture sales, I can't produce more sales. I have animals, I can't send them to slaughter because everything is booked out. And that is with the privilege of having, being a regular customer of slaughterhouse and that being acknowledged just because there's such an influx of homesteaders who want to slaughter their three pigs and one sheep that they have for the season. Thank you. So you're having trouble getting into slaughter facilities as well as everyone else. Even though you have certain dates set up. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But I can't keep up with the demand. I can't increase anything. And in any case, the next three months are lost in terms of that just because there's no capacity. And then, yeah, there's other issues with slaughterhouses that were, you know, the inspectors are overreaching and making our lives more complicated at this point that doesn't really need to be happening. But that's for another discussion. Carolyn. Niko, could you say the name of your business and where it's located again, please? Yes, absolutely. My business is called Shire Beef LLC and we're located in Versher, just south of Chelsea in Orange County. Great. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Any other questions? John, did you have a question? John O'Brien? No. There are no other questions. Thank you. It looks like Bruce has something he wants to say. Bruce? Bruce, Bruce, Hennessy. Oh, go ahead, Bruce. I just wanted to share quickly who we are. I neglected to do that. You know, I have a hard time in front of such illustrious company. You shouldn't be shy at all. OK, I just wanted to just mention that we're Maple Wind Farm. We are both a farm that produce 100% grass-fed beef. We produce a pasture-raised pork and primarily pasture-raised poultry, broilers, layerhens for eggs, and turkeys, all on daily move pasture. And we have a very small USDA poultry processing plant. So we are kind of deep within all of these issues on the livestock side that is non-dairy. And I will say that while our sales absolutely exploded and we happen to be lucky enough to just be starting a direct-to-consumer effort to try to move away from wholesale and towards direct-to-consumer, that while we have received amazingly spectacular new sales, we still remain not profitable for this time period because of the massive expenses we've incurred through having to hire additional staff to make sure we can continue to operate even if people have to miss due to even one symptom for COVID. They have to stay home and get tested. And that can be a four- to six-day process. And we've had to invest a lot in our infrastructure to keep our staff safe. So I just wanted to add those two things. Yeah, thank you, Bruce. John, did you have a representative? Do you have a question? Thanks, Bobby. Yeah, just quickly. Nico, did you apply for the non-dairy relief like Bruce did and run into a very difficult application? No, I did not apply, John, because I have no way of ascertaining profitability for this time period in the way we do our accounting. We do an end of the year accounting. I can look at my cash flow. And I could potentially spread out my winter feeding costs over all months and get to a profitability. But with the profitability clause in there, it is very clear to me that I will have a very hard time documenting that at this point of the year. And the jury is out what's going to happen for the next three months. And I think that is really where we're hidden to the trouble that what we might experience is good cash flow and good sales, as Bruce just pointed out, with massively increased costs and how that all shakes out at the end of the year is hard to tell. And I can't account for it, because my invested cost is in stock inventory. It's an asset. So it's hard to take your assets and put them into a profitability curve if you don't have timeline that you can do that on. And so no, quick answer, no. I haven't even tried, because I'm discouraged to try, because I can see how difficult it would be to prove where that cash flow separates from profitability. So moving the date out and maybe in the meantime, you could find VHCB has a crew of people that's supposed to help people with their applications and questions about all this. And if we move the date out, so it gives those of you that haven't applied more time, maybe working with some of the folks at VHCB Farm Viability Program, they could help you maneuver through the maze of questions, and we could get some money to you. Sure, that would be a possibility. And we have applied to VHCB for that. And we heard a brief response three weeks ago. And I think they're in the same boat as everybody else. We're just overloaded with work, both on the administrative and the executive level in terms of actually getting the work done. Yes, I appreciate your comments, Senator Starr. And I have thought about that. Well, good. Well, to move on, we're still running a little late. We'll move on to Andrea and Roe Vermont. Are you with us, Andrea? Yes, I am. Linda has a chart to put up. Yes, I wanted to, first of all, thank you, everyone, for making the time this morning. I'm really glad that you're all able to be here. I think you're getting a really good picture, however concerning it is of the situation that's out there for this really important sector of our agricultural economy. I'm going to try and be brief. I do want to draw your attention to something. And I'm hoping that Linda is able to put this up for you. It is a flow chart that the Agency of Agriculture created for the application process. And if you can scroll down, Linda, so that we can see the bottom of the chart, you will see that up a little bit, up a little bit. Okay, so on the left there, you'll see, did your business have a net profit for the period of March 1st to August 1st? If you say no, you're eligible. But if you say yes, you're not. And then if you say yes, you are bumped over to what is essentially the working lands track. But you'll see in that first box that you have to have at least one W-2 employee in order to continue. And if you don't, and that would be true for all sole proprietor operations, of which there are many, then you are out of luck. So this is another wrinkle. This is another wrinkle in the system that I think we have to deal with. Andrea, doesn't it say in brackets, this number may include the owner? It does, but if the owner is not a W-2 employee, if that's not how they're running their business. And I think Nico referenced, some of the issues for these farms, they operate on a different calendar system than for example, the dairy farms. So I just wanted to make you guys aware of this other piece of the puzzle. And I know even just looking at this flow chart, you get an idea of how involved this application is particularly all of the documentation that farmers have to pull together, put into electronic format and upload. And I also know that it's true that BHCB is getting heavily oversubscribed with people asking for help. So I just wanna reiterate, obviously moving the date out is really critical. But if we can find a creative solution to this profitability problem, I think that is a really critical piece because as Maddie mentioned, the pot of money that's available over here on the left-hand side is considerably bigger than the pot of money that's available on the working land side. And we could serve a lot more people. I just wanna make a couple more points. I'm aware of the fact that time is tight. I don't wanna take away any time from the farmers who pulled themselves off the fields or out of wherever to testify today. I do have a brief statement that was submitted by Taylor Mandel from Footprint Farm. She was not able to be here this morning because they're in the middle of harvest. But here's what she had to say. They're located in Starksboro. They're a diversified vegetable farm. Timing, due to the busy nature of the summer vegetable growing season, we leave much of our bookkeeping until the fall. In order to be ready for this application period, we hired an additional part-time person in order to have the time to get our books in order only to find out once the application opened that we did not qualify. The application criteria feels like it penalizes farms that pivoted early in the COVID crisis. Nearly a third of our business, $37,000, usually comes from the Shelburne Farmers Market which decided early on that they would not open this year. We also realized that another third of our business, wholesale greens to restaurants, would suffer this summer. Rather than lose that money entirely, which would have qualified us for this relief money, we invested in packaging, invested in an online store, hired more staff, doubled the size of our CSA program. We also worked with other farmers and producers who had lost that in revenue to include their products in our CSA. Due to the nature of CSA, we then received our whole year's worth of income between March and July, which inflated our gross earnings for those months. The guidelines for this relief fund did not take into account the quintupled costs we incurred to save our business. They do not take into account farms that have an uneven cash flow throughout the year, and they do not support farms that have done everything in their power to stay open, feed people and continue to represent the strength and fortitude of Vermont's working farms. Sincerely, Taylor Mendell Footprint Farm, Starksboro, Vermont. So that's just another quick snapshot of a very similar situation that's been experienced by many, many farms around the state. And I appreciate the conversation about the slaughterhouse issue. It's a huge one, and it's definitely one that I hope we can continue to work on. But because they're gonna have expenses if they have to hold their livestock over the winter, and they're gonna lose the income this fall, as Nico said. I think we have to get creative about solving this problem of the profitability. I know the agency has said that it's a very difficult lift technologically for the contracted company that put this application up to fix it. But I just think there's gotta be a workaround here that more people eligible for this money and not leave it on the table so that we can shore up our food system. We don't know what the fall is gonna bring. We don't know what the virus is gonna do. So I really hope that these two committees, all of you, very smart people, really dedicated and appreciate all the work that you've done. And we're ready to work with you and we can bring more examples or more specific ideas to you whenever you're ready for them. And I will stop now because Corey Pierce from Bread and Butter Farm, who also serves on the Role Vermont Board is ready to also offer her testimony. And then we could take questions after we both are done. Yeah, thank you, Andrea and Corey. Are you with us? Yeah, you gotta unmute yourself. Okay, yeah, I'm here. Sorry, I'm not good at this. Thank you for having me. I think hearing Taylor's, yeah, so I'm Corey Pierce at Bread and Butter Farm. We're on the town line of Shelburne in South Burlington. We do 100% grass fed cattle, pork, organic vegetables. We also do a lot of other related but non-directly agricultural enterprises including summer camp and some year round programming with kids. And we do work with UVM and the farmer training program as well as on farm events