 committee and good morning Gus and Ella and Nick. They're going to be with us for a few minutes here early on. And I somehow on the schedule, Gus, you got on first before Nick. So unless you want to change your order, we'll follow the schedule. That's not my ugly dog that's barking. You're muted Gus. I didn't know if you were barking at us. And Gus, you're muted. There we go. Yeah. Good morning. So I'm up first. Is it Mr. Chairman? Yes, if you prefer that, if not, you can pass it off to any one of us or Nick or maybe now I would speak for you. Well, I'll just be very brief because, you know, I think our section of the bill you're looking at is on page 22. Yeah. And I think the language you've written works just fine for us. And if Ella has any additions, she will speak up now. You know, we I am sure that if additional fun, we wanted to make a modest request that we knew would get out the door. As we talked to people, there's lots of interest in supporting farmers in this time. And we're happy to do a little more, but we also wanted to provide a modest request here. The only other thing I'll I'll just mention today, and it may not fit into this bill, but we've given you some language some time ago that we thought might go in the ag housekeeping bill, that would make us eligible to apply for some federal funds that we're not currently viewed as eligible for. And if it was going to go faster, we'd love to see it move, but you may not want to do that. Well, no, that I talked with Jane about that. And we may have it in in our first quarter language. But if you would send that, I mean, it's all it does is make you eligible to apply for more grants, I believe. That's correct. Yeah. And if you wanted to send that, or do you have that language, Michael? I do. I drafted it up for the amendment to 656. I can just pull it out and have it separate and send it to Stephanie for inclusion in the in the first quarter if you want. Well, I think this goes faster. We could tuck it right in this, just add it to this bill as well. And whichever one goes through first would have it in it. And we'll scratch it on the other bills. Okay, we'll do. And so, Gus, you want to give us or Ella, give us a, is that the language that we'd have to add? No, no. Maybe you could send the committee members a copy of that, Michael, so they could look it over later. And so we'll have it for tomorrow. Sure, I'll do that right now. Yeah. Maybe quickly, you could run through what you're planning on doing with this additional funds, Gus or Ella. Well, why don't we turn that over to Ella and she can just remind you of the presentation we made a week or two ago, but fundamentally, we will be using consultants and some viability providers to do rapid response work with farmers and she can tell you how much we've already done, but we don't have funding for it past June 30th. So we'd be looking at needing help from July through December. So with that, I'll turn it over to Ella to just talk about how she's geared up the rapid response work. Yeah, thanks, Gus. Welcome, Ella. All right, I can't hear you very well. Hold on just a second. Do you have a headphone or something plugged in? It sounded like there was a mic far away from you. No, is that, can you hear me now? Yeah. Okay, great. Sorry, I think it's switching between Zoom and Microsoft Teams gets messes up the system. So thanks for having us and I'll be really brief because I think you've heard a fair bit about this already. With that 192, like Gus said, we'd use a combination of largely consultants, but possibly also some of our viability partners staff time to provide one to six hours as needed for anything sort of business related that helps folks respond to the situations or really get back on track with business recovery. It's a real wide range of activities. So far we've helped probably about 100 businesses over the past five weeks. And particularly with financial planning and applying for federal and state relief funds and unemployment, but also many of those over a quarter of them shifting markets to retail or online sales, as well as some work around food safety regulatory situations and then sort of health and well-being and mental health services. So we're partnering with Farm First, which you're familiar with, as well as the Ag Mediation Program, and then about eight or 10 of our network partners, Intervail, UVM, NOPA, the Center for Narrow Cultural Economy, and others who are all in touch with farm and food businesses, as well as forestry sector businesses. So we really did open this up across to working lands businesses, not just farmers. We're doing some work with many of the slaughter and meat processing facilities around the state through the Sustainable Jobs Fund and their partnership. So funding a lot of different pieces at the moment and trying to make just easy access to those consultants and organizations. So the 192, like us said, would really enable that capacity to continue July through December. And we may end up looking for additional resources beyond that as our partners identify new programming and educational support they want to provide to businesses. But this will really enable us to continue that rapid response coaching for that six-month period. And we'd work with at least 300 businesses during that timeframe. I would invite you to consider adding in that section eight on page 22 of the bell. Consider adding not just farms but food businesses or ag-related businesses, since we do think that businesses such as small food distributors and particularly slaughter and meat processing or other types of agricultural processing businesses may need our support as well. And alternatively you could also open it up to working lands businesses and then support that 192 could go towards some of the forestry sector businesses that we're also supporting right now. So you're getting requests from these people already and but yet you don't have the authority to help. Is there any problem with any committee member have a problem adding that to that section? So we'll have Michael fill that in. Did you have a question, Chris? Yeah, just you mentioned, you know, this kind of maintains your capacity and this has got to be the most modest line item request we've heard in the last month. And I guess I'm a little more interested than just maintaining your capacity and if there was an ability to reach 500 businesses, if that's realistic with capacity, I sure would like to understand that number and just invite you to help us see how much we can ramp up. I mean, you do, as I understand the work does fall across a broad range of partners and actually was something that was under demand before the crisis. And so maintenance of effort doesn't seem to quite fit the challenge here. I'm wondering if you could comment. Sure. So I agree. I think that we've been trying to judge, you know, every week feels a little different right now every day. We've been trying to judge sort of what capacity can be deployed essentially between consultants and organizations. And also trying to understand from each of our partner organizations where they would like to spend extra capacity for COVID relief work during that specific timeframe. Since we're trying to help them identify where COVID relief dollars could be utilized and where it's actually truly eligible. There's a lot of misinformation or just lack of information for a lot of folks who are thinking about that but haven't really dug into the details. So we've been helping articulate what that eligibility could look like, what activities would be eligible, and getting sort of small asks from each of our partners in the range of like nine to $40,000. And I'm still having a couple of our partners work through those essentially proposals to us and we're planning on putting that package together of beyond that $192. What else could we deploy during that six-month period? And it's looking like about $150,000 to $200,000 additional above and beyond the $192 with sort of small awards to each of those relatively small, I mean $40,000 would go a long way to helping the Sustainable Jobs Fund, for example, work with about 16 to 20 businesses sort of more in depth than that sort of six hours but really, really look at pivoting businesses, structures, and markets significantly over that time period. So we are gathering that information and prepared to deploy additional resources and preparing to deploy additional resources. We could end up applying for that money under an RFP with ACCD or if there's other opportunities to have some of that funding a little earlier and know that it's coming, we'd get those services out faster. Sir, is there any way of checking on how many dollars that you've generated for the candidates that you visited with from our, you know, our little investment or your little investment into helping? Yeah, I mean with our sort of rapid response work, we're not at the moment collecting data like sales data on sort of a week to week or month to month basis but we do plan to do some look back with clients. I think where we, everybody's in such an unknown territory right now. So I think you're asking about metrics that we're seeing ready and we could collect a little bit of data from the sort of 100 businesses that we've been working with over the past five weeks. We've been trying not to ask too much of those business operators in that short time period. So we don't have that data now. I think that's probably wise. I mean their plate is, you know, stuff's falling off their plate. It's so full and there's no need to burden them with more. If, you know, we just had a ballpark figure because sometime in some instances we get asked, well, yeah, you're spending $192,000 and is there any return on this? And it's nice to be able to say, yeah, and this is it. And this is where the numbers came from. Even if they're ballpark numbers, I wouldn't bother the client so to get numbers. But you know, if you help somebody get unemployment, which they hadn't and weren't going to get, that, you know, that's anywhere from $6,000 a week. And so it adds up quick. But Ruth? Yeah, thanks, Bobby. And thanks, Ella and Gus. I think I asked this question before, but I just want to reiterate it, I guess, to make sure I understand. So we have heard direct testimony from larger dairy farmers that are medium and large farm operations that one of the most helpful types of technical assistance they could use right now is, you know, business and finance consulting or technical assistance. And these are large operations where millions of dollars go through every year. And I've heard from lots of smaller operations and small farms that your services are excellent and extremely helpful. But at the larger end that are more potentially complicated and have a lot more moving parts, the reviews are not as strong. So I'm just wondering what your capacity is or what your, who would you send these people to? Do you work with Yankee Farm Credit or some organizations like that? Or what do you do for these larger dairy operations? Sure. So we've worked with most of the medium farm operations in the state. That's, tends to be a good fit. But LFOs tend to be of a scale on both sort of management-wise and financially that they have their own financial advisors on retainer and utilize a company like Deem Associates, for example. So we do partner with Deem Associates. We've paid them once in a while when an LFO or a meat MFO wants to use their services, but doesn't quite have the financial capacity to do so. So in some cases, a couple of times over the past five or six years, we've subsidized that to help a larger dairy farm get started with a company like Deem Associates. One of their staff, Dan Zhang, is going to start doing some consulting through our rapid response coaching for us so that we have somebody on the team who's very familiar with working with larger MFOs. Certainly some of our folks at UVM Extension have worked with some of those farms as well, particularly on aspects like succession where the financial service providers like Deem Associates don't do that kind of coaching and don't have that kind of expertise. So we tend to provide the LFOs more with succession or help getting other kinds of enterprises started on their business. So we sort of fit in the nooks and crannies that wear the typical financial support services that are paid for, that are private sector, don't necessarily touch. And we do also work with Yankee and trade clients back and forth there also and John Lidback who does consulting for them has also consulted for us. So yeah, generally most of that sort of financial and business general planning is supported by the private sector for the larger businesses. And it's not just the case with dairy, it's the case of other kinds of businesses depending on both the sophistication of the management and the sort of financial scale that paying those companies directly. We don't want to take business away from the private sector also. So that's a natural tension there. So yeah, we fit more in between around new markets and new enterprises and succession in that way. But we do have relationships with those companies that do do more of that typical financial planning work with larger and we'll refer back and forth with them. Okay, great. And I'm assuming also you work with cheese makers and dairy processors because that's another area that's really struggling right now. Yes, I think we've worked over the past like 15 years, I think we've worked with almost every cheese maker in the state practically, maybe at least 75% of them particularly as they've ramped up their scale or gotten new enterprises or new products off the ground. Certainly and we see some of them come back around when they're looking to build a new facility for example is usually a time that they come back to our program. Great, thank you. Yeah, other questions from committee members for Gus or Ella? No? Well, go ahead Gus. Just if the committee wants to enhance the proposal by $150,000, we certainly can report back to you when you get to the next budget in August if we're having any difficulty getting those dollars out the door and I think the language Ella proposed which I think you were about to take a poll on Mr. Chairman will just broaden whom we can serve and we certainly would be happy to just make clear to the large farms that probably are having cash flow issues now because of all that's gone on that that we could help support the consulting that they already probably have on contract