 Good morning Michael. Good to see you and you may want to be in on this discussion a little bit. We're going to talk about general ag issues and where we want to go and what we've done and what we need to do to finish up what we where we are and I didn't know but maybe you know we've you guys you other four are all on on two special committees and we ought to probably the way I understand it there's a maybe doing short term issues and another committee that's doing longer term issues and so I thought if we went kind of went through that brainstorm those different ideas that we would come up with some ideas that Michael might want to hear hear us talk about or may want to jump in and add to to work on just as you know for our committee and I don't know if hopefully you've thought about some short term issues or long term or just issues that we might be able to add on to one of these lists for the subcommittees to drill down and promote even further and maybe even a little deeper we we certainly have heard from you know many individuals that have expressed problems that they're facing that that we may want to address and like Ruth you had your turkey Paul Stone on and and he talked about maybe needing some help to set his turkey slaughtering business up if I remember right you know that's a I would say that's a short term or issue that we might want to think about and talk about you know the the part we had a person on that spoke about my migrant justice people or migrant workers about they're you know afraid of health care and I think Chris has got that under control but you know the language barrier that they're having speaking with these people and you know so we've got we we have a lot of background that should help put this list together the long term you know there's a other way other things there the long term things are like setting up maybe a new milk pricing system where we would have our own milk order setting up the taking the dairy guys and trying to convince them to push back from dairy milk cows and get into maybe raising more beef on the longer term side and a host of others so jump in and and Ruth's going to take some notes for us to put on the list and and to send to the two subcommittees so why don't we all just join together and just raise your hand we're all you know it's only us as far as I know is that right Linda yes yeah so you know just raise your hand I'll let you jump in and Brian Brian and Anthony are the first two up in Chris so Brian thank you Mr. Chair well I don't think there's any debate about the fact that the the virus has exacerbated the situation with dairy what was already a very fragile system and we can you know look at various ways to try to fix that whether we diversify a little bit more whether we continue to offer subsidies I just think until we get control of prices and we may never get control of prices as long as we're tied to that federal milk order even without the virus this is going to continue to be a situation every single season so that made it worse and that's one of those things where you could could look at a short-term solution and I think we did Michael strapped it a bill that would at least provide some temporary relief for the dairy industry now whether we want to couple that with vegetable and beef and all the other types of agricultural products I think there's some sense to that and maybe we come up with one big number and then divide it up whoever we see but certainly I think that's one issue that that intersects well with not just the immediate situation but also some long-term things as well so where are you getting are you getting to the point that the the dairy milk subsidy program for right now that we talked about the small farms small certified we put that on the the early short list well I think so yeah yeah and and then the milk pricing you know the tied to the federal order we've got it Michael's got another bill that we were going to work on that last that next week when we come back but we never got back and with this problem kind of gotten put on the shelf but that's where you're thinking putting that on the long-term side so or do you think we could work that into a on the short term because that's there's quite a lot to that issue setting up our own state milk order I mean it's it's going to be you know we're going to have some pushback from them guys that are starving themselves to death with the federal order but those damn co-ops have got them so brainwashed it you know it's pathetic yeah and I think for that reason senator starts probably more of a long term yeah I don't think we're going to get consensus with with all the farmers and the co-op together to go ahead with just a Vermont pricing model I just especially not in the time we have left we put that then on the is everybody sort of in agreement we'll put that on the long-term side of things yeah yeah I guess I just wonder if that's appropriate for the task force or if that's more like a senate ag independently yeah I think you're right on that Chris what do you think Michael for the the task force for going forward on milk pricing I think that's a that's that's definitely a long term yeah looking at the charge of that task force and and the the skill and detail it's going to take with breaking down the market and breaking down the legal constraints it's it's not something that will be done by the beginning of June yeah I that'll be a committee issue then yeah yeah um you other folks good with that sure so uh Anthony we're putting the dairy aside a little bit for now um I see two very interconnected issues that we have to deal with relating to number one hunger and the need to provide food for the monitors and then relief for farmers and I don't want to say one goes before the other they're clearly both connected and I think reason why farmers are suffering the way they are it has to do with the lack of demand and the lack of demand means for monitors aren't able to access the food that they need to have in order to stay healthy so I think we there's some short term I think there's short term anyway depends on how well the legislature can move forward it's hard to say what's short term and long term in the eyes of the legislature sometimes but um I think that we should look at ways in which we can deal with both of those issues um providing access to food and providing support to farmers and we could do by funding some of the existing programs that provide access to food and help farmers there's this thing called for monitors feeding for monitors which is run by the food bank which buys food from farmers at market prices and then brings it to the food bank there's the farm shares program there's crop cash program these are three programs that help people reduce the cost of food for themselves but also help farmers we maintain those markets that they need to try to make profit from being in an agriculture I think that some kind of emergency funding for farmers who have lost market share you know we hear a lot about how the farmers are doing well because they have csa's and those kinds of things and that's true there are a lot of farmers who have capitalized on it in a positive way but there are a lot of farmers who have not been able to adapt to those kind of markets for a variety of reasons whether they don't have good internet access or they don't have some