including our summer burger nights. I definitely relate to Taylor's statement. For sure, we pivoted quick and early in anticipation of losing a number of our markets including, so we have a very, traditionally caught a very small CSA and then have sold to restaurants and to some local markets, stores, wholesale accounts. And we were just unclear of how that was gonna go. We are also getting a lot of interest. So we cordupled our CSA, created an online platform, started doing online farm store sales and same thing brought in a lot more money than we normally do in a short timeframe. Normally our cash flow has peaks and dips but this made it where we had, we peaked all of our vast majority of our income in like May and June, which is new for us. And then also invested a lot of cost. So created this online platform, put in tons of safety protocol, processes for both our staff but then also how we interact with customers, created partnerships with other farms that lost their accounts like those going down to New York City and selling that suddenly couldn't and restaurant, people with restaurants did a lot of that collaborating with other farmers. We increased our refrigeration cooling capacity. So I would also echo what Nico said, it's really difficult right now to predict our profitability. I'm definitely when I looked into the application, I just don't know how to do that right now. So it's a bit overwhelming and hard to figure that out in a short period of time. So I'm also slammed right now and trying to stay up on paperwork and stay up on all my accounting and bookkeeping. So it's definitely an overwhelming time to try to like do a bunch of the deep level accounting and business analysis that I usually do in the later part of the season. And I will just also echo the slaughterhouse thing. We are definitely sitting on animals that we normally, like we could sell right now and we don't have the dates with slaughterhouses. And that's a really long, short, long-term scary one because dates are pretty booked. We jumped on that actually right at the beginning of the pandemic and did get dates. So I know there's people in worse situation than us but we booked dates through this year but next year's looking just as bad and challenging especially for smaller scale like us. So yeah, those are all kind of my quick and dirty. In addition to some markets that we completely lost, like we didn't do any burger nights this year and that's traditionally been about a third of our beef sales for the year and we are able to get a higher price per pound when we do burger nights. So it's been a really helpful part of our paying down our large amount of debt that being a first generation farm that we have, burger night has served as a great way to kind of help pay down debt service. So even though we've sold our beef in other ways it's obviously been at a much lower price per pound. So I think those are, oh, I guess one last thing. I mentioned that we do other enterprises here that aren't exactly agriculture but like our summer camps which are true farm camps and our on farm events which are obviously featuring our food don't qualify. So that is something I always run into because I'm this mixed. So I'm in Shelburne, I'm zoned as integrated agriculture which has been a wonderful designation and wonderful to work with my town on that. And they've really embraced and been excited about that we do these mixed use things but it provides some challenges around grants and things like this because I ran my summer camp this year which was amazing but I ran it at, I cut it in half but I kept the same, I actually had more costs to run it because I kept the same number of staff and we had a lot more costs for safety protocol. So it ran, it basically didn't make us any money. And again, normally I count on the profit from that to help with some of our other debt. But that's summer camp so that's not really qualifiable in all of this. So it's just hard to understand how to navigate a business that has mixed enterprises among true agriculture enterprises. Cory, did you check with ACCD to see if they had any of their programs that they're offering that would help your summer camp program? It's a similar kind of, I've seen it and I have similar questions. So I need to, again, it's cumbersome and I'm looking into it but we've, so I guess the short answer is I'm looking into it and I haven't gotten my full answer on it yet. Yeah. Are there questions for Cory or Andrea from the committee? No? John, I see John's hand. John. Thank you, Bobby and Carolyn. While we have this assembly of very smart and knowledgeable people, I just wanted to throw out a general question. Why both the ACCD and AAFM COVID applications run you through this W-2 requirement, which there's so many mom and pop businesses in Vermont that that then makes them ineligible? And I just wonder, was that federal strings involved with this money or was it just an administration policy? It seems that, I don't know. John. The smaller you are, the more you're penalized. So John, I don't know what the answer is, but that was gonna be one of my points as we discuss moving forward as sort of triggered by what Andrea said and my actual reaction when I was filling out the grant application is why did they include the need for a W-2 employees? And is that the kind of thing that we could eliminate? It might create some problems for people who have already applied, but that might be a simpler fix than some others might be. So I think that's a question for the folks at the agency of agriculture. And... A-C-C-D. Yeah. A-C-C-D to figure out. Well, it's only that you can be a sole proprietor and apply for the ag money, the $5 million ag money, as long as you didn't have a profit between March 1st and August 1st. But then when you get bumped to the working lands money, all of a sudden you need to have a profit or no, no, no, excuse me, you need to have an employee. And why, you know, why that? That's my question. Well, that's a question for I think us policy makers to ask Anson and Secretary Curley and those folks because I mean, that had to come from the administration. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'd love to know the answer to that. Any, Andrea? I just wanted to add real quickly that, you know, we have heard testimony or you have heard testimony from the agency of agriculture that make, even though they seem to understand how problematic these provisions are, they have made it sound like it's really gonna be difficult and really impossible, largely because of the software developer that the state contracted with to do all these applications. But I just find it really hard to believe that we can't come up with some simple workaround to if it is the will of these committees and the legislature who created this program to make this work for the people who need this relief in the timeframe that we have, let's just get creative and figure out a way to do this. It's disappointing that the agency did not consult before, you know, when they were setting up this application with a lot of the folks who were going to have to be impacted by it. And I think that's part of the reason we ended up with some of the requirements that are so onerous and don't make sense for this sector of agriculture. So we're really appreciative that this program exists. We have to find a way to get it to work for the people who need the help. Well, that's very true. And that's the only reason the program got set up is to help people. And here we are hitting our heads against the wall. But there isn't anything that's impossible to do. So Bobby, earlier in the meeting, Terry Norris put a chat, a little notice in the chat which said that when we heard from Diane Botfield, I can't remember, it must have been yesterday or the day before, who knows. That potentially it could take several weeks to actually implement changes to this program. And so that might be problematic in trying to get the money out in a timely way. I'm not saying that that should stop us, but it's just something that is of concern. But the other thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna say that the agency tried very hard to get this money out quickly. And this was not an easy lift. So I agree with Andrea, it would have been nice to have been consulted about some of this stuff, but they made their best effort. So I think it's pretty amazing that they got done what they got done because they did the dairy first. But anyway, you're right, we wanna get this out to folks who need it. And then that's another question. Do we want this money to go to people who ultimately do make a profit? Or do we want it to go to people who really have experienced serious losses and expenses? Well, that's our jobs to figure this out. And we put this together sort of in a hurry as well. So I mean, we share some of the blame that's for sure. But anyways, we'll move on to the Intervail Center and Sam, are you with us? Hey, Bobby, I think Chris wanted to say something. Senator Peterson. Chris, I think to represent a part of this question, the answer is already answered in the way we handle dairy, the way we handle processors, the way we handle every small business that gets assistance through ACCD. Nobody but diversified farmers has this net profitability requirement. And I think the legislature, the owners should be on us to explain why this class of business should be treated differently. And I can't for the life of me think of a single reason why. So I'm gonna push this back at you guys. Why did you put that in there? We did not. Carolyn, we put that in there because we were trying to get funding for non-dairy farmers. And your committee was not supportive of that. And this was the compromise that we came up with. We wanted farms that were not dairy farms to be able to apply for and get funding to offset their losses and their expenses due to COVID. And this- But why that provision, Ruth? Why that provision? That was the compromise that we agreed to so that you would support this because you wanted to put all of the money into dairy, Carolyn. No, no, you know what, Ruth? That's not exactly true. I'm delighted that we got non-dairy money, but part of this, and we didn't say anything. We want folks who are not gonna make a profit overall but not between those specific dates. We never said that. We can debate who did bought and when but our minds and our hearts were all in the right place. And this issue has come up to be a problem and we just gotta fix it. So rather than spending our time chewing on who did what, when we ought to spend it on fixing the issue which we'll do. And by the way, Bobby, the vegetable and berry growers association are not gonna be available today. So just so you know, we've made up a little bit of time there. Oh, well, I guess we're, so Sam, Sam is Sam with us? I am, yep. So we'll move on to the intervail in their issues. Sam, welcome. Hi, thank you for having me here. My name is Sam Smith. I work for the Intervail Center. I am a farm business planner and I'm primarily funded through the Vermont Farm and Forest Viability Program. I have testified before this group plenty of times before. And, you know, I'd like to echo what Andrea said there first and foremost in that, you know, what's done is done. What we need to do is address the situation and try to move forward and really, you know, I was involved