but probably are feeling quite tight about spending extra dollars on right now. Well, we're running under a cat budget you might call it and if we can get the money that extra $150,000 or $200,000 from someplace else I'd like to keep as much of our money going direct to the farms as we can and get the extra money from some other spot along the way but we'll talk about that and if it looks like there is no other spot to get it from I mean if we can spend say $150,000 but it saves a half a million dollar firm and keeps them in operation you know that's very important so I think we'll discuss that and then decide which way is the most sensible way to move forward. Yeah and I'm not trying to push one way or the other out only to say I'm very happy for us to take more on if you ask us to as Ella indicated the commerce package has $5 million of technical assistance in it so we can also apply to them at a later date. Yeah, Ella. I just wanted to mention I'm just looking at some of our data of the folks who we've done this rapid response work with and so far 53% of them have been dairy farms 20% have been diversified produce and livestock farms and about 6% have been logging and wood products businesses and then a variety in between and I just thought that that might be helpful information to give you know we're certainly largely working with dairy farms right now. Yeah well they're really hurting that's for sure anything else any other questions are you guys going to stay on while next with us? Yeah good well we'll switch to Nick and I know I you sent out a release the other day that you're helping with some relief on some conserved farms and maybe you're going to fill us in on that along with other issues Nick. Yeah thanks Chairman Starr and just I guess for the record I'll introduce myself Nick Richardson president and CEO of the Vermont Land Trust it's really good to be with you all this morning you know I too would wish that we were doing this in person but it's great that we're continuing to get the work done together in this way so yeah I do want to I'll spend some time talking about our bringing you up to date on our COVID recovery and response fund which we see as a complement and an important additional support along with the programs that we just spent time talking about and in particular I think the work that the farm and forest viability program VHCB is doing is just essential at this moment and we'll come back and sort of spend some more time talking about that in my testimony I think there are a huge number of needs out there right now we all know this you guys are spending a lot of time listening to and understanding and wrapping your arms around the complexity and the scale of the challenge that Ag and our and our value-added producers are facing right now and it really is a moment for an all hands on deck multiple solutions approach all of us coming together and putting a lot of leverage to the existing programs and infrastructure that's in place for support and bringing in the private capital and resources that we can too which is I think a place a lot of entrusted is well positioned to do something so we're going to spend some time talking with you about that and I just want to thank you actually for the pandemic response bill that you've been crafting and I want to come in I mean the primary reason I'm here is to testify in support of that bill I think this committee has done really good work in developing a proposal that is that hits hits on all of the challenges that our ag community is facing it's comprehensive and what it seeks to address I think the flexibility that is built into this this program and approach the the tools that it gives to our agency of agriculture and farm and markets but also the flexibility that is in the bill around how those dollars get deployed is is very good it's a work we're just really excited to see such a good bill coming together I I would be remiss if I didn't take the moment to just say I wish that it was more I think 30 million dollars is a good start I think 50 is probably you know would be 40 producers and and 10 for processors I think is you know is is where we're going to have to get to at one point or another in order to build a bridge for our ag economy right now I also really appreciate the way in which it's this bill is framed and that delivers that funding what I anticipate is it delivers that funding very very rapidly and with a lot without a lot of strength is attached and of course oversight you know making sure that the funds are spent well and giving guidance to the agency around that and they'll do a great job with it but this is a time I think where we really need to be working to build a bridge for our whole ag economy and then you know with that bridge in place we can then start to do the work that inevitably is going to come around transition succession diversifying the business models that are out there all that work is underway it's in front of us and this this moment will I think and the the economic uncertainty and challenges we're facing from COVID will certainly accelerate some of that and I think it's important for all of us who work in this area of trying to support ag in Vermont to recognize that that the transition is going to accelerate but I but I do think that this is a moment to build a bridge for everyone and I'm excited that this bill is doing that I think the other the other point that I will make is that time is really of the essence yeah this funding needs to get out the door and I I'm not as steeped in that that aspect of how we move from you know a bill to to a lot and then to the actual allocation of that funding to the agency but the timing of that really matters right now and you know this is the the crisis that the farm economy is facing isn't waiting for our funding it's it's going ahead full tilt in May we had 14 farms cease operations last May had one farm cease operations and last May was when the dairy like when it was when milk prices weren't looking so good no you know so we're we're really in a moment where we need to activate the infrastructure that we have the resources that we have and the the partners and the state has built an incredible system through with VHCB with UVM extension we're happy to play our role in that NOFA Center for Ag Economy Interval Center I mean it's are the the agricultural support system in Vermont is the envy of the country and it's here and it's ready to be able to be put into service but these funds need to need to move and need to move very quickly if we're going to be able to provide the support to producers that that they need right now and I think this and the committee's keenly aware of this because you live it and breathe it but for every farm that goes out there are you know a bunch of them that are just hanging on by the by the barest of threads and and the consequences for for those folks of this time is very real as well we were you know we've been working closely with I think I think about Dan Hauer again in Fairfield this downturn has put a real crunch on his cash flow and every dairy operator across the state he isn't transitioning out he's not on the list of 14 that won't be operating anymore but he's really struggling to make this work this period work and anything that we can do to provide that relief and support is important for him is important for Barney Hodges of Sunrise Orchers and Cornwall Senator Hardy I'm sure that you're familiar with Barney and his his operation but his apple shipments have slowed struggling to hang on to land and the business that his father started 60 years ago again you know continuing to operate but but really challenged to do so in this time and that's true of literally hundreds of farmers across the state Senator Pearson I was appreciated your testimony around just recognizing that this is a moment where you know the funding the normal approach and the the normal capacity isn't sufficient because of the scale of the challenge that we're facing and I think I really appreciate this bill as being an example of bold action and I'd love to see it be be even bolder and bigger or just you know more more funding and more allocation to the good set of programs I think that this bill envisions and is put into place you know and then I think the last thing I'll say is just we're we're your partner in this and the Vermont Land Trust is working very hard to organize and leverage the resources we can to help to alleviate the stress of this moment for the conserved farmers and and landowners that we work with and that Coates and Recovery Fund that we stood up last week is the results of long-term donors to VLT who have been with us and heard the stories and connected with the farmers that we've helped the land that we've helped to protect and the farmers that we've worked with they've come to us and they've said you know we know farmers are hurting right now how can we work with you to support them and and and started organizing with us around getting significant funding in place so that we could be a conduit for some of those relief funds and those support funds as Ella was describing I think so well those little pieces of investment and transition to online and technical assistance that can make the difference for farmers at this time and we've had a you know the the initial slug of funding that we got which was about seventy five thousand dollars from donors has already been allocated and spoken for in the course of three days we have a long pipeline for we have a beat on about two hundred thousand dollars of additional funding that's going to come in from private donors and supporters of the organization I think there's room to scale that and grow but it it underlines and emphasizes for me I couldn't be strongly more strongly in support of the idea of of increasing by a hundred and fifty or even just doubling the the allocation to BHCB that you were talking about earlier for the farm enforced viability program we will match that with our efforts and you know the center for ag economy and NOFA and other folks will do the same and together I think we'll build a really good bridge for our farm economy and we'll be able to protect the state treasure I think our economy and our farm communities and those people are they're a treasure for our state and they they need to be supported and protected in this time and I know that you all agree with me and so I'll wrap there I appreciate the chance to come in and testify with you and I'll take any questions you have yeah well thank you Nick and thanks for all your your work and help and you know it's a team effort and it's great to have you guys on the team not that you haven't been but it's really really great and and that we can all work together for the same purpose and in the same goals uh are there questions for Nick uh Brian thank you Bobby not not a question but I just want Gossinella and Nick to know the members of this committee also wish that the 30 was a 50 and in fact maybe the 50 could be even more than that but we have to sort of deal with reality at some point too and it looks like that's going to be it although part of the rationale for not having it be 50 now is that there could be some issue in the fall I don't know whether the weather's going to affect this virus uh to bring it back again or not but I think it's sort of like keeping money in the bank so to speak so that we can maybe step in again at some point and be able to help out again rather than just kind of like the fireworks shooting them all off at once and then having nothing to fall back on so we're very sympathetic with the funding but we we will face some constraints and uh some other as you are well aware whenever there's funds people tap down the shoulder and say could I have a little bit of that too so that's that's what we're working against but you guys do great work and we appreciate as our chair said you being a partner with us other questions for nick or or gus or Ella if not I want to thank the three of you for your time this morning and if you think of anything oh michael's waving you want me to wave back or do you want to talk michael sure uh I just wanted to ask Ella to to repeat the language change that you requested for the you want it to be for food businesses uh and what and what else I would suggest either changing it depending on the committee's preference um to farm and food businesses sometimes we use the word instead of food business sometimes we use the word ag related businesses to sort of focus more on those that provide services like slaughter and meat processing and and distribution uh so perhaps farm and ag related businesses and then the other option I put on the table was just to use the language working lands businesses more broadly to to include some forest sector we we don't tend to see that be an overwhelming majority of the work but enabling a portion of our work to cover that great thanks yeah um so are there any uh anything else michael on your drafting part that you're going to need or you're good well it it all depends on if the committee wants to add the other the atcb language um I sent it to Jen and Ella I think Jen is having the atb's attorney look it over um and if the committee wants to include it I will build it into the bill yeah well anything else folks that you want might I take two more minutes is that would that be okay if I took two more minutes um well will I take a vote on it um no go ahead neck thank thank you chairman um I I just wanted to say you know we're we're very excited and I'll use the word relieves um to see that as the budget is taking shape there's an allocation for vhcb in it that is that is appropriate and I know that the first quarter budget this preliminary budget that's being put in place is not the full story it get difficult in budgets to come um vhcb is in a critical infrastructure for this state we can't function without them um before the hands of the arms there the heart and uh so we work together to get this great work done and I anticipate that there will be challenges to um well have in the in budgets to come whether it's the quarters two three four budget that's coming or or in days that that um that follow and I just really appreciate the commitment that we're hearing um to conservation funding and particularly I think the recognition that conservation is as a tool that can help us to get through this time if we use it wisely and in the right way and we're very committed to doing that and working closely with the agency and others to make sure that we're um we're making the most out of the funding that's available but I think conservation is a really important capital delivery in the rural communities right now and I'm glad to see that it is continuing and I think I believe and I anticipate the reason why I want to spend some time on it is I anticipate that support from this committee for that will be critical um has been critical and will be critical in these discussions to come and Gus and I are working very closely together um with the with the federal delegation to do what we can to potentially bridge that's available from from federal sources for from ASAP ale and other things so we're working hard on all aspects of this system together and um that's a really fundamental partnership and the the funding that's available from the state for VHCB is so essential right now yeah well we appreciate all that VHCB is doing but also all that you guys have done in the past to you know to shore up the ag community and in our farms and conserved I mean we are the envy of the country when it comes to our ag glands and how we protected them and and have got the best farmers in the world that run under such difficult situations and seem to still be on top so you know we know that doesn't happen alone and and you know we're we're very appreciative of what what you all do to working together and so if there are no other questions um we'll we'll work and try to get our bill out we want to try to get it out tomorrow or or no later than Monday or Tuesday so we can get it over to the house and and I've had long conversations with Carolyn uh a chair of the house committee and and they're waiting for for our bill and I think they're gonna be great to work with it doesn't we've tried to cover anything that any questions they've had we've tried to take care of it in this bill so when it gets to one that shouldn't drag on uh very long so with that if there is uh Gus no hi thank you okay well why don't you guys get back to work um and uh so thanks a lot for being with us and uh we'll we'll do our best we know you will thank you senator thanks uh guys take care yeah so um uh you want to get we may as well talk about the michael's got the new language to add and do you want to talk about the extra money uh at this point uh logged it's fresh in our minds sure well what do you think wait what do you mean the extra money for vhcb or just in general no the you know they said if they had 150 to 200 more thousand but of course that's going to cut down on our other money that we want to ship out the door do you think we could put something in there that would give them a leg up with um with uh commerce no you know I certainly wouldn't mind giving them more money but and when we talk about taking it out of the stuff that we're working on it's it's a tough decision to make well it it is because you know we're short on money to start with so we were gonna uh chris yeah sorry and I had a phone call so I probably missed parts of the conversation but um it's a pretty modest amount of money and it really answers um some of the medium and longer term thing I mean think about it I think about it this way we're we're what does that get us to just over 300 thousand dollars so that's a one percent administration for the money we're trying to get out the door we are going to have to answer just like in the restaurant universe the governor is under pressure to answer the question of are we giving money to businesses that are closing there's a similar dynamic in ag and I think that this is the best answer we've got to that charge and we also maybe are not going to be able to push forward the 500 thousand dollars for for um farm workers so that this is just a little piece of that I don't know the only question I have is because it is also part of their ongoing operation is there some of it that could be part of the first quarter budget I know Jane wondered about that bobby when I was talking to her so I would guess she's shrewd enough to know that that was coming out of the 30 but it's worth asking that question well I think I think there's a good opportunity to to pick it up there uh and and if that would give us an additional say 150 to work off from our 30 I'd rather I'd rather get it out of the q1 uh budget or from accd out of there what millions they've got for rose yeah I have a little spreadsheet going here trying to figure out the numbers some I guess Brian probably does too and others um so I've just been working on them and I just want to make sure there's that I have everything on the list um the the dairy farmer slash milk producer dairy processors slash cheese makers non-dairy farm operations um the farm worker retention program although there's a pin in that obviously um and then vhcb technical assistance um and this puts aside all the food things I have a different list for the the food security um is there anything missing on that list that we've talked about that we that in the farm ag specific right well no I just I did it a little bit differently but but I think we can certainly work whatever parameters I took the dairy as a separate one and the food bank and then Gus's crew and then the non-dairy farmer and processor so I had four different pots of money if you will um and then I just worked the numbers back instead of being able to use 50 I used 30 and some were less I mean I don't know how else to put it but the number had to be smaller than it would have been if it was 50 yeah I put the the food bank thing in the the in the food security uh column and was thinking it you know the ag relief package if we're able to get 30 million for that and if we can't I don't know if bobby if we have a number for the food security portion of it but I was looking at 10 million because there's just such a huge need for food security out there and how do we divvy up that 10 million as a separate thing from the ag but then putting ties into it as senator polina mentioned yesterday that would tie it to buying local food from farmers in vermont how did you add your numbers up that you plugged in yeah so on the ag part of it um I I guess I would ask michael about whether it makes sense to to draft the non-dairy portion of it as one huge packet one big package or if it's easier to do it separately for the dairy processors versus everybody else because I have it separated out but if it seemed like it was complicated by how do we decide an amount if we add if we put them all together in the same bucket so I think that's probably your key decision point on on keeping dairy with the other producers and processors because dairy does have that poundage tier system based on their milk handler license and as the administration proposed it the milk producer and the dairy processor were under one program you could go back to that model albeit with a specific appropriation for the processors versus the producers and then you could just have the other ag producers and processors separate and you could and you know again you're you're going to run into that question how do you set the amount and you might just say you know it's going to be a it's going to be a max grant award you know you're going to set a cap some of these producers and processors may have expenses or costs much greater than the cap but you're doing what you can do yeah that makes sense but wouldn't I if if you were like a big cheese maker or yogurt maker why wouldn't you go through a ccd to to acquire some money well that that's an interesting question because I was going to raise for you whether or not you wanted to add some default language at the end of the section about things like offset that an award that they get isn't going to be offset against taxes or liabilities and one of the other things that I wanted to raise is do you want to say if they receive assistance for this economic harm from another program that they're ineligible to receive it under this program well if we're if we're going to try to help really help you know the people that work the ground as I call it the dirt farmers you you can't have a great big chunk of that going to the concrete and and in manufacturing places as long as there's money elsewhere that they could be taken from you know if there's dollars somewhere else we ought to maximize our leverage and and get as much of that as possible because that is manufacturing I would agree with that yeah I think we should at least have language like the anti-double language like you can't you can't cover your losses with both programs one or the other and if they get rejected say from a ccd then they could apply through through our monies in the agency of ag but those commercial people I mean I would think they've got people on their staff that that are certainly capable they borrowed from Vita you know they have ties there that they have more opportunities than than our our farmers except for maybe the big ones are tied in like that but you talk with most of those big farmers and the the owners themselves are out and running the equipment and you know they aren't they aren't like the western farmers where the guy that owns the place or the investors that own the place are sitting in some plush office and they got all you know a manager and all hired help our guys actually work work our farmers yeah I mean that's definitely true especially with smaller operations they have no very few staff members they're out there doing everything yeah the wife does most of the finding the the all the bookkeeping and all that and yeah so Brian the number you had yesterday I just want to confirm the 21 793 750 was that was just dairy farmers correct well it was the dairy and the goats and sheep and okay for the farmers maybe even the the apple people and you know the I think they are all included in that small small certified medium and in large is that the way it is Michael they have to have animals I think yeah well three and up I think it is right so is could could senator column or repeat that question I'm sorry well the chair yesterday and I'm not sure how he did the math but he had a real specific number so I wrote it down uh 21 793 750 dollars and my question was was that earmark just for dairy and just for the farmers the way that it that that I believe it set up and what that 21 million was going to go to would be the milk juice so so yes it's it's just for the dairy farmer okay not the dairy processor yeah there was no money there for processing okay or no candling or any of that because that none of the non dairy farmers none of the crop farmers or anything else beef poultry that came in another pot of money right okay that's right it's not just cow dairy it's goat and sheep dairy but it's dairy okay thank you what what happens if you have an arm on farm cheese plant or something how we have we haven't thought through that as to my knowledge I think I think the question came up the other day but uh we talked to eb about it you can do both they can qualify for both the way the administration wrote theirs is that they would they would have to separate out the two pieces of their business but I specifically asked that and I think we would want them to be able to do that or I would at least because it's their cheese professor on farm I know it's come up elsewhere and we may want to check in like a hotel that also runs a restaurant are they getting twice the grant I mean I I don't know I've mixed feelings about it but I should think we'd want to be consistent between it's the same dynamic yeah so I don't know why I don't know how many of those small processors there you know producers of milk and processors there are but there's 271 small farms not certified and I would expect that most of them would fall into that that category you know they're under under 50 that use their own milk to do their own products and I I would think we could something for those those guys to be all in one wouldn't that be the simplest way to do it thanks what do you mean by all in one though say that again what do you mean by all in one well they could show their losses from the milk they're producing right also they would have to show their losses of the cheese that they are the products they were manufacturing from those animals and that would be their overall loss on their on their farm wouldn't that yeah I mean they might not if they sold the milk to the cheese company and got $30 a hundred wait for it to their own cheese little cheese company they could show a profit with their cows but a loss on the cheese thing and and I would think that you would incorporate their their production and in their milk with the products that they manufacture from their own milk and that would be their overall loss on their on their operation yeah and I think I agree and I think some of them I've been hearing from folks who are on farm cheese makers and it sounds like what they're saying is they lost their markets so I don't know whether they would look at their milk as one piece of their business and then cheese making as another piece of their business it's all one yeah they've lost their markets when the restaurants stopped buying cheese they lost their markets so they're really hurting from that respect so they're looking to rebuild their markets but they're also found themselves because of COVID having to hire more workers so like if they want to get back into manufacturing and have to keep social distancing and whatnot they've actually talked about having to hire more people to help them dig out of the weeds that they're stuck in so we would just say overall it's it's your business numbers I think so yeah I think that would be the only way to I mean I'm sure they don't separate it out right what about a diversified dairy so they've they've been making a ton of money I'm just saying probably not but on the vegetable yeah I show us one that's making a ton of money hold on hold on so they they they have you know we heard from the the guy who diversified into pumpkins well he's not profiting on the pumpkins in June but for instance if there was a dairy farm that also was doing tomato starters and that part of the business was doing really well would we wouldn't we want that overall number to be reflected not just their loss on the dairy side of the ledger I mean this is well maybe we just punt all of these kinds of questions to the agency that's another option but I'd rather have a little bit of some of the principles articulated if we can think if it's all part of the same business then it