in a number of conversations with the agency around crafting the application for this program and we brought up this issue a number of times during those conversations and their response was always that it was the way this legislation was written and that's why it was gonna end up being the way it was. And I think, you know, the impetus is on this group to make the recommendation that that language needs to be changed and it needs to be addressed as quickly as possible because, you know, I'm not gonna go through all the different nuances that these producers and other groups have put forward here but the majority of them are spot on. I think the points that I would like to make here, I've assisted on numerous dairy applications and a number of the federal program applications, those were, you know, the majority of my life for a couple of months, right, when we went into lockdown and now we're onto this funding. And I think that, you know, the key concern is that this funding is not accessible to the majority of diversified farmers. I have yet to work with a producer that is going to be eligible for that $5 million pot. They just cannot meet those requirements around no net profit. And the reason that is, is that net profit is calculated based on the business activity that's going on. It does not take into account the below the line activity that the majority of farms have, which is that they take that net profit and then they apply it to other expenses such as debt, depreciation and the income of the farmer. So a lot of times that net profit is the income that they take home. So I think a lot of our farms, we've talked about seasonality and we have talked about the difficulty of bookkeeping and applying that bookkeeping to the calculations that the agency is requesting, but the reality is that net profit is sort of, it's not a realistic number because the majority of our farms operate in a pretty leveraged manner and especially dairies. Like if this stipulation had been made for dairy farms, none of those farms would have been able to apply for this funding. So I think once again, it behooves you to go back and change the language, the agency will deal with it. They have been, and I have to say they have been absolutely wonderful. Like the agency people have struggled really hard to make this application process as equitable as possible and bringing service providers into the loop to help with the application. So I think that, but it really is up to them to implement it. It's up to you to change the language. I would make some suggestions around that. I think that it's not impossible. The dairy applications have the same issues around each farm has their own nuances in the way they calculate their profit and the way that they do their bookkeeping. And the agency has been flexible in that in the dairy application. And I think they could be flexible in that in this application. Basically you have to demonstrate what your losses were and they use, generally use 2019 numbers which does hurt newer producers who just started up or we're going through an expansion or if there's a seasonal variability. But it does give you a starting point to say, I made this much in 2019 and I made this much in 2020 because of COVID. And then you can also demonstrate the direct expenses or increase in expenses related to COVID which is farmers should be able to do that. So it's not impossible. It is challenging, but it really is important. The other things that I just wanna emphasize having worked with producers really intensively during this whole time is that these producers, the majority of our diversified producers experienced a very different thing than our dairy producers in that. Their demand jumped exponentially right as we were all going into this sort of period of real great uncertainty. And they really had an increased level of risk associated to their staff and families. And they worked really hard to pivot and serve their communities and provide fresh local food. And it also presented an opportunity for us to grow this food system we've been working on for the past 10 years, 15 years here really intensively, but like through Farm to Plate, we were able to implement things really, really quickly. And I think the working lands money is a great sort of indicator of that. So a number of these farms pivoted so quickly and they had the opportunity to do that where our dairy farmers didn't. But I think what we need to do is if we change this language, it allows us to acknowledge the importance of these businesses to the future of our Vermont communities, right? These farms are the farms that are going to replace the declining dairy farm population. They're gonna utilize that land and they're going to provide the economic activity and the food and the community that we need to maintain our rural character in Vermont. So I would just urge you to go back and change the language or amend the language and the agency is responsible for implementing that, but these businesses need this money to stay in business. I would echo what Jen said right back at the beginning. I saw farms that had a huge spike in sales in March, April, May, and then their sales have totally tailed off as retail stores open back up. And I think the majority of the farms that I work with are probably gonna end up right about in the same spot they were that we had projected they would be at by the end of the year, but there are some that are just not, not in a good position based on their market. So I'm gonna yield the floor here to Amanda who I can think, I think can really speak personally to that experience and what is going on in our farm community right now. Yeah. Thank you, Sam. Before we jump to Amanda, did or have you, have you talked with the agency in regards to the difficulty of the applicants that you've been helping to meet that criteria? So we had extensive, really extensive conversations with the agency around this net profitability language before they even crafted the application. So I have honestly, I have not done, I've had two farms apply for this money because the rest of them look at the application and say it's not worth my time. And they know that they're not eligible for that pool and there is not a lot of clarity around how to demonstrate the losses or increased expenses. I'm happy to help people with that. Like that's why we're here, the farm viability network is, we do have capacity and we're really, we're open to working with people on that. And we did a lot of those for the dairy applications. But with that language inserted there, the majority of our producers are not, they're either not eligible or they're eligible for a very small amount of money. Yeah. Well, we'll talk with Goss and the crew at BHCB to see if they can come on board and help us with this issue because it really needs to be fixed. Yeah. So Amanda, if there ain't questions speak up, but we'll move on to Amanda. Hi, my name is Amanda Andrews. I own and operate Tamaracollo Farm. We raise 10 acres of certified organic vegetables, laying hens on pasture and for 10 years we have done 200 Thanksgiving turkeys on pasture which we are not doing this year because of the fear around COVID returning in the fall and Thanksgiving not being a thing. I started my farm in 2010. I sell exclusively to the New York City Farmers Market. I attended the Union Square Green Market on Wednesdays year round and on Saturdays during peak season. It's a farmers market where 60,000 people walked past my stand. And I was proud to represent Vermont agriculture to that market. We sold to some of the best restaurants in the country. And in March 15th, all of those restaurants were ordered closed. I immediately lost a third of my business. Within a day of that, it became clear that we could no longer responsibly travel to that market for the health of my employees and my family and the state as a whole to not to travel across state lines and 100% of my business was gone. My business has been through a lot. We survived Tropical Storm Irene with the help of farm viability moved my farm to higher land, purchased a farm, an old dairy farm that was not being used. Relocated thereafter went through a divorce with my then partner, bought him out of the business. During all of that time, I was showing increased sales. Growing a very strong business was in a great position, was able to hire more employees year after year, reinvest in my business and take a small salary. With this collapse in the market and inability to access the market, I've grown over 10 years. I pivoted quickly as a lot of the other producers have talked about. I had a truckload of produce ready to go when the restaurant shut down. I cold called every wholesaler I knew and was able to sell all of that produce at a half to a third of the price, even though my costs of creating that product had not changed and had in fact increased. We needed the wholesale markets I was able to pick up in the next few weeks throughout March and early April replaced one of my weekly farmers markets, but that was not gonna be enough to continue operating. So I began a direct market sales through a CSA program like a lot of the producers have talked about. And that was very successful through March and April. In May, we almost hit our 2019 sales numbers. As soon as it started to warm up and people felt more comfortable going to grocery stores, that program collapsed from sales of 75 members to around 30. The losses we're looking at from March 1st through the end of July are about $15,000. August alone is another $15,000. We're looking at more losses going into the fall. I echo what the other producer said about the difficulty of ascertaining profitability and monthly expenses at this time of year when we're all extremely busy. I am in a position that I do know my numbers. I have been able to create all the reports the application requires. And I do know that according to the rules of this application, I show a net profit during that period. That profit is not enough to cover the debt service that Sam is talking about. My mortgage, my delivery truck payment have been graciously deferred during this period. I would already be out of business if they hadn't. The profit I've made during this period is not enough to cover those payments when they come due. I've already shrunk my business to meet what market is available to me. In 2019, I had 14 W2 employees. This year I only have eight. I would love to regain the sales I've lost, but I'm focusing on developing a strong stable business here. And with this aid, I will be able to pay off some of that debt so that I can maintain my business at this new level. This is the same way that dairy farms operate. As Sam spoke to, they did not have this net profit requirement on their aid money. My debt service is not to cover luxuries. It's to cover a tractor, a delivery vehicle, my mortgage, my pickup truck that I use for poultry chores. Without aid, I will not be able to service this debt and I will go bankrupt while I'm showing a profit. That's just for this period. As a lot of the meat producers said, fall is an extremely expensive time. Our labor needs increase going into fall, our feed costs for our poultry, our winter housing costs, getting winter housing up and secure, securing our tunnels and our fall and winter vegetable crops that our neighbors will depend on if grocery stores once again