would be included that way you'd have losses in the milk but you'd have gains in the tomatoes so you'd look at the you'd look at the bottom line after you combine those two things Michael how we would draft this because I specifically asked this question of the agency and they were looking at them as separate but and so if we want to not have them separate then we would have to draft language to make sure that the agency doesn't default to looking at them separate because that's how they sort of have it in their mind I think well I think I think if if you had a small dairy or a dairy and you had a farm number and all that and then you had you also own the ABC cheese company and it was incorporated or or a co-op or whatever you would have two companies you would have your dairy operation and your ABC cheese company but I I believe that most of these small operators it's all it's all connected so the the milk they produce goes in another room and and they make their cheese and go to farmer markets and sell it and and that's what keeps the overall operation running and so it should be all all figured out as one I would think so could you do something about a business a business name or a corporation or an S corp or something if they're if they're running two operations it'd be two business but I mean it seems like the numbers we're playing with unfortunately are are too small to cover all the losses so if you had a small dairy farm that was also an on-farm cheese maker and they got and their losses were I don't know $27,000 and 20 of it was from the milk portion and seven of it was from the cheese portion but their grant was only going to cover 15 on the on the on the milk side that wouldn't even cover their whole loss you know so so can they get it from both programs if it's not covering their whole loss that I think it's the double dipping is only when it's above and beyond what their total loss was well but they only get the under the program they only get reimbursed for their for their losses or expenses right and you are you already said that they don't get the to qualify if they receive a payment elsewhere you can say that the small farm where that's also a dairy processor or any of the farms only get to qualify under both programs up until they're reimbursed for their losses and costs. Brian? So I want to ask a more basic question because I'm getting more and more I don't know if the word is frustrated but I'm looking at the numbers and they're just not working very well so we originally heard the governor's proposal as being 50 million 40 for dairy and 10 for the processors we've added if you will and I'm not saying it's a bad thing to do that I think all of these considerations are important the food security issue which includes the meals on wheels and the schools and the food bank and Gus is a group we've added that ourselves so my question is out of the 400 million dollar proposal from the governor were there other proposals made which could help those sectors and and not have us dividing by six you know what I'm trying to say in other words it would give us and I can't believe that the governor would have made a proposal or anybody would make a proposal and completely ignore food security it just I don't think there's got to be another pot somewhere that we don't know about and I didn't really need the whole proposal to be fair I mean 400 million's a lot of money to be spread about all kinds of different agencies so I don't know where it is if it's anywhere Chris did you talk to Jenny or no I don't have a direct answer but they I think I've conceived it and and we've talked about we uh because memory yesterday we wondered about just jettisoning those sections like the the meals on wheels and the food security issues they're not they are close to agriculture but they're not agriculture in the in the strictest sense of the economy so I I continue to believe we should not pay for that out of the 30 million the other thing is to just I think it's a helpful perspective as I understand it because you mentioned the 400 million from the governor the legislature has not used the 400 million number because the joint fiscal or the money chairs agreed to immediately set aside a chunk of that money given the shortfall in the ad fund and other things that and and to just not say no but say not right now we got to figure out if if there are other issues down the road or if we can use it to backfill the ad fund or whatever so we immediately agreed that we were not you playing with 400 million in the in the shorter term so both of those things turn back the budget options but in terms of the very direct question it's my assertion that we should spend 30 million on assistance to ag businesses and and continue to push our partners in the in the building for the food security priorities but have been paid for it I think we've got to we've got to do that or we aren't going to have enough money for to make a difference for anybody and so I think I think that's where we are uh rose yeah I I completely agree I don't I like I said when I was looking at 30 million for ag and then 10 million for the food programs and that would be separate and that we would work with the other committees to to come to realize that yeah that's what I was looking at so um and uh I I agree with chris and we get the education committee health and welfare and economic development and probes all to be like yeah we need to do this let's find however much million you know right now I have it at 10 but it could be whatever um so I guess one thing I would like because on my list continues to be the farm worker retention program because you all know that that's important to me and I think to the committee and but I'd like to hear Michael's recommendation as legal counsel definitively so we can know if we should still try to do that or take it off the list um because it's still in my numbers but I guess Michael I defer to you as our legal counsel yeah hey Chris I'm gonna I gotta step away for a second I'll be right okay so I informally consulted with some of my colleagues about it and the general consensus is that it's more of a workforce bonus rather than a hazard pay bonus and the treasury guidance is pretty clear that it is workforce bonuses are across the board are prohibited only hazard pay where the employee is directly responding to mitigating the threats caused by COVID-19 are eligible and so I think you can make an argument as Senator Pearson did yesterday that because certain people were out or employees were not working and some farm workers had to work more that they were working to mitigate the threat caused by COVID or the business interruption but uh and you could go forward with that and try to be persuasive if there was a single audit the treasury um but I think if you look at all of the the guidance it seems it seems more uh it seems less likely to qualify than something like the essentials workers bill that you passed or the um school nutrition program the essential worker the people were in grocery stores they were in restaurants they were being exposed to the virus they were working um to to you know provide services so you know I I think that's a little bit more persuasive here they were not directly exposed to the risk on a day-to-day basis in their operation um their operation didn't necessarily need to impose significant safety measures I I they were probably working similar hours um and I don't know if I if you look at all those criteria it looks more like a workforce bonus rather than a hazard you can make you can make arguments and so it's really up to you if you want to make those arguments I think that's going to be a hard sell especially with the kicker that if if it gets rejected after we pay the money that we got to come back and get the money out of the general funder to cover that that cost I think it'd be rough and Michael can I just ask a follow-up thank you for that um and you know we're we've heard from our some some of our colleagues and certainly from advocates about just making payments straight payments to people who didn't qualify for the federal stimulus payments because of their immigration status and what is your opinion on the legality or the potential of that well I would just take you back to if you're talking about straight payments from the CARES Act money yeah you you have to go back to the CARES Act criteria it wasn't previously budgeted and it's a necessary expense and necessary expense has been defined as let me just pull up one of my documents that the expenditure incurred due to or as a result of the COVID-19 health emergency um did the expenditure was it incurred due to COVID-19 um I don't I you know I again you can make arguments um but uh you know this is one where I would you're on the spot I'm just trying to get you know that we we worked a lot to try to get to something that was workable and it it sounds like it's just not gonna it's not gonna be feasible and to to provide payments based on the CARES Act money and we don't have general fund money to spend you know what you could do Ruth maybe on the most of these guys work for the larger medium sized firms put a little kicker in their grant certain amounts of it have to be used for their laborers but wouldn't that just be a workforce bonus that if we put language in like that that would be a workforce bonus and Michael has just said that that's not eligible right I I'll just read directly from the frequently asked questions document treasury put out it says the guidance includes workforce bonuses as an example of ineligible expenses provides that hazard pay would be eligible if otherwise determined to be a necessary expense is there a specific definition of hazard pay hazard pay means additional pay for performing hazardous duty or work involving physical hardship in each case that is related to COVID-19 yeah yeah it isn't gonna make it okay Michael you must have thought a lot about this because you knew we were pushing to try to get it done and you haven't you haven't come up with any logical way that we could work the the words to cover it so I thought it would qualify up until treasury issued this may 28th frequently asked questions document because I thought it was uh uh assistance to a business that experienced business interruption and had costs that were incurred due to that um namely in in paying labor force and and keeping them on the farm and you heard testimony about that from some farmers who had to let go their labor because of of rising expenses I thought that will qualify but then kind of the treasury said no that that's a workforce bonus and they're only looking for hazard pay and I I was with it I was with you on it until this this document which was issued last what Wednesday yeah well um so the food bank and the food issues will move to the right hand side of our page and and try to get the money out of out of um accd or or health and welfare uh or any of those outfits what about chris well just just quickly I was just about to email uh baruth and lions and kitchell and just asking this question but then I realized senator hardy you've been talking to baruth so is it okay to just include it all in one and then we just have it all on the table or would you rather keep handling the school meal issue separately um you can you can email all of them and I can just follow up I'm copying all of you so you'll see yeah chris you might want to add senator uh sorotkin too okay good yeah so that puts us back to our basic ag bill and and we've got our we've got to deal with our small farms with cheese making that should be part of that small farms payment and and we're light I think we're light on the small farms payment uh if we're going to add in their little manufacturing operations and the losses that they've been getting on their cheeses and because um in that 21 seven number uh the small small guys are only going to get $500 in that that's not going to cover much of a cheese loss or a loss there uh rose yeah so I I mean I'm curious to hear what Brian has but if I I took a shot at divvying up the funds and and just rounded up for BHCB to 200 000 since they asked for 192 just make it easier and then the cheesemakers 7500 non-dairy farm operations 33 75 7500 or 7500 7.5 million sorry and then the non-dairy operations 3.3 million and then the dairy farmers 19 and that gets us to 30 can you walk through those again slowly um yeah so the dairy producers slash farmers milk producers 19 million 19 1919 dairy processors slash cheesemakers 70 7.5 million the non-dairy farm operations 3.3 million and then the BHCB technical assistance 200 000 so that that comes out to 30 million and I don't have it broken down by the sub amounts for the I think we would have to back in sub amounts but I strongly recommend that we weight it toward the small processors and the small farmers the 7.5 both the 7.5 and the 19 million because we've heard a lot of testimony that the small and that's where all the farms are going out or the small and medium ones and that we that that they're struggling the most at the small end so you know providing funding for everybody but but having it weighted at the small end that I haven't gotten to those details because I figured we should cut back into those numbers the non-dairy is that the fruits and vegetables and and turkeys and and all that yeah all of that plus the food that you know slaughterhouses those kinds of and meat processors and things like that and then all these numbers are fluid I was just trying to come up with something based on the testimony we've heard as to terms of the impact that each of these operations have been seeing um why did you have Brian well mine was different because I took into account the food bank numbers and all the rest of it um so mine are useless now that we've pretty much we're going to look for other sources for that food security part of this so minor hold hold hold that now move me up the 7.5 yeah processors is that strictly dairy processors yeah that would be the dairy processors cheesemakers and we would I think after hearing cream yogurt cream yogurt yep and and I think having the no double dip language or whatever it is that we just discussed make a lot of sense and and just for the the food security thing which I have as separate I had the summer meals for kids three million the food bank three million and meals on wheels three million to sort of and then uh if we can make the food service workers bonus uh hazard pay whatever we're supposed to call work that that would be in the you know 500 000 to a million dollar range I think but I don't have a real number so just I was just trying to fool around and it sort of does the senior senior meals kids meals and then everybody else and it chunks it out evenly that's was my if if you wanted to use like the numbers that you just came up with Ruth if you took our original dairy numbers uh from back when we first started yeah and was the uh eight I don't know eight 8.8 million by three uh because we were we were talking about doing three payments if you did that two double take the original numbers do two and a quarter times that I think it would come out close to the 19 do you have a calculator there Michael or they're going pardon I have one here yeah so I have one too so if you took the original amount of I I think it was 8.8 right I don't remember 8.7 I think is what our original amount was but I don't yeah 8.7 one seven five hundred dollars if you took that and multiplied it by two and a quarter I think you're going to come out pretty close to that 19 that would give you 19 million 575 yeah so that that number that you came up with could work and the system is all pretty much in place except for we ought I would think you guys would want to see that broken down uh to the four different groups but you could take the way we've got it on on this sheet Michael you could take that that sheet that we you first sent out yeah multiply each one of them there's only four multiply them by 2.25 and and see how see how it comes out but it should come out the same way except for um well it's going to be a lesser amount than what what I had on my 2.1 one home there'll probably about a 100 maybe 120,000 for the big guys and you've got them Michael I'm writing it down there is there any way Michael has this on a spreadsheet that he could share as we yeah that would be the best way Bobby can you take that document that you just put up to the screen and and look at the number in the lower right hand corner it could say 348 something um 479 34 750 if we pull this off no one will ever believe we didn't even have a website a website we'll pull it off what do you mean if we pull it off I haven't got a doubt in the world did did I figure the right number Michael yeah so LFO would be 112 500 dollars a MFO would be 50 625 dollars 50 yeah a certified SFO would be 28,125 dollars again 28,125 because 12,500 yeah times 2.25 yep 28 125 this is going to come out to more than 19 million I think but and then 5,000 times 2.25 equals 11,250 that's for the small and how many of them are there for each of these categories do you do you have that number Michael yeah um hold on a second shoot um I just screwed up something the there's I believe for LFOs there's 34 for MFOs there's 105 approximately for certified SFOs there's 268 and for the SFOs there's 271 those are the numbers and that does not include any there there were the 14 farms that went out and then there are the three that wouldn't qualify because they haven't right and and and this is all cows this is not this is not cheap those guys yeah that that number's a little bit high on the small end yeah I don't know if it's a 268 that would be deleted by 15 or or 18 and that or the 271 but I I would imagine that somebody not in good standing would be up in that upper category and those are all payments that are multiplied by three right 2.25 2.25 well I didn't do the math I don't know what the grand total is I'm trying to I'm gonna do that right now it's it feels like it's gonna be more than 19 how do we keep hinging on 19 do we have 10 set aside for something else I yeah the 19 was for the dairy and then for the milk farmers then the processors the 7.5 million non-dairy operations 3.3 BHCB 200 000 that gets to the 30 million we can change those numbers that that was just what I was kind of sketching out okay do you have any rationale for your numbers Ruth I was trying to get to 30 million and that made somewhat sense I don't know based on the impact of what we heard in testimony also you know we did hear that there's an impact on the non-dairy farms but it's lower than the impact on the dairy farms and number of them so and I've just been hearing from a zillion cheese processor cheesemakers the little cheesemakers are medium small to medium cheesemakers is that yeah the small and medium ones in my district and I don't I haven't tried to figure out how we're gonna we're gonna the ag agency figure that one out how much to give each one of them I think we should come up with our own numbers based on the little the amounts the and I have it broken down micro small medium and large and I don't know what that is but you know I don't want to give a ton to the huge processors like do we need to be giving money to Ben and Jerry's when everybody's filling their shopping carts filled with Ben and Jerry's pints during this well plus they they can go to accd to or or be come up with michael 19 19.6 is that did you multiply it by two michael 2.25 okay and and that's that's rough um if I think it's gonna go ahead I think it's gonna be a little bit higher than 19.6 but I think it's still gonna be under 20 so I think and if we run a little bit over so bad you know I hate to complicate things but weren't we gonna look at working lands too wasn't that that something we were chewing on well you don't need to chew on that any longer I should spit it out well look at the house bill what are they that they're somewhere else yeah they threw a big one in there or working lands yeah uh-huh could you really fill this out for me I'm not I haven't looked at the house bill I'd like they added a million bucks for working lanes where appropriations bill okay so they're in pretty good shape if if they can hang on to it so michael I get 17.2 million essentially maybe I did the math wrong but so I came up with 112 500 as the the LFO payment and I multiply that by 33 so I'd be yeah but there's a rough number is right I'm saying these are rough numbers these are rough numbers hundred and twelve dollars I'm 100 okay five hundred okay I that that was my bad I missed a zero there so now oh now I'm up to 20 24.9 million Michael are you doing this on excel no I'm not I'm doing it on excel I think the 2.25 is too high pardon I think the 2.25 multipliers too high Bobby that that gets us up almost a 25 million well I think we'll we'll have Michael work on those numbers well well Nolan was listening I don't know if he's still listening so we we could ask Nolan if you if you we set on what payment you want we can ask Nolan to to run the numbers well have him run them at two and 2.25 okay all right Brian thank you Bobby so I'll just point out in terms of Ruth's ratios here the original proposal which was the 50 80 percent of that originally was going to go to the dairy farmers which was the 40 and the other 20 percent was going to go to the processors the way we've laid it out with the 30 million total if we use Ruth's rough numbers the processors make out a little bit better they're getting 25 percent of that budget instead of 20 and the dairy is down instead of what would have been 24 million if it had followed the 80 million they're now getting 63 percent with the 19 but we've also included obviously the non-dairy farmers which the governor's proposal didn't take into account and then the so I think all in all I mean we could push push them a little bit in their way but I think overall it's it's pretty good and I do favor as as I think all of us do taking a look at the medium and small farms so that they're getting a little bit bigger piece of the pie the way the way I think they were they were getting the in production the two big medium and large do 85 percent of the milk and the two small pardon Anthony you're not muted I didn't know if you were trying to talk to us or not no not you no it's fine the production levels of of the groups are you know they're it's almost in reverse of the way the money's going out but not quite an even match so uh did do you know Nolan was on Michael I can I can reach out to Nolan and have him help us with these numbers but I'm sorry I Nolan isn't on says Linda I should have written it down the first moment you guys started playing with numbers I'm watching the old spread the old table here that gets to 8.7 I understand you've multiplied that by some number two or two and a quarter but I'm it's hard for me to do without seeing something so so we also want to deal with processors and where does the non-dairy farm fit in all of this 3.3 million 3.3 yeah that's for the vegetable and fruits and meat and hemp and every yeah so that doesn't that doesn't include um small dairy processors no small dairy cheese producers I mean those folks there so so I wish we could some have Michael or somebody share this on the screen as we're manipulating it live because it seems like the structure is well set up for that but but we we're we're dealing with all milk producers producers then we're dealing with milk all milk farmers then we're dealing with some milk producers then we're dealing with non-dairy farmers and then we're got a tidy sliver for VHCB is that the entirety of our thinking yeah yeah so it's like the second thing you mentioned you said small dairy producers twice you meant processors I think when you said that well yeah yeah so producers and processors most of the money goes to dairy farmers right yeah not just cow dairy but but by and large right and then some chunk of it goes to processors right some chunk goes to non-dairy farmers right yeah two two-thirds one-third two-thirds to dairy and and one-third to processors non-dairy uh VHCB that's the way basically I've got it down and and like Brian said the old way was 80 percent was it Brian 80 went to dairy 80 went to dairy and 20 went to the processors yeah and so you know we're we're in the ballgame you know and in in the area I think accuracy what what is the ratio if if yesterday who was it somebody said that that dairy makes up 70 percent of our ag economic activity is that right did we hear that from somebody yeah eb flurry I think yeah that number struck me is actually lower than I would have assumed well it was 80 at one point yeah I thought she said 80 yeah I think she said 80 and and that would include both the processors and the and the farmers so we're in that ballpark right Brian did you well actually I didn't add up the process but if you do that yeah we're probably close to that yeah so she said here I'm looking at her testimony dairy counts for 70 percent of Vermont's agricultural sales she may have bumped up a lot so so it just seems to me like we ought to roughly I mean we're trying to balance this and be fair and we ought to use we ought to use the lay out the land to reflect at least how we're thinking about it unless we have heard that one sector is particularly harmed it seems well we ought to give dairy 70 percent we're at we're at 66 and two thirds you know we are not if you add the processors pardon what about when you add the processors there's another 7.5 so now we're giving 27 out of 30 that's more than two thirds that's with the processors and the dairy guys I mean my point we're high on the processors that is kind of my point I don't know the right answer but I maybe maybe we give to the diversified the non-dairy so the meat and the veggie guys maybe we could take a little bit out of the processor and go there but Chris if you want to give the farmer the dairy farmer 70 percent they should be getting 21 million no I think EBS thing says dairy overall which I'm trying to read here and dairy farms over 80 percent of Vermont's farmland you guys I just sent you a link to the google doc that I have up that I'm looking for these numbers I sent it to you too Nolan I see that you're on and Michael so you can sort of see how I've done the numbers and the dairy to get anywhere close to the the 19 million is one the multipliers 1.7 basically not 2.5 or yeah what if we brought the processors down to five and added and brought the non-dairy up to five see the only problem Chris is we gotta kind of remember that maple has moved into a lot higher category because they're producing a lot more and I don't know if they've had any loss of sales or or you know that's diluted the overall picture I think. Michael the chair makes an excellent point um but isn't isn't the language protective in that you have to demonstrate a loss or an expense so so maybe maybe we might be smart to set it up so that you know come October 1st there's a waterfall or something like I guess I'm just oh I'm not I'm not articulating this well but maybe you're right Mr. Chair absolutely and maybe we're wrong about a lot of the presumptions going in here but but we do have this protection of you have to demonstrate a loss or or an expense correct Michael that that's correct and in the processor language they can't have had a net profit over over that period which you had set to August 1st yesterday can't have a net profit between March and August 1st um yep where are the goat and sheep farmers in this I'm trying to they're in the milk though they would be in the milk producer language okay I'm just trying to account for everybody I can think of about them so Chris I I I hear you and I am completely sympathetic to your trying to get the percentages to based on what EV's testimony was the 70% and um I think we could sort of mess with the numbers a little bit but I do want to say that you know one of the reasons I I divided up this way is based on the testimony we heard and based on the farmers I'm hearing from and the um the impact on cheese makers has been pretty substantial especially high-end value-added cheese makers who sell the restaurants and you know those really fancy cheese shops in New York City um that are just not operating right now so I think that um that's why I I waited the dairy processors that the cheese makers hire because of the impact that it's that we the COVID has had on them sure Jane Kitchell told me Jasper Hill's hiring today so the the problem is I agree with that Senator Hardy it makes you know the the problem is the the we just don't really know because we're always operating under the people that contact us and tell us the horror stories and meanwhile I'm willing to bet a lot of the little farmers are scrambling and have not given much thought to the senate agricultural committee and and I just don't know I mean that's where I I I would be more comfortable saying well we've hinged this to the lay of the land