become an unsafe place. All of those costs are being incurred now and I do not know if they will yield a profit next year or not. I know that you all have put a lot of work into this and I really hope they are able to examine the net profitability language and the timeframe in which that net profitability period is currently put into place. The idea of net profitability on a diversified farm or a dairy farm on any farm is really a false notion. None of us are rolling in the dough where as Sam said, that is what we use to service our debt and maybe take home a paycheck at the end of the year. So without what is being termed net profitability, I can't operate my business. Well, are you finished? Go ahead, Amanda. No, I was just gonna say, I appreciate the work you put into it. I really hope that we're able to find a fix for this. I don't know what that fix is. It's painful to hear that the reason it can't be fixed is because of a contract with a software company or a computer programmer that that's gonna risk putting our farms that are keeping our working landscape functioning out of business. It does not seem like a fair trade-off. Well, we certainly have our work cut out for us to fix this. See, part of the applications are already in. People have got their applications half-filled out. So we'd have to, I don't know, forgive that section, but then when you go on your computer and push the button, I don't know, we need to really spend some serious time with a computer programmer to see if this can be done without having to change everybody's application, whether it could be changed right in-house. So anyways, are there questions? Somebody had their hand up, Charlotte. Sharon, thank you. I cannot actually do more than video and communicate and listen right now because my internet's so poor, but I guess I tried looking at the Agency of Ag website to see if there was an option for people to print off the form and fill it out by hand. There's not, okay. So we are really stuck, okay? So I would like to say that the dairy application has an option to come in and amend it. So the dairy application actually allows for a second, essentially what is a second application for additional costs later in the year. So once again, I commend the Agency for the work that they've done, but I think what your responsibility is to really to address the legislation, their responsibility is to figure out how to implement it. But I don't think it's impossible. I think what we have here is it's a lot of work, but everything at this point is a lot of work. Yes. So it's like, if you wanna make this $5 million accessible to the farmers who rightfully should have access to it, you need to change the language to make that happen. Bobby? Bobby? Yes. So I would ask Sam for any suggestions he might have. I do know that having filled this out myself, that the almost the second to the last step, there's a page about economic harm. So for instance, my New York sheep and wool festival, which is a major portion of my income is in October, which is technically past the date of August 1st. But actually it might go till September 30th, but at any rate, you have an opportunity to include economic harm. And I'm wondering if Amanda could include, if she did apply, if she could include all of those payments that she has to make in that economic harms section. And I don't know, Sam, you're... Yeah, so that's the way that they have addressed the sort of variability in the dairy applications is that economic harm section. And once again, it goes back to some of the challenges around the software and the capacity to upload documents. That can be challenging, but that's where they have allowed farms to really advocate for what they see as an additional expense or an additional level of loss. So a great example of that would be, say a farm that had to pivot over to direct market sales. Like I worked with a dairy that their primary market, which was a cheese maker evaporated and they had some raw milk sales and they pivoted and built a farm stand and they were able to advocate that the renovations to the farm stand in that addition of a point of sale system so that they could have customers interact in a cashless environment was an additional expense related to COVID. And that's gonna allow that farm to stay in business. And I think the calculations around net profit and thinking about later in the year, I think being able to demonstrate the loss, like in terms of Amanda's case, she has really good numbers. I've worked with her, she's a phenomenal producer and a phenomenal businesswoman. She is what I would consider to be a top tier farmer in this state. And she has the records to look back and look what her sales are. I know that that Thanksgiving market was probably maybe even like 20% of your sales for the year. It's a huge, huge market. And so she has the capacity to look at what that potential level of sales was and then what she could project out for sales based on her product availability. If she's not going to that market, she doesn't have that $40,000 in income that they would have generated in that day. So. Right. And that could have been potentially something that she listed as economic harm for the month of November. Yep. Yeah. I do wanna say the way the application is structured. It's asking for receipts to document costs and stuff. And it's really hard to know my fear with, I have my application done, I have not submitted it yet out of fear that it's gonna be flagged for questions and the pool of money that I'm eligible for is gonna disappear before I can answer those questions because I am shunted into this smaller pool of money. The documentation of how do you prove a negative? How do I demonstrate that the profitability that my quick folks profit and loss statement shows is not really there. That's the money I'm gonna use to pay my debt service that I know I would have made X amount of money at the Thanksgiving market, but I'm not going. Documenting those sorts of losses when I know I have a limited amount of time and the pool of money is shrinking every day is stressful because this aid is what is going to keep my business going. Yeah, thanks, Amanda. Yeah, the non-dairy, you know, there's a ton of money left in that kitty and it's very important that we figure out how to get this done so you folks can pick that up and use it to stay in business. So, you know, that's our full intentions of fixing this so that you can qualify and get what we planned is rightfully yours for your losses. Any other questions, Anthony? Yeah, two things. One is clearly we've got to fix this problem. I mean, we helped create it. We need to fix it. These folks are making it really clear what the problem is. I wonder whether there's a possibility of the working lands program is a Vermont program, not a federal program. Is there a way that we can change the criteria of the working lands program to remove that issue around the W-2, how many W-2 employees do you have and move change the criteria in the working lands program to allow more people to qualify? We'd also have to make sure the CARES money is moved over into that program because there's obviously more money available to move the five million over to the working lands program. But I guess what I'm saying is instead of trying to change the program that we've screwed up, move all that money into working lands and then change the criteria for the working lands program so that we make it easier for people to qualify for that money. So it's just a thought. I mean, we'd have to think it through more, but I just wonder if there's a possibility of doing that. Well, that was my intention is to try to change that. And yeah, that's a Vermont, like you said, a Vermont law and we should be able to amend that bill without too many problems. Especially since we've changed a lot of things as part of the emergency response to COVID-19. So we could even say that we're changing it for this particular time frame or whatever, but so this problem goes away. So Bobby, I think that the money that's in that portion of the working lands and Michael Grady's on the call, so he can correct me if I'm wrong. I think that is COVID money that we're talking about. So there are certain requirements, but as to when it needs to be spent, but I'm not sure why the requirement is there for a W-2 employee. Mike, do you know the answer to that? I just checked the act that appropriated that money. I could not find the W-2 requirement. I've reached out to the drafter of it to see if he can provide some information on that. I will let you know as soon as I find out, but you are correct that the money, that's a large part of the money, not all of it that's in working lands right now is CRF money, CARES Act money. So would it be possible for us to move more of that money into that fund? Yes. Yeah, thank you. And there's no requirement in the federal money that you have to be non profitable or profitable or have W-2s because we didn't put any of that in the farm language, the dairy farm language. And that's rolling along pretty decent. So I'm glad you're with us, Michael. I didn't realize you were on. So you've heard the discussion and Michael, for those of you that aren't familiar, Michael O'Grady's our legal person for the ag committees along with some other committees and does an excellent job working, doing our workforce. So anyways, Bobby, I hope that we get this figured out for you along with the rest of the people that have testified so far. We still have some more to get to Carolyn. Yeah, the only thing I wanna say is that I think that the part of the tension here is the timeline of it all and making sure that people who really need the money get the money but that it has to be expended. And this is a question for Michael Grady too by I think it's December 20th. I could be wrong about that. But so it has to be out there and it's technically supposed to be, I believe spent. Is that correct, Mike? No, that's not, I mean, even from me, that's not correct in the farm language stuff. It has to be expended from the agency to the farmer but the farmer does not have to have it expended. Okay. So you're both a little right. So the federal requirement is reversion of any unexpended funds on December 30th. To avoid that and to allow for use, the authorized uses under the CARES Act on December 20th, state law provides that any unexpended money is going to go into the UI fund which is an authorized use, the unemployment insurance fund which is an authorized use under the CARES Act. For the issue of expenditure, all of the ag programs is, the applicants need to show economic harm. They have to already show expenses. So what they are being awarded is their expenses. And so effectively a grant from the agency meets the expenditure requirement under the CARES Act. Okay. If they were looking for future costs, future expenses, then the recipient would have to spend that by the December 30th deadline. So future expenses need to be spent by the recipient. Economic harm, prior expenses, they are effectively just reimbursing the applicant. So are we all set on that issue? So are there any other questions for Sam? If not, we'll move on. I understand the vegetable and berry people are not with us, so we'll move on. Nico has his hands up there, Senator Starr. Who? Do you see him? Nico Horster there is raising his hand. Oh, I didn't see that, but. If I could ask a clarifying question about that. So if we're looking at expenses that this is directed to Michael, which was very helpful to hear that. So in our world, as you probably heard, I don't know how long you've been on the call, I've been tracking all the participants. A lot of our expenditures are seasonal. So can we pre-expend? I'm paying my hay bills now out of my line of credit. Can I pay my line of credit, which I wouldn't usually pay back till the spring when I have the money again. Can I pay that as an expenditure with the grant? So to start pre-expending it and therefore show a loss. Because if I did that and I paid my hay bills right now, I would have a loss on my books and then I would get the grant and then I would actually issue the check to my hay supplier for my winter feeding bill, which is gonna put me in the negative numbers again. So this is what we're talking about, but this is not a common accounting practice. I would consider this somewhat questionable. And so really, but this is what we're talking about. This is what I'm hearing from Amanda. This is what we hear heard from Corey and all of us are similar in that our expenses fluctuate wildly, we have debt service that is relatively constant, but for some of us, the debt service accumulates with the large bills at certain times of the year. Thank you. I just wanna address that a little bit just in the conversations with the agency of AG. I think the way they've approached this in the dairy applications is that they have, you have to be able to justify the expense. So that is obviously pre-paying expenses is a commonplace way of potentially dodging a tax bill, but it's not necessarily gonna get you more funding in this case. I think it doesn't, if you're in a sort of game of system to not show a net profit through paying your hay bill, you may be able to do that in this case. But I think overall the agency is looking through the details of each of these applications and they will come back with questions if there's a questionable expense like that. And then they would probably ask for documentation from 2019, which is what they've done for the dairy farms around that type of thing. Michael, this is Bobby. Do you have any answers to the questions that Nicael asked? I think, you know, technically on the just a plain reading of the language in the bill and the federal guidance, you might be able to do that pre-order, but I think Sam is correct that the agency is going to look and see that you're not trying to manipulate your expenses and is trying to do due diligence to make, to ensure that there are good faith expenses. Oh, yeah, totally. I completely hear you there. I mean, I have the hay, the hay comes off the field directly to us. I don't pay my hay bill till February, March, April or whenever. So there's a built-in line of credit by the hay suppliers, which is unofficial, but in theory, they could invoice me right now. I could pay it right now and I'd be, you know, I'd be in or shape financially, correct? You could make a good faith assertion that that is a current expense and the billing has just changed from previous years. Yeah. That type of kind of fact base on the ground expense is something that the agency is going to review. And before you start, you know, gathering more expenses, you probably should check with the agency on what they're going to review as good faith. If there's no, thank you, Michael. If there are no other questions, we'll move on to the Vermont Maple sugar makers and Allison Hooper, are you on? I am, it's Hope as a last name, which is good to have right now. Oh, yes. Thank you. Thank you for having us. And I'll keep it brief because I think that everyone has really clearly made the point. And I'm glad, I think it was probably Andrea who first brought it up. I'm glad she brought up the W2 issue. It really is a double whammy for most folks. So the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association as one of the oldest ag associations in the United States, we've been around since 1893. Right now we represent about 1,000 producers. Many of them are smaller producers who have less than 4,000 taps. So really small family producers, just like most of the people on this call trying to make a living on Vermont's working landscape. Between the net profit benchmark between March and August and having W2 employees, those are barriers to entry for most, the majority of Maple producers who are smaller. So again, like everyone else were seasonal and March to August, that timeframe doesn't represent that seasonality. So the Maple season, as you probably know, runs from mid-to-late February and into April, depending of course on where your sugar bush is located in the state. So this year producers were able to tap trees and collect and boil down sap into syrup. But their income from the 2020 crop has either been uprooted, severely delayed, or has been a lot less profitable than usual depending on how they had to pivot based on their own family and business needs and what sort of income they needed right after the season. So our smaller producers often have done what they felt like they needed to do to diversify their income base, as you've heard from meat and vegetable producers. So they've incorporated agriturism, in-person, local sales, retail, wholesale, restaurants, fairs and festivals, schools, colleges and online. And those who thought they'd diversified enough for good business planning, that sort of went out the window this year. So, and then our Maple Open House weekend in March was one of the first statewide events that was canceled because of the pandemic. We weren't gonna see people coming into the state, we clearly didn't want people coming into the state. And small family sugar houses didn't necessarily want crowds in their sugar houses. And that for folks is a great way to create new marketing and new relationships around the region and not just in Vermont. So they couldn't sell there. The other issue that Maple has run into is that we need to package our product in order to sell it. And the pandemic has caused an issue, a lot of unexpected issues for everybody, but an unexpected issue in the sense that we've had a harder time getting association containers from our producer who creates the container, lines it with a coating, and then gives us the plastic caps to go with it. When I tried to get plastic caps for our sample jars at this point, those plastic caps have a 20 week turnaround time. So our jugs have had a months turnaround time. So people who ordered their jugs on time last January, many of them are just receiving those jugs right now to be able to sell syrup. So having a product and putting the expense into getting a product is one thing, but at this point, if you don't have the jugs to sell your maple syrup, you may be able to get in with a bulk buyer if you haven't already had that relationship. If you pivot it in that way, it means that you're earning far less per pound of maple syrup than you would otherwise. Maple producers are at the point this fall where they're gonna be getting ready for next season. So their expenses for tapping and tubing and labor in the sugar bush, their equipment upgrades, and trying to order more containers to package their product, those expenses are coming without the associated income that's gonna help them get ready for the next season. So not fixing this language to give them access to funding that they need between the no net profit and the W2 employees means that we're creating this ripple effect where they're not gonna be ready to have the money to get ready for the next season. And that's just gonna cause problems down the line. Our maple producers that are smaller don't have W2 employees. They're using family, they're using friends, or they're doing it themselves. And so if they showed a net profit because they were able to pivot some of their crop this year into cash, they're not gonna fall into the other bucket. They're not gonna qualify because they don't have those W2 employees. I also have Emma Marvin from Butternut Mountain Farm who's the chair of our board. Her family also produces syrup and they operate a retail establishment. So she's here to share some other perspective. Hi folks, thanks for taking time to listen to each of the stories from producers and from those associations that represent producers across Vermont's diversified agricultural economy. I'll just add a couple of points to build on what Allison has already shared. I wanna set the scene a little bit by reminding everybody that as the first crop for the state of Vermont, maple producers were producing our crop at the peak of uncertainty as COVID was really ramping up. And so what we experienced with the producers that we work with here at Butternut Mountain Farm was a tremendous amount of concern on their part about whether the market that they are typically used to selling into would even exist. All of the producers with whom we work and all of the producers that I'm aware of as members of VMSMA, I think took solace in going into the woods and having a harvest, but there was a tremendous amount of uncertainty during that process. And as Allison alluded to, a number of the VMSMA members and sugar makers across the state lost an opportunity to directly market their products by having visitors come into the sugar house. What we've seen as time has progressed in our own business is a 75% reduction in sales going into the food service sector, a 40 plus percent reduction in sales going into the specialty sector. And I highlight those two because those are two of the markets where producers have the easiest access to sell directly into those markets rather than working through a processor like Butternut Mountain Farm. In the case of my business, we are very diversified. So the retail where we wholesale into retailers, grocery stores, club channel, mass market, that those customers have done phenomenally well and our business has grown because of the demand we're seeing through those channels. But that is the only place that our business has seen growth and everywhere else, there's been a dramatic reduction and certainly those markets are challenging for individual producers to have access to. That's one of the values that Butternut Mountain Farm brings in the supply chain is access to those markets that are too difficult for us as individuals to gain access to. The other thing I would just highlight is that Maple and this speaks a little bit to what Amanda highlighted around the uncertainty of the future. Maple's a cold weather food. So while we produce our crop in the spring, the reality is that much of the sales we experience are relatively static in the summer. We have farmers markets and that is a very important outlet for a number of producers, but the reality is many of our Vermont Maple producers right now are trying to decide how they're going to put their product out to market. Are they going to sell to a processor like Butternut Mountain Farm because of the uncertainty in their more traditional markets in the fall, craft shows, specialty markets, direct to consumer, all of that uncertainty provides a tremendous amount of challenge for those individuals and we're getting regular phone calls now at Butternut Mountain Farm from producers who typically either withhold a portion of their crop for sales in the third and fourth quarter or have