of the division of of the agricultural economy in Vermont not we've hinged it to the people that we've heard from a lot because I I just you know I I'll go I'm happy to work together on this obviously we're doing it and senior spreadsheet by the way is a big help thank you um but um who's got the spreadsheet Ruth sent around a link and I'm still working on it trying to get it to make more sense but I also think that going back to what Chris was saying at that point even out the money I think that a lot of the non-dairy farm operations of vegetable growers and whatnot are not going to necessarily be looking for large amounts of money I think you'll find it with some of those folks it's a relatively small amount of money is going to go a long way setting up a farm stand or a website or something along those lines so I think that the more expensive things are going to happen in the processing more than in the non-farm non-dairy farm operations so I think the 3.3 might be reasonable I'm not totally convinced yet but I just think that the amount of money they're going to be requesting as individuals is not going to be that much for individual farmers and it's I think it's a traditional dairy farmers that are hurting probably the most because they've had four or five years of a bad run with low milk prices and you know there's been a lot of money made in the milk business that hasn't ended up back on the farm because of the low milk prices uh rose hey michael or bobby could you just give me those numbers for the small medium large again your small your small farm number looks way high yeah I I copied something and it messed it up so I'm trying to get back to it so the large farm was 33 33 and not the number the the the amount so the the large farm was 112 five okay and then the medium um five oh six two five five oh six two five fifty six five fifty thousand six hundred twenty five dollars okay thank you but your your numbers aren't yeah yeah I'm fixing them because I got them I got them wrong the certified small what is that 28 125 28 125 and then the small farms 11 250 11 250 okay I will do it again and Nolan I'll give you I'll give you editing access to my spreadsheet so you can fix things you see okay so um so uh crash I um I I mean I think if we're worried about cheese makers which we are because they've lost markets in New York City and restaurants that we have to acknowledge that a whole lot of our veggie producers and meat producers were pushing their product into restaurants and I I I just think they're they're not as used to coming to the legislature they don't have associations in the same sense and I I'm really uncomfortable I mean we're making a lot of presumptions and the one of them seems to be that we're that they're doing okay and I just I don't think we've heard that and I I'm not sure how we can assume it's true across the board and cheese makers and assume it's not really been very painful for everybody else and I don't know the right number but I I'm I this makes me uncomfortable although Ruth your numbers are going to drop after you update all that yeah I'm going to update it all and change it and Nolan or Michael the the numbers on the side the 34105268 is that accurate that's what we're working with that's that's pretty accurate it's going to be a little bit more than that when you add in the the goat and the sheep um but it'll be it'll be around those numbers apologies I'm so late to the game are you guys backing into a specific number intentionally or 30 million 30 million your number for for both for the future security and the ag or no not the security no security is not part of this okay got it all right yeah this is I know that Ruth was a jfo equivalent in a former life so I trust her spreadsheet skills I'm still working on it don't give me props yet I feel that edge uh trust but verify no one yeah let's yeah happy to yeah um so uh are there are there other issues in the language that that we're dealing with that need to be while Nolan's working on these numbers uh that we need to fix Gus's language right Michael yes yes yes and uh there's two versions of Gus there's two now proposals from vhcb there's the um the technical assistance for viability for farmers post-covid and then the language about changing their authority and repealing the sunset on the rural economic development initiative uh do you want that added to this bill I thought we were going to add that okay the bill the extra money we were going to try to pick him pick up for him would come from uh the uh Q1 budget okay all right so leave the 192 yeah okay we could round that to 200 just for round numbers whatever whatever you would like it's got to add up to 30 million so we'll we'll see how we come out at the with the 192 okay um the the next thing I want to put on on your radar is I'm sorry to interrupt but I think I just blanked out there I was watching the spreadsheet are we adding this grant eligibility language that vhcb was did you just decide that that's what I I took that conversation to mean okay thank you yeah um and it also includes repealing the sunset on the ready program okay I don't know what that is but okay yeah rural economic development initiative program senator pleena's idea from a few years ago that was a good sunset michael that was a good sunset next year next year okay yeah that's that's a hell of a deal we made we put 75 000 oh it's that one okay and it gained like three million generated in in two years maybe we should double the budget well I I've got an issue going in approach to increase the ready money so that we could add two people doing these grants and it's it doesn't help like burlington very much but it helps all rural communities around the whole state pick up new money burlington is happy to support small towns throughout the state no I and I burlington has helped us a great deal and and those of us that realize that from rural areas appreciate all that that you do so so another issue I want to put on your radar is public records so people will be supplying information to public agencies including things like their production numbers their their sales etc do you want those to be public or do you want them not to be public well things like things like that I don't think the farmers will give a hoot about that but it's still not right but I can see cheese manufacturers that may apply that have to put in the pounds that they manufacture or make I don't boy that's pretty you know I don't think that's very important that everybody in the world can look at those numbers Michael could could we do it in a way that just made it clear it was an auditable thing but not otherwise public sure I was thinking that the the name of the person and the amount of their award would be public but the information that they provided to show economic harm would be not public and subject to audit yeah I think that trigger an automatic exemption from the public record because Anthony and I are very sensitive and Chris was a member of the government operations committee to it one time and every single time we start talking about that we've got tremendous pressure as the guy that actually put together that list of public records act exemptions I am I am empathetic to your to your position what I would would say you could do is you could say that the information that they provided to show economic harm is confidential business information that's exempt under 317C9 which is the existing trade secrets and confidential you won't be creating a new exemption you would just be saying that the information qualified for an existing exemption okay it'd be better at best to do it that way otherwise the bill may end up in government operations committee you don't want to have that happen no you guys are drawing it in there Michael do you have the numbers for the number of cheese processors I don't I don't have that I don't okay well we had it at some point maybe it's in the testimony from the ag agency but that would be helpful for Nolan to come up with the amounts for the different levels for the cheese somebody said I think it was eb 54 54 something 54 processors yesterday or something yeah I seem to remember that when they when we had Steve and the eight and Anson and those guys in to testify they gave us numbers on the different levels somebody did I just couldn't find it but that then because we need to do the same thing with dairy processors to try to figure out because I backed into nineteen point two million dollars on the on the dairy farmer part of it and I can keep working on those numbers but you can sort of see on the spreadsheet where I'm at at this point and I can back it down even more but um I don't want to back it down more if anything you keep that number up around the 20 number you know 19 and a half to 20 million I've got it to 19.2 Bobby and and if we take if we back that up if we don't back that down then we have to take it out of somebody else so sticking with the sort of percentages that we talked about um the 19 million it's where but anyway Mr. Chair were we going to take a break around 10 30 um yeah I think we're late so I think so too take five minutes and then we'll come back um we're back live I would presume Linda yes that's what we never left never left um so um Nolan have you gained numbers yet yes I can read that whoever's typing okay I've reached this gave me access so that was my test so Ruth's been doing the work so sorry Senator Hardy's been doing the work so far so how do we look I I don't I'm not quite ready to let it go but I could be convinced to let it go but eb comes in she testifies that dairy is 70 of the ag economy and we're giving them 88 percent of this money far as far as I can see I had to get to your 88 percent uh 26.5 out of 30 and you're counting in the processor money as well as the dairy farm money it's the dare is the processor money going to processors other than people that work with milk well yeah I mean I don't think that included like cabbage cheese and and those guys in the 70 percent you know I think she was talking about the milk the milk guys all right hold on I'm gonna you can find her um her testimony here I'll share it with you look at this because I'm not gonna I'm not going to bank on losing seven six or seven million dollars of dairy money to processors and when they can go to uh accd and get get money so it's her testimony says which I just sent you um says in Vermont our dairy farms make up over 80 percent of Vermont's farmland and contribute three million in cash circulation each day dairy accounts are 70 percent of Vermont's agricultural sales with over 1.3 billion in dairy products and byproducts sales each year of this 1.3 billion annual sales artists and cheese makers account for the largest amount for one product category at over 650 million so over half this number exceeds the direct sale value of fluid milk by over 50 percent overall dairy generates 2.2 billion in economic activity so that's the multiplier but she she seems to say the 70 percent in dairy products and byproducts I would I don't know I mean Michael Nolan is that wouldn't that be the processors yes I would that would be processors as well so I I mean I want dairy should get their share clearly I thought we included slaughterhouses and other processors in that processor number that we have up to this point so that isn't just dairy Chris okay the way it is laid out is that it is just dairy processors in the language or the spreadsheet in the spreadsheet in the language Michael has it all combined in the language and so the question I have is it easier to have it all combined from a drafting and perspective or is it easier to separate them out and if we do raise them out I think it's a fair question to say what how much do we give to the dairy processors the cheese makers and how much do we give to non-dairy farmers and processors and the reason that splitting them out may be easier is because of the the different levels of poundage of milk processed which is not relevant to maple and veggie and apple and stuff and I just got the numbers from the agency of processors by tier I will email that to all of you does the processors by when you look at the processors the way the administration laid it out it was assuming that all the processors we're going to get a payment similar to the way dairy farmers are going to get a payment that's the way I kind of read it and I don't think we should necessarily be presuming that all the dairy processors are going to need payments out of this fund I mean commonwealth dairy down in Brattleboro it's owned by the largest dairy producer in the world so I think it's a french company do we're going to give them money I mean come on I don't I don't think they'd be eligible to apply the governor's scenario I think they would be yes you're right Anthony under the governor's scenario they would be eligible because they'd be in that largest category and we can make ours different so we don't even include that largest category but why wouldn't we just I mean I'm just playing devil's advocate why I can understand why we're giving farmers a payment based on their size or the number of cows that there's somewhat some sense in that but to just say the processors you're going to get a check because we're presuming you lost money doesn't really doesn't really make sense to me well we can't justify that either unless they lost money and therefore it wouldn't be eligible to to you know they wouldn't be eligible to draw money unless I could show and prove the loss or in trouble yeah there's the whole language about economic harm it's just setting the tiers if we want to do that maybe we want to do that I don't know I'm just trying to figure out what is easiest for budgeting and drafting and so Michael I don't know if you want to weigh in on that but I think if you want to separate dairy out it's and you want to do it by tears it's easy it will be easier to draft that than to try to include dairy with the other ag processors and frankly I would probably go back to the administration proposal of having the milk producers and the dairy processors under one program but a separate appropriation to each of them and then for the ag the other ag processors the non-dairy ag processors you would I think the only thing you would need to do there is set a maximum cap award you're not going to be able to tear all of them so you're going to have to make a policy decision about how you want to cap the the amount that they can receive if we put the cap we have the number right of processors yeah you have the there's a hundred and ten total 52 or under 500 38 or 500 to 10,000 pounds a day nine or 10,000 to 50,000 a day three or 50 to 100,000 a day 400,000 to 500,000 a day and four over 500,000 a day so how many categories are there michael six thanks okay um so I mean if you cap if you cap cap that that we've got we've got seven how much seven million for them how much seven point five yeah i'm point five but that can be changed this was just a I can move all the numbers and I can do it before your eyes chris you can watch I've been transfixed like well anthony why you want to do for a cap or brian what do you guys think if you got I think it could be relatively small yeah I mean I mean I don't this seems small but when I the first number that comes to mind it's up to like 20 or 25 thousand dollars well if you multiply 25,000 uh by the total number how do you come out that's a question for Ruth and all and I'm working on the number to multiply by the total seven two point seven it'd be two point seven five million if you just multiply 110 by 25,000 but you don't want to do that I was trying to come up with a way to tear it I don't know how you'd want to do that though to tear what that's the problem like you know but you each depending on the amount of pounds per day the grant oh yeah that's what I'm working on now I just put it in there you see that Chris oh I'm on a different sheet a crash but putting it on number of pounds for days is assuming that it's all based on their volume as opposed to their need but they still have to show economic harm anthony they can't get the amount unless they show that they've lost that money so if we have a cheese processor who you know went to have an on-farm cheese stand and they've been selling it like hot cakes or cheesecake then we're not going to give them money because they're doing fine right you know you don't you know you don't have to necessarily have a specific cap per per size you can just say here's the amount of money in the fund and then they apply based on their need they have to justify their need and then the agency has discretion to decide you know up to a cap how much is you know relevant the bigger ones will have bigger the smaller ones will have smaller and then until the money runs out but yeah that makes sense to me we don't have to be as we don't the micromanager we can give this some basic guidelines to the agency and say go forth under these principles until the money runs out yeah but the you're leaving the agency to settle on a cap so so we can set the cap i just soon set the cap if if the committee wants to do that and and then let them deal with it i agree so what's the good number 25 well i think 25 would cover a lot of the small guys up to their you know right up to their limit and it would keep the money from all disappearing to a certain sector that can get their application in quicker and and all of that and i i think on the upper crew the larger ones maybe we shouldn't uh we shouldn't have the language in there that would tie them up where they couldn't apply to other sources because their losses i mean like habit could it could run up pretty high and we wouldn't want to just give them 25 grand and keep them from applying to get another amount of money from a ccd i wouldn't think true do you want to set the cap at the at the percentage that basically use the agency's proposed caps for those different categories and then multiply reduce it by what it was reduced by because you went from 10 million to 7.5 do you understand what i'm saying yeah give me the numbers and i'll plug them in right here michael so so under five was 56 500 as a cat from 500 to 9999 was 70 000 as a cat from 10 000 to 49 9 9 was 97 000 as the cat for 50 to 999 it was 127 000 for 100 to 499 it was 157 000 for more than 500 it was 185 000 okay so i can just i can back into the 7500 if that's what we're gonna want what is our are you okay with the 7500 chris or should that be lower well 7.5 million i'm sorry i keep saying it wrong 7.5 million well they're all just pennies they're all pennies right bobby how many pennies so many pennies they're dimes so i i i'm look i i i'm gonna stick to this principle that it should roughly come out to 70 and the all of all of the addition it's that big metropolitan area in montpellier with the fire trucks all of the up under 500 per day and all that that's all dairy right that's all just cheese correct yeah numbers a little chris what do you think i i'm liking well i mean so you you're giving dairy 86 percent here by definition and so that you know that's the numbers i just want to hear what the committee wants to do i can make the numbers do anything you want it's possible i'll make them be in line with what chris is saying let's see how it works okay let's see so that would have to okay that would mean adjusting the overall amounts for both milk producers and and the dairy process yep that's what i'm doing we'll see and then i can back into it and you know you could also have if if the chair's right that there haven't been the losses outside of dairy then we could have a october september 15th process where it reverts to dairy i don't know i'm willing to think about that i just um the the the other so the spreadsheet in the language are are at odds but um but it's helpful we're we're sort of having a dairy section of the spreadsheet and everybody else right right that's that's what it would wind up as yes the uh but we know we know very firsthand that the the milk producers have been the big losers i mean we haven't we haven't had a ton of other witnesses come in to testify and we've had how many meetings we've been going on for three or four weeks uh with meetings and and we know that the small cheese guys are having a hard time because we did get testimony on that but we haven't heard one word from commonwealth we haven't heard i don't think anything from ben and jerry's and i don't think we've heard anything from uh cabbage uh cheese making from cabbage farmers but we do know that the people that supplying them with product is they're losing their butts and and uh so that that's where the money should be going is where the most problem is and and i think we're we're running pretty good at this point doing that and helping the other farmers along the way was some help so the way i just moved the numbers it would be 75 for dairy farmers plus processors and 25 for non dairy farmers plus vhcb and that would be 17 million 55 5.5 million 7.3 million and then 200 000 so and i can back into the the sub amounts if i don't want to start changing those until we have the bigger amounts okay personally i think the 17 is light i do too it must be the cheese guys are the processors are high i i like if i were gonna have waited i'd give more to the pros to the cheese makers but um but uh i don't know still maybe that makes farmers it's basically 56 57 percent for the dairy farmers 18 for the processors and 24 for the non dairy yeah how about your original numbers better i think i think the numbers are messed up somehow because you shouldn't give 25 percent to the processors if you if you think of the process numbered it was 650 million that they generate i think 18 18 million for this process for the dairy processors yeah that's 18 percent sorry 18 percent not 24 no but i mean chris's number he you're tying bobby are you talking about the testimony we got the other day from eeby eeby yes was that chris again 650 million where was what was uh attributed to cheese yeah and we're giving them out of out of 1.3 billion so that's about half that's a lot of what happens so actually it's 2.2 63 million out of 1.3 billion chris her her thing was 650 million overall dairy generates 2.2 billion economic activities with her testimony said yeah dairy does three million a day you know it's it's billions of dollars that come into the state from dairy and it's 70 of the ag economy is what she's saying and this would give 75 of our package to dairy a shameful addition no i'm kidding it's it makes sense dairy i mean look dairy's hurting we understand that i think it needs to be you've heard my arguments you've given a little bit towards the 70 percent it's still at 75 percent so now the question seems to me is the ratio between to farmer to versus producer the right one or processor the right one and i that i'm i have less strong feelings about i i tend to agree that it should be more to farmers would be my gut but i don't know well i know if you play with the numbers on the milk productive producers 17 isn't enough to make up a big enough difference you you've got to get up closer to 19 to 20 million to to make that really meaningful and helpful or we're going to be too light on that and they're the ones that are bleeding the most i agree well i think that the cheese producers are too but um and some of them are also farmers i mean that's the thing there are people a lot of these people are both but well they'll get it so they'll get the money want they'll they'll be better off getting the money as the farm side right well i would think so because you've got to feed the animals to be able to keep them healthy and well to make the cheese all right so i just moved it to 18 and 4.5 that gives 60 that's that's 75 still that's 60 to the farmers 15 to the cheese makers i don't know i i'm not sure i care so much i just i can just back into any of the numbers or no one can since i'm making i'm not letting you i'm letting you driver now because you can't have too many drivers in the driver's seat so but i think it seems like you want to figure out what your percentages you should be and then we can back into it see the other the other way we could do this is have it set up so the smaller cheese makers that we've got quite a few of we know they're producing their own milk to make their own cheese we we could allow them to apply for both both ends of it if they so chose um and and it would give the little guy two bites at the apple which might help them more than than having it all under one or the other would that be difficult to do michael so i i don't think so um going back to a point you made earlier so if they if the the producer if the farm has a corporate entity that's a producer and a corporate entity that's a processor they're going to have separate economic harms right and so they should be able to apply for as a producer and as a processor correct yes and but if they don't have a separate corporate entity you want them to be able to apply as a producer basically under to qualify under both programs provided that they don't double that that they only they only get their actual losses or expenses well if they added if they're running out of their checkbook let's say you know everything goes into one account everything's out of that account their their losses are going to be i would think greater if they're a farmer producer of product than just a farmer right so i think what i just explained you were you right into it that says uh um um uh a farm that operates both as a milk producer and a dairy processor with separate corporate entities for each may apply under each program a farm that operates as both a producer and a processor but doesn't have separate corporate entities um may apply under both programs provided that they um cannot receive payment for more than their economic their overall total economic harm yeah and that would push more money to those small juice makers which are hurting the most yeah i'm fine with that i like that that sounds good i'm i'm still messing with the numbers but overall do you want me to go back up to the 19 million i would very much like that so then out of the cheese makers or would we take it out of the non-dairy because it's got to come out of one of the other ones i take it out the non-dairy because guys like paul said he might use what 20 or 30 000 to revamp his operation to deal with the turkeys and and fruits and vegetables well they're just planting so we don't know their economic harm at this point but we would we would make it available if there's we could even put language in that if if there is money left over that later on in the summer if the other small farms like fruits and vegetables if they if they uh further harm they could they could apply them we haven't got a sunset or anything on when they can apply do we michael uh yes there there is a deadline for application pardon me isn't it late in the yes it's it's um uh october yeah so the veggie people are now as time goes on how they're doing and they could apply later on and on a first maybe on a if we could word it right if you haven't applied and you're the first time a plier you'd get the first bite at the apple or something are we um are we the the milk the the cheesers that are not milking themselves aren't they eligible or do we have any idea if they're eligible under accd or whatever yeah i don't see right the restart program under accd is pretty broad um so likely yes but you're gonna you're gonna have well i don't know what the restart program is if it's about reimbursing economic harm i don't know if they're if they're gonna have that that double tipped language see we well we wouldn't want to we wouldn't want to keep the big guys from applying to accd because they've taken a twenty five thousand dollar grant from us i wouldn't think that they're losing millions what what if we um what if we just capped the what if we stopped ratcheting up on the processor so that you know 80 80 grand or something was the the biggest grant would that say would that be enough to keep our our proportions a little closer to the 75 percent i i thought we had a twenty five thousand dollar cap didn't you mention that anthony yes but then but then you talked about going to um a cap based on the agency right reduced by the amount of raw reduction and appropriation to dairy processors so ruth yeah on your spreadsheet i'm looking at you've taken the 7.5 million which you originally uh offered and you've dropped that to 4.5 and then you've taken what was 3.3 and doubled that to 6.3 it seems like there might be little ground there to move the dairy processors up a little bit and the non-dairy do we really need 6.3 million for non-dairy i i defer to you guys i was trying to be uh responsive to chris's concerns about okay well here's here's a consideration for them for the non-dairy if and this is information from steve collier um there's a approximately 7 000 farms people that that are basically saying