all of their crop move through ancillary channels, direct to consumer, direct to food service, direct to specialty retailer and those folks are looking for markets for their serpent to Allison's point. There is a dramatic difference in the cost, the value that those producers are going to receive for the products that they sell when they choose to sell in bulk versus to those other channels directly. So it's a really challenging time and I'm grateful that you all have put time and energy into trying to develop a program that addresses the risks that agricultural producers are having. I think representative Partridge earlier in the conversation you highlighted, it's complicated. I think we all recognize that we have a diversity of businesses, a diversity of business models and that uncertainty makes how all of those models work even more challenging. And so I can appreciate the challenge you all face in trying to put together the boundaries of a program that is fair and equitable across a wide variety of needs. And with that, I think I will stop and open it up for questions for Allison and I. Bobby, you're muted. Bobby. Yeah, didn't I sound good? Yeah, you were really, you were at your best right then. Yeah, thank you. Brian, you had a question, Senator Calmore. No, actually, Senator, I was just telling you you were muted. Sorry. When I do this, it means I can't hear you. Oh, well, I'll pay more attention to your hand signals. I'm wondering in regards to Maple, I understand that this year was an exceptionally good year for sugar makers as far as production. Is that accurate or not? I think for most, it was average to good. It really depends on where your sugar bush is and what your, the sugar content of your sap was. So some areas of Vermont experienced low sugar content. And so the higher sap yield meant that you made about the same, you're able to make about the same amount of syrup as in prior years. So it varies based on location, but it was a good crop this past year. Yeah, well, that's helpful if you sell it. Bobby. In a year when you could, you're correct. Bobby, I'll speak up for Rodney who could not be on this call. Rodney Graham from Williamstown, our vice chair. He reached his goal of over 2,000, more than 2,000 gallons, but he sells a lot of his syrup to the Capitol Plaza, which closed. And so while he had this great goal and met it, his market was significantly diminished. However, I will give a plug for his maple, it's actually his nephew, his maple filled donuts are to die for. And if you happen to be able to find a store that sells them, it's Graham Family Farms, maple cream filled donuts, really good. They have centered a lot of their new online marketing and Facebook and Instagram posts to their donuts in the Montpelier area, local stores, yeah. Yeah, they're wonderful. One thing I would add to answer that question, if I may, is just around the bulk markets. And so folks that were selling into the bulk market did see a significant decline in what they were being paid for their syrup between 2019 and 2020, largely driven by the Canadian exchange rate. And well, folks can make arguments about whether that was COVID related or not, certainly the currency of fluctuations were dramatically impacted by the uncertainty of what COVID brought to the environment. Yeah, other questions for Allison or Emma? If, thank you both very much for your time and your testimony. And we'll move on to Vermont Farm Bureau. Joe, are you with us? Yes, you're right on the screen. So, Maureen, welcome, Joe. Yeah, I don't wanna, I mean, I'm always not on muting myself, so I appreciate the fact. First of all, this is Joe Tisbert from Valley Green Farm and from Farm Bureau. Thank you for what you guys are doing here. This is my pleasure to be on today. I feel like I haven't seen you guys forever and I look forward, I always look forward to working with everyone here. So our goal today was really, we thought that this discussion was gonna be set around diverting dairy funds from dairy to other types of agriculture, which clearly this is not the discussion for today, which is fine with me because I wear a lot of those hats and it's so important that we have the ability to not only service, but to help every farm of every size of every type. And so clearly a lot of the things that we would have discussed have been brought up, the W-2 situation, the timeline, the application. I just finished the application for my own business. We've had a devastating summer because we do a lot with agritourism and our agritourism is non-existent. I think we were able to serve 20 people all summer, which is, we would normally serve thousands of people during the summer months here. So we have this clear, it's about a third of our businesses has gone away. So we are happy that we were able to put an application in and try to apply for some funds to see if this will help us out. But on the same token, overall some of our business was a little stronger, especially plant sales in an early season with the strongest we've ever had. I've been on the phone with farms that are doing maple. One of the farms in particular, and I don't mean to step on maple's toes, but one of the farms in particular has those festivals and farm sales. They have completely lost at least 50% of their business going down. And I've told them to jump on and try to apply for this funds to see if it'll work for them. But it's very important that we look at all the aspects of these businesses that are doing it, along with dairy and what's happening with dairy. I mean, we can't forget anybody here. This would be horrible to do. One of the things that I think we should bring up and I think it's been stated quite a ways around is I think the governor's budget is cutting, or not cutting, but putting $550,000 into working lands. This processing issue is not gonna go away without serious state funding. We need an entrepreneur that said, or entrepreneurial type people that are gonna say, I'm interested in this and I wanna do it. But it's clear that we don't have enough processing in this state. It's clear that a lot of the livestock farmers around us that sell meat directly have really had a boom and in a short timeframe, but overall they're not able to get animals harvested. So there's a lot of things here that you guys have hit today. I think there's a lot of good points being made about the size farm. If we don't support all the small farms, then we're not gonna have a couple of small farms in the state. We need to make sure that the funds are directed in the right ways. So I would suggest that you think about and when you get to your budget discussions that you think about the working lands and if this is something that we need as a state to do, I think there should be some kind of strategic plan that says, okay, we wanna earmark some of this money for that and we should give a little more money to the working lands because it is so critical to some of the working pieces in our state. As an organic grower myself, you know, we had to, we had on a time when we didn't think we were gonna have any early season sales, we shifted to online buying and it seemed to have worked pretty well for that first two months of the period. Then when agritourism kicked in, it really devastated our business and so we need to like make sure that other people who have these same issues are making sure they can fill out the application correctly. There is problems with the application. It is difficult in a lot of ways to do. I have my business, I can't survive without a bookkeeper so with her help, I think it took us three hours to get this form filled out and we got kicked off like multiple times. I mean, so most of us farmers who are working and are running in and trying to spend a half an hour or an hour on this farm and then coming back, going back to the field, doing things, you know, this should be a way to save all the information that are on this form so you don't have to start over every time and that's what we noticed. You know, it took us more than a week and a half to get it filled out and sent in because we just didn't have the time to do it and that's where most farmers are at today. They don't have as much help as they used to have because the cash flows unless they got a really good market change has gone but I've talked to farmers who have CSAs, I've talked with farmers that are doing Maple, I've talked to farmers that are doing Livestock, you know, across the board, you know, people need help and I appreciate you guys' effort to try to make this happen for everyone. I would strongly suggest, and you know, my original reason to be on the call is Dairy and I'm hoping Mary's still on to let you guys know about the problem with the applications that she's come up with but we need to make sure that if you can extend that deadline most of these farmers are not gonna be able to get to know September milk till October. So when you have a deadline in October 1st, you know, you're not hitting all this stuff. I'm hoping Mary's on, Mary, are you on? Yeah, I'm here, can you hear me? Yeah, could I pass it off to Mary right now to give you a little discussion about that? I would really appreciate that. Bobby, can you hear me? I can hear you Mary, sorry. Ruth, did you have a question of Joel right now or do you wanna wait until Mary finishes her testimony? I can wait for Mary, thanks Bobby. Go ahead Mary. And well again, thank you all and I think this is a very important conversation to have and we are glad that Farm Bureau could be a part of it. I just wanted to touch base a little bit on what's going on in the dairy application specifically. A lot of people are having similar issues to what I've heard today with loading documents, untimely responses and just trying to get the application done during one of our busiest times of year with haying and everything else that comes with getting ready for corn harvest. So I know we got the recent report that only 20% of the funds have been used. Most of the people I have talked to are waiting until September because they wanna be able to capture the full loss. What's happening as well is organic dairy farmers are applying for this grant and getting improved as well, which is a good thing if they're experiencing any losses or any extra expenses. So it's not just conventional dairy, this does reach across the board but we wanna make sure that we're getting those dairy farmers all the resources they need to apply and I would strongly encourage to extend the deadline because as we mentioned the September milk right now, we're still operating under COVID restrictions for milk production and a new thing in the last few months that we haven't had before is the producer price differential. So that's locally based in the Northeast and we're actually not able to capture the full value of the market in our milk price because of this differential. What it's doing is there's too much, it goes on the fluid milk for your region and based on cheese sales. So we're actually seeing a negative PPD come out of our milk checks right now and we expect that to continue for a few months. So we're not out of the woods yet by any means and we appreciate the opportunity to apply for the application, but dairy farmers again, we're really under the gun right now to get crops in. A lot of people are waiting till September. So I do think that a lot of these funds will be used and from everyone we've talked to right now from the day of application to the actual payment is about four weeks. So there's a significant lag in time when we're looking at that. So I think there's a lot of money on the table right now that is probably already spoken for even within just yesterday. Thank you, Mary. There, Ruth, did you had a question, Ruth? Yeah, I just wanted to go back to Joe and something he said, because it's the first time I've heard it. There are clearly a lot of issues with the technical ability to fill out this application. And you mentioned that you're not able to save the application midway through. Like if you don't finish it in one sitting you lose what you've put in there. Is that what I heard? That's what we experienced. So whether I did something totally, you know my abilities of the computer and all that if whether it was something we did or not did but none of the information saved once we filled it out at all you had to go back through the whole thing again. And not that the form is totally inept. It's just there's a lot in there that, you know if you're busy you're never, it didn't save. So for our instance, it didn't save. I'm not sure if other people have had the same experience but and I just know with my personal business and Farm Bureau issues and things to handle I don't really get a lot of three hours to sit at the computer very often as I, you know, to get this stuff done. So especially when it's paperwork because you know I want to be right back in the field and let somebody else- Of course. Andrea, can you just be really quick to confirm or deny the saving application thing? Yeah, I can clarify because I sat through the webinar that the agency offered to people who were going to apply. There is a feature of the online form that you have to complete a page in order to get it to save. If you stop in the middle of a page, you lose everything. And it's not, apparently it's not really obvious that that's how it works, but that is what they said. Okay, well I find this a little ironic that one of the reasons we're having a hard time figuring out how to modify this is because of an expensive software developer who developed an application that you can't even save. So that's problematic. Just to be clear, you can save it. You just have to do it when you get to the end of a page. Right, you have to do it at the exact right time but if you have to run out and, you know- Yep. Milk your cows or get the hay in before it rains you might not have the luxury of being able to stop at the right time. And so that seems problematic and something that we hadn't heard. We had the Senate Agriculture Committee had talked with the agency about the deadline. And one of the things that we were considering and the agency seemed amenable to was November 15th to change the deadline for all of the programs to then and that they would have enough time to get everything processed. So that would give people a lot more time and hopefully be able to work through some of these. And I don't know if it's helpful or possible to ask them to offer a paper application because I know not everybody has access to the internet sufficient at their homes. But it's good to hear that this is another issue that's come up for people. I mean, not good to hear, but interesting to hear. So thanks. I think there would be, excuse me if I can speak. I think that this would be beneficial to some producers who are not so readily available on the computer. I mean, I know there's a place as they can go get help but how many of them will? And if it was a not just online application I think it would be beneficial. Yup. Other questions for Joe or? This is not a question, Bobby, but one little, oh and John O'Brien did have his hand up but one little thing on the application that I will add is that once you finish the page on economic harm if you move forward to the next page and you go back because you wanna add something I was not able to do that. It wasn't critical but it's something that anybody filling this out if anybody's watching this and wants to know once you move to that final page where you check off all of the things you agree to and understand you can't back up and change your narrative about economic harm. Yeah, it's weird. So John had his hand up. Yes, John O'Brien. Thank you, Bobby. I was thinking back to our testimony on the dairy side of things in June when we were hearing of those enormous losses to the dairy side of things and that even the caps we were putting in place we're only gonna cover, I don't know, probably some people on this know better but maybe 10 or 20%, nobody was gonna be made whole by these COVID relief funds. And so I was thinking, would there be a way and Michael O'Grady might have some ideas about this? Would there be a way to just completely simplify the diversified agriculture and say, if you made $100,000 selling carrots last year or maple syrup, if we just said, okay, you're gonna get 15% of that, we understand you're not gonna be made whole. Let's just declare all farms in Vermont have suffered some sort of economic harm and base it on, say, last year's gross sales. Something really simple so that we spend this money. Because I think we've seen here, if we're worried about fraud or people who made a little money somehow, they were just in a sweet spot, it's really minuscule. And the more important thing is to get this money out because it's a bridge just to a post COVID time. Are you still with us, Michael? I'm here, I think you could do that, but my concern would be exhaustion of the funds relatively quickly. The agency has always said they don't know how many non-dairy farmers there are. And they've estimated it at approximately 2000 to 3000, right, because that's in the neighborhood of how many people have claimed farming income. With $5 million in a designated percentage of previous year's revenue, I think you probably exhaust that money quickly. I'd wanna talk to Nolan about that at JFO. But yeah, you can do that. That's not hard from a drafting perspective and you could characterize it as for reimbursement of expenses due to COVID. But I'd be concerned about the amount of money that would be available. Well, the size of the firms, different firms would make a big difference. Maple producers, there's some that do a tremendous amount of syrup some that do a hundred gallons or 200 gallons. Yeah, it would be tricky to do it that way. I think, John, but we're all ears. We can visit about it and try to look at it and see both sides of the issue. Yep, I mean, we're sort of doing that with the dairy side of things. The LFOs are eligible for a lot more than the small certified, for example. Yeah, Rose? Yeah, I mean, John, I am sympathetic to that and was thinking along the same lines, but when we created those categories, it's because exactly what Michael said is that there are way more farms and we're still not sure how many farms. So we had to create some kind of tiered system like we did with dairy so that there wouldn't be a few big farms that came in and got all of it, especially since we only had a very limited amount of money for this, the non-dairy farms. But I agree that the caps are, especially since the maximum is only $20,000, that's problematic because it's much lower than other grant programs, including the working lands. So there certainly is an incentive to go for the working lands if you can. And so it's certainly problematic, but there was a concern that the money would be blown through with just a few farms if we didn't have the tiered system like in the same with the dairy. So are there other questions from committee members of Joe or Mary? Carolyn, anything else from your side? Are you gonna, have you sent your letter? No, you haven't sent your letter yet. You said you've gotta get your committee to vote on it. I think they've contacted me and it's gonna be sent. It's gotta be sent by the end of business today. We've sort of finalized it. And as I said, I think that the solution to this is gonna take a little bit more discussion to reach something that really works. So I think, and we've been asked to weigh in on, as I said earlier, numbers of two approach, not so much policy. I think it makes sense for us to continue to work on this and I think it makes a lot of sense for us to work together. You're muted, Bobby. Bobby, you're muted. There you go. You really like to hear me, don't you? I didn't mute you. You muted yourself. Well, see, as far as I know, what's gonna happen, there's gonna be a general bill made an amendment to the COVID funding programs. And we're gonna be part of that larger bill. It won't be part of the budget. It'll be a separate adjustment to the COVID funding proposal. And so we're gonna have to get our amendments and Michael has already put together several sections of that, our proposal that we're gonna give to a provost to follow through on. Michael, have you shared that with the house at all? I have not. Maybe you could, as long as you guys are all crazy in the house and amend our work that we're doing, but we could certainly work together to add some additional language to our proposals that we're gonna forward to our Appropriations Committee. And it would be helpful if you guys could, you know, work on that and take part in it because we're gonna need, you know, both sides have got to agree to it in the end anyway. So it would be good if we could all agree on the Ag, at least the Ag stuff and move forward. Well, I would agree. I think it's a great idea. And I think that we've asked some questions here that are important. I think moving the date is probably not a problem. Michael's already got that in our draft. Okay. And then the question about, can we eliminate the question about the W-2 employer, ployee rather, I think is important to ask. Michael's gonna investigate that, right? Michael? Yeah, but I've already, I think it's a CARES Act requirement, but there's been some hubbub about removing it. I know David Hall has been talking to the Senate Economics Development Committee about removing it for the ACCD programs. So it's something that I'll have more information for you on probably later today or tomorrow. Yeah. So the date, see the W-2 issue is an issue. The other is moving the money from the farm program to working lands to avoid that particular issue. How much, you know, how much should we move or leave that up to the agency to decide as the funds are being paid out. So we've got plenty of things that we can work on within the next, I would expect next week will be the tell time. I know the President Pro Tem said that once the budget's done, we're going home regardless of what's left on the table. So if you got, did your committee get done with the appropriations bill? Did you say that, Carol? Yes. There we did. Outer. Oh, our approach is not finished. We finished our recommendation to approach. Oh, okay. So we've still got then a week or two because once we get the bill, it's going to take us a week or so to wrap it up. So we're good until probably mid week next week to get our stuff together. Right. Do you think that timeline is somewhat accurate, Michael? Yeah, I think that's probably pretty accurate. Yeah. So anyways, so you'll keep working, Carolyn, with your side and we'll keep doing our thing and we'll communicate on how you're doing and how we're doing. Next week. So Bobby, I actually