that they get some income from farming um and so uh the grant would either have to be very low or it's going to be first come first serve um from that program and it's going to be a thousand bucks right now right right which is very little so we give a hundred grand to a big cheese maker and we give a thousand bucks to a beef producer right but if you've got one beef or two beef you're i think it's two maybe you're in you're in that 7 000 number you aren't really a beef producer you're a hobby uh animal grower for your children or something isn't is there that threshold of half your income or whatever michael um so that that's not in there right now uh you could do that um that's dangerous doing but i thought you had wanted it to be that they are just subject to the raps okay that that that that also is a bit of a a threshold right right but it's a it's a relatively low threshold um for beef that's what you're looking at see if you do the if you do the uh the other issue and one spouse or the other works off the farm then you know you're kicked out and and you know they're feeling the hurt too we know they're small so i i just come back to the the if dairy and dairy processors are about 70 of the ag economy i think we need to have some justification for giving them more than 70 of the money and maybe the justification is we think they're hurting worse exactly but they have look i'm getting a text from rural vermont saying they've been farmers diversified farmers testify and we've only heard from them so i i just don't have a we heard we've heard from other farmers and they all said yeah it's been painful and they've lost market share and they're had expenses and they're they're all they're all hurting chris but if you lose the the dairy infrastructure uh those little guys wouldn't even exist any longer because they wouldn't be able to if you lose your parts places tractor places uh feed dealers and and all those people where it end up like new hampshire uh driving four hours in one direction to get a part that cost you uh 100 bucks but if you don't have that you can't get the hay in it's going to rain and i mean it's just it's just so important to maintain the infrastructure that that's why dairy is so important is because it helps keep all this other little dairy alive and and healthy that's why i've been willing to go over the 70 percent that eb white testified is is the the the relative amount of the economy um i just think every percentage over their share has gets trickier i also suggest an idea at times of getting past this the hobby farmers or whatever you want to call them people it's one or two cows that we set a minimum sales requirement to be considered for the money like you have to have made five thousand dollars a year so the previous year or something like that you have to generate income you have an income threshold in order to qualify so that way somebody just has one or two cows the one or two cattle is not necessarily going to qualify it's not going to qualify for the money well that would shorten up that seven thousand number for sure or make it go further right make it go further make it go to people who need it more too you know you could do something along lines of um like for the for the cheese you could be like produces more than 250,000 or 250 pounds per day and then you could have a cap at the high end like about a hundred thousand per day and you could save a couple hundred thousand off the top end i mean right now this has those grants to cheese makers going up to a hundred grand yeah so you could cap it a hundred thousand right or cap the fifty to a hundred thousand in the category per day and just cap everything above a hundred thousand per day at seventy five hundred seventy five thousand and then that kind of frees up about two hundred thousand three hundred thousand or whatever because you're cutting that you're reducing them sorry we're reducing those by twenty five thousand eight times four about a hundred thousand and just saying you're you can scratch the ends you don't have to you don't have to use these categories that are presented to us we can lump categories together we can cut out categories we have minimums we get a maximum like we don't have to use the 10,000 to 50,000 per day we can do 10,000 to 100,000 per day and break out a crack category in that the only thing we need to watch out for there is there's some very uh small sheep producers and and goats that only make maybe 10 pounds or 20 pounds of cheese on a certain day of the week or two days a week and they go to the farmer markets on the weekend with their 20 or 30 pounds and get you know 20 bucks a pound for it or whatever and they you know they get by so we wouldn't want to lock them out if they're actually losing money well they they get up to 25,000 dollars right under this proposal right now yeah we're good under this yeah yeah okay how did we um how did we start at 25,000 that that seems like a big number we're giving a small dairy 11,250 I just was putting numbers in there trying to back in the total amount and and sort of trying to stay with the concept of giving more to the smaller guys but I can move the numbers to whatever you want to make it all fit that's the beauty of a spreadsheet no I understand I just so you went to where that number came from it's it's you started with the administration's proposal and then you reduced it by basically whatever the reduction is currently right now yeah they started with 25 to the smallest cheese makers no they started with higher than that okay they started with 56 yeah they were all they also had 10 million dollars versus 4.5 right now so um you know I we can do a minimum and a maximum and then I can adjust the interim ones to whatever makes sense and I think Nolan's right I'm combining some of these categories will make it easier so we have maybe three categories or four categories instead of six um and then you do that and and you use you you add up the dairy and make sure that's up toward 19 and use the rest uh to to cap out or put minimums in or or maximums and work that way you know I I have an idea too um because you I think you'll have 13 minutes left if you give Ruth and I some guidance in terms of percentages and some basics we can come back tomorrow with some scenarios yeah rather than us just go back and forth and kill 13 minutes yeah we can do that the best thing is just to decide on the the big categories and that you know if we're going to do 19 million 4.5 6.3 and then turn the thousand then we can back into the numbers but but I feel like we need to leave today pretty solid on how we're divvying up the bigger pot yeah um so anyway if you if you start at the top we have 30 we keep 19 for dairy that end of it that that leaves you 11 million to divvy up between uh the other producers and and the non-dairy um people and vhcb but what are the percentages what would the percentages be in that scenario like what does non-dairy get as a percentage of the over on that spreadsheet that was that so at this point if you do 20 million and 4.5 that's that's 78.3 percent for which for dairy total like the dairy processors and producers so non-dairy is close to 25 percent 21 it's yeah it's 21 point and if you add in the vhcb thing 21.7 but i thought no and you're with those numbers to to move them around in different categories to cover yeah i think i think if you give us some guidance in terms of in my head the percentage of how many you want if you stick with the dairy at 19 million that's 63.3 and for the rest of it right now the dairy processors are 15 and the non-dairy is at 21 so you give us some guidance in those areas and vhcb is 0.67 but that's only because it's 200 000 if you give us some guidance i think that we can we can come back with some ideas i think that's in my opinion maybe ruth i would want to at least keep the non-dairy as close to 25 as possible yeah okay then uh yeah and it's a 21 right now and you you don't have any room to move to 6.3 Chris what are you thinking in terms well i guess i i there is i mean 25 seems we were there for a minute we were trying to figure it out so a quarter of it's for non-dairy all this is based in need so i i i think you could do that by trimming back um the amount that the large producer gets or some other way but but it seems to go to 75 for dairy i think is you know we can we can trim back on the producer's sides but we need to know the total amount so that when you say producer do you mean processor those just said either way producer or processor because i think we could cap the big processors somewhere absolutely we can play with that cap i mean obviously we can cap them but we need to know the total that we're giving to cheese makers and total for dairy farmers and then the total for non-dairy so i would i would boost the non-dairy a little bit and take out some from the processor so that non-dairy's get in a quarter and the processors uh you know get trimmed back but but keep the basic structure of what we have which benefits the small processors so i mean that goes to i think that's going to take well that's going to take a lot out of the cheese makers if we're if we're sticking on the 19 million for dairy for the farmers some of the the little cheese makers i mean even if you added in jasper hills uh you know they're pretty large cheese maker um you know i think they're going to be covered well um the way we've got it set up where they can apply uh you know either way in some cases if they run two corporations and if they don't they can add all their losses up as as one loss so they they'd be able to count both so that so so the agency has just said for the non the non-dairy processor the non-milk producer they're concerned about setting the threshold so that it it's about people who are actually producing items for sale as opposed to the recreational farmer so in what category michael the in the non-dairy farm operations well that you you could write that in right michael yeah yeah and that allows us to get a more an actual rant not a not an embarrassment jack does that michael does that imply considering what i said before about the um an annual sales amount as a threshold for eligibility i i think you could do that i think if you if you set a uh a minimum income from sales from the farm that would probably do a lot to address that concern that that makes sense to me obviously like my neighbor makes honey but he's a state worker he doesn't need a grant for his honey operation that's not what we're talking about but the beef producer that you know the meat producers that the significant vegetable operations i don't want to just say here's a thousand bucks yeah i i so whoever's manipulating the spreadsheet you've satisfied me with the big amounts um assuming we can make that real for the cheese makers well just point out what we've done on the spreadsheet is to completely reverse where we started originally we had 7.5 for the dairy processors and 3.3 for non-dairy and now we have her completely the other way around i still think it's light on the dairy but it's it's five percent more than they represent in the economy so yeah but in a normal economy chris i don't think this is a normal economy and you're using one person's numbers well i'm okay the state expert on dairy i mean uh look i if you can bring forward some data that counters that that's fine we'll talk about it we're already but i i just don't know how we i mean we we've just spent decades you know amplifying dairy over other kinds of producers and it's this which this continues by the way this is i i mean yeah you you have to keep the core of your business healthy and well or all your other little businesses falter and we're giving them 75 percent of this money well we we had 20 million more that came out of the ag department that was going to be handed out much differently than where we are and and i think we've included more people covered more areas and and 20 million dollars less to accomplish our goal and and but you you can't you can't starve the core of your of your enterprise and think you're gonna keep the low satellites all well uh roose how about um sorry my family's like trying to get me to come kill a wasp for them um but um i i'm the bug killer in the house um but the uh uh brain um can we uh no one can mess with these numbers um and and i can help them or talk to them about it but and why don't we sleep on it and talk about it tomorrow um i'm feeling like completely burnt on this conversation no event for any of you but i i i think i need to take a break and i also have to get ready to report that livestock yeah so i need to make sure i understand it yeah so so could i just summarize what you've asked for in the draft yeah you you've asked first to take this the food and the nutrition programs out and put that separate yeah you've asked to to combine the dairy or take the dairy processors or is out and separate them from the other agricultural processors you want no double dipping you want um you want the records to be uh trade secrets when they're referring to um production and sales etc uh and you want the vhcb's language to go in with ellis change and with their um vhcb authority and then for the other ag processors you want a minimum income threshold for them to qualify for the grant you haven't talked about what that threshold would be there's a producer michael not pro not you said processors i don't think it's producers well it's both it's ag producers right okay not here it's yeah right no right so and don't forget the repeal language that's that's that's that's already and yet yeah we we do encourage double dipping for the very small producers that are right also right right so we don't want to call it that right it's it's each if you have a corporate entity that's a producer and a processor you apply for those different corporate entities if you have one you get to apply for both but only up to the total amount of your economic harm yeah okay so for the threshold the income threshold i mean no for would say ten thousand dollars is an income threshold and we can start there and see how it goes okay sounds like a lot to me but well probably five beef or six beef if you quartered them so all right anything else from anybody what time are we meeting tomorrow nine o'clock is that okay sure okay yeah and hopefully we're to vote on this and get it done that would be great so anyways we'll see you all in about an hour and uh otherwise we'll see you in the morning see you later so yeah