have a question to ask and I don't want to start any firestorms here. I guess what I want to understand and if Mike can share your suggestions with us, that would be a good starting place. But does anyone here feel that people who have not lost money, who may have been doing well and at this point, see that they're going to prosper in some way, be able to apply for this COVID money? Well, my quick answer is why would, if anybody's doing well, why would they apply for it in the first place? Why not leave it for the people that aren't doing so well when you only got an amount that's only gonna cover maybe 20, 25% of the losses anyways? Well, I agree with you, I understand that, but then we hear about the unemployment situation where people were kind of trying to get extra money. There was supposedly fraud going on. So I just want, you know, like that's a, and I see part of this problem is this timeline crunch where a lot of us who are a diversified ag won't maybe know until December whether they are really in hot water or not. And yet there's this requirement that applications be in and the money be spent or at least expended by the agency by a certain date. And so I don't like it, but I'm just wondering how we handle that. What's fair? Well, I mean, Rose. I think what's fair is that we create this program or amend this program to be the same as all the other economic development grants that we've put for other types of businesses and they don't have this kind of requirement. And we've made it more difficult for the non-dairy diversified farmers, whatever you want to call them, this sector of agriculture that we have for other sectors of agriculture and other types of businesses. So bringing this program more in line with the other programs, that's what's fair. And in terms of the accusations of fraud, I think they've been overblown and that most people are doing what is right for their business and for their family and trying to make ends meet during a pandemic. And I think that there are plenty of guardrails in place for these programs. There's a full state system in place and we just wanna make sure that the farmers get the help that they need and make this as flexible and easy accessible as possible. And that was where we were trying to head with the draft that Michael has started on our side. And it would be great if we could all agree on that on both these committees. That sounds good, Ruth. I will say also, and I wonder if you included anything about paper applications, I will say applying for this really tested my skills. Everything I've learned about computers has basically been taught by my kids or learned from my kids, but it was challenging. And I got inventive with screenshots of emails on my phone of emails from both sheep and wool festivals saying that they were canceled in order to prove it. So I'm wondering if the paper copy is available for any of this. Also, I noticed that John Bartholomew's hand is up, but anyway. I don't think there is a paper copy available, but I think that's certainly something we should ask the agency of because we've heard that in other testimony that there are farmers who don't even have internet access. So even if they had computer skills, they don't have internet access. So I think it's problematic. Yes. Michael tried to get us a paper copy, but once you get to a certain point, it kicks you out if you don't put in certain names and numbers and all this. We couldn't even print a form. Go ahead, Mike. Diane said it might, it would be difficult to print a paper copy because of formatting. She didn't say it was impossible. So I don't know if it truly is impossible, but it would be difficult. And so that's, I know you're trying to cut Solomon's baby here. You want something that's easy and accessible and that the agency can implement quickly. That's an online application, right? To move money. If you're going to be asking the agency to be processing a thousand paper applications, that's not going to happen quickly. So maybe the answer, Mike, for folks who don't have computer access or don't have computer skills is to contact VHCB and ask them for help. Well, that's what's supposed to happen and they take their iPad right with them and go meet with the firm and fill it out on, I believe on their iPad or, yeah, their laptop. Yeah, so I'm saying this for the sake of anybody who might be watching. I noticed that John Bartholomew's hand is up, John. I'm really hesitant to use the federal government as an example for anything, but I want to point out that when they gave the payments out to taxpayers, there was really nothing that looked at need whatsoever. They just sent the money. So just another approach. Well, they have a printing press that just keeps pumping the money out down there, which we don't have, so we're going to leave money. That's where the money came from. It is federal money, so it came from their printing press. I just wanted to point it out as an example of another approach. So, but I got to tell you that that system is based on IRS tax computers, right? You put in your social security number, they can check what your AGI was last year. They can check if you were listed as a dependent last year. It's not just that they cut you a check. I know people that were denied because they were dependents. My next-door neighbor's kids were denied because they were dependents last year. And so it wasn't just they cut a check. There was- I know, but my point is that it wasn't based on need. Money just came and they have no idea whether the person who got the money needed it suffered any loss. Right. Well, there are people who earn too much money to qualify for those payments too. So, yeah. Yes, but remember that you're talking about two different pots of money. Yeah. The money that went out from the federal government to the 1200 and 500 was an economic impact payment that was basically characterized as a tax credit, right? It was just a credit. You just got the money if you met all the criteria. The CRF funds that went to states are to pay for expenditures related to the coronavirus outbreak, right? And it's two different pots of money, two different criteria. Yeah. Understood. So anyhow, we'll move forward and with our work on both sides of the House and Senate and hopefully by next Tuesday or Wednesday, something like that we'll be able to put our proposal together. Maybe we should set a deadline and we could work on this. So maybe next Thursday we should try to wrap everything up between us and the groups. Bobby, we have a meeting, a committee meeting on Friday morning at from 8.30 till 10 or 10.30. So we could work on it then. Yeah. So you could kind of get your thoughts together for next week then. Yeah. Yeah. Ruth, did you have a question? Yeah, I just wanted to know if we're going to do another joint committee hearing because I do think given the history of this proposal that it would be helpful to have our committees work on it together in like, as together as this kind of thing is these days because then we'll know for sure we're all on the same page because this is too important to get messed up between communication and we need to do this fast. So I guess I'm just putting in a plug for another joint meeting of just the committees without necessarily a ton of testimony but just trying to work it out. Having obviously Michael, maybe Nolan if that's necessary and maybe somebody from the agency who can talk to these questions about technical issues with the application but really just getting this language done between our committees as quickly as possible. I think that's a great idea. And I think Linda was suggesting that we hang on so that we can maybe schedule something. I don't know when you all meet again. I think we're pretty flexible in terms of our committee. So as I said, we do have a meeting Friday morning at 8.30. Can't remember whether it lasts till 10 or 10.30 but I think we're on the floor at 10 on Friday. So if that coincides with something you all can do glad to do it. Well, we will probably meet Friday morning if the committee members can make it. But we've got to talk about where we want to go as a committee before we meet with you folks so that we have a little game plan. Oh, geez. I thought that was the whole idea that we work together so we all are on the same page. Yeah, it's hard to do that with 12 or 15 people, you know, all of us, but I think maybe later what are you scheduled for all morning or? We meet at 8.30, I think it goes till 10 then we're on the floor at 10 until 12. So if you're reluctant because you wanna do your own thing, then maybe Mike could share with us what you have proposed so far. We can talk about that and have an idea, a read from our committee, how they're feeling about it. I doubt there's gonna be a lot of problem with this. Yeah. Well, see, tomorrow we're not meeting, but we could meet Friday morning and we could meet with our committee and maybe for an hour and then at nine or 9.30 switch over and meet up with you guys. Yeah, the only problem is I think we're on the floor at the house at 10. So that doesn't give us a lot of time to talk. I doubt if you'd miss much, if you miss. No comment. I'm just kidding, but you wanna schedule a joint meeting for Tuesday then? Yeah, we've got it. Let's work out the details when we're not streaming live on YouTube. We're gonna be on the floor. I mean, we're on the floor every day of the week. I'm not sure exactly what the schedule is at this point. So I'm gonna have to check that. I'm looking right now. Well, let's shoot for a general meeting of the two committees next Tuesday and that's us, Friday, to work on some issues and you can work Friday on, and we have Michael that's gonna be putting it all together anyway, so we can go from there as long as we both agree that Michael can share information amongst the committee members. Yes, so Bobby, we're on the floor on Tuesday at 10 o'clock. Then we have our committee meeting on Wednesday, 8.30 to 10.30. Then we're on the floor that afternoon from two to four. Thursday morning is clear from the house floor from two to four and then Friday we have our committee meeting from 8.30 to 10.30 and then the house floor on Friday afternoon from two to four. So if we can work around that schedule, we're glad to do it. Well, I think we have a problem. We'll have, because, you know, Tuesdays you guys can't meet with us. We could meet at 8.30 in the morning until 10. Well, maybe then we better, yeah, why don't we plan on that then? Okay, Tuesday morning. Okay, committee heads up Tuesday morning, 8.30. We're on the floor at 9.30, Bobby. Yeah, I was gonna say, we only have one hour, but that's better than no time. Because you guys, you wouldn't want to miss any floor time. Well, maybe, maybe not. Depends on what the topic is. Yeah, we'll plan on the first thing Tuesday morning. Okay, and Mike sent us the changes, the draft for, so committee, I'll forward this to you and you can all take a look at it, okay? And if you haven't gotten back to me regarding the letter to the approves, please do so immediately. John, John, and who's the other person? Terry? Anyway, all right. Well, thank you very much. It's always a pleasure to have the house with us and we meet together. So really do some serious thinking about where we're going to try to fix this and we'll see you all Tuesday AM. Great, thanks, Bobby. Yeah, thank you.