good farm sand shares that you know they need help access adapting to the new market so the idea of having some kind of covid relief fund in a sense to provide farmers with maybe either grants or loans ideally grants so that they can adapt to the new markets new market situation I think that bringing a group of people together to work with the dairy farmers to talk about transition is a good thing and that is the transition itself will be long term but the idea of implementing some kind of strategy to to work with the farmers to begin to think it through is a short term strategy I mean if we're going to be given subsidies to farmers which we're probably going to be doing I think we should say to those farmers look we're going to give we're going to give you some money to make up for your losses but you have to go through some kind of process whether it's just a meeting or whatever it might be an evaluation as to what potentially you could transition to and I know transition is hard for dairy farmers especially bigger ones but I think they should at least have to engage in a conversation about it in order to qualify for the relief money that we're going to end up giving them because we don't give it a millions of dollars and I think for monitors would you know be easy to say we're giving them a couple million dollars this year next time there's a drop in the market price we're going to give them more money and I think we need to tie that commitment that we're making to them with their commitment to try and to find ways to diversify themselves out of the problem that we have that they're in so I think I don't want to ramble on about I've been talking more with NOFA and some of the other groups to look at some of the existing funds funds meaning funding sources that are available you know NOFA has a COVID relief fund that they're setting up the center for ag economy and hardwick has a fund I forget what it's called but these are existing funds which we might be able to direct some money to so that they can then distribute that money to farmers in need so the idea has come up with a series of things that would allow an institutional buying would be the other piece I think which is you know setting goals like we have you know our goal is on whether it's 15% on what it is in the bills we're looking at now but I think we should set much more aggressive goals and make institutions schools and hospitals and other institutions buy more local food sooner rather than later so again there's more to be said there but those are the kind of ideas I'm thinking of so yeah Michael so we could like tie take the money that's going to get shipped into the dairy relief fund and put language in that do you put language in that that we would move toward we would also hold meetings to move dairy farmers you know some plate way of saying that we're going to make them come to meetings and and talk about alternative uses usage of their farms yeah either meetings or a group of people that visit with them on their farm it's it is the kind of thing that NOFA and some of the other groups are thinking about how to go about doing it in a way that works well I don't want to alienate anybody you want to just make sure that they're willing to go through the process of think rethinking what they might be able to do with their land if they're not going to stay in dairy or partially move out of dairy I had quite a long chat with Gus this week I don't know what that day it was but it was pretty you know they're all Tuesdays from now they're all Tuesdays they're all the same well Gus Gus that's why I'm gonna have him on at our you know meeting I told him this week was all screwed up and you know we were already too busy and next week we would have him on so he's going to bring Ella on and and not earn her thing and Dale earn her I mean why would I think of that they came race a car and Nancy ever heard Nancy ever heard right and so that's what I think he wanted to talk something about this type of thing through farm viability and and that stuff and and I think that that would help would help bring this about and if we ran it through a program where they actually and through an agency that actually accomplish it accomplishes something you know it could go in in a different agency and and we would just get talk back and you know the talking days are we need some action you're running out of time so maybe maybe we could have that on the agenda when we talk with Gus I think L is a real spark plug and would get on to this and you know they'd set up a program and and make it all work but I don't think we can have it just be a volunteer thing maybe by accepting this money somehow that I don't know how could we do that Michael so it wouldn't look like we're forcing them but it would strongly encourage them well uh I think you and this might be but you could have as a condition of acceptance that that that farm and forest viability will conduct a site visit to discuss ways to improve the efficiency of the farm including potential transition to other commodities that that might have that sound gosh I think that sounds good I would and I and I'm not saying this to be critical of Gus or BHCB because I think they're wonderful don't get me wrong you know Nancy Everhart has been an old friend and I have a lot of faith in them but I think I would like to involve other people as well and sort of figuring out how to best go about it so it's not just BHCB well I have a team a team that represents a broader group of people not so that we would have more more ideas floating around I think extension has been doing some of that work right yeah they work for they work for Ella at BHCB you know they work through BHCB and that money that we give Gus and and for that you know get shoveled out to the different groups that do the farm viability stuff yeah well if you're gonna say the every dairy farm in the state uh applies for and wants the payment that's approximately 640 farms so you're probably and I'm looking at at Ella's shop right now I think she's got five people maybe three three to five people that that are are part of her farm for us but you're gonna need more than that so how do we add that Michael um well I think you could probably come up with a committee or a response team or something like that that's made up of representatives from these organizations or whatever organizations you want that can then coordinate on how they will provide services or review of a farm that accepts something like that and it's not like they have to go through the review before they get the money they have to have right here right this is tied to it but it's not it's not a prerequisite to doing it right is that so that does that sound pretty good to you guys or it sounds like the first draft to me yeah yeah okay so we got we got that one um that's all in the short term stuff I don't know Ruth how you're gonna write that down is uh is is something for the committee that to take that up but yeah I mean I think that we this morning when Anthony and I our committee met I think we acknowledged that there are some things that standing committees are just going to be working on and that these new committees don't need to necessarily deal with so I can put little asterisks next to things that our committee is going to take care of and these bigger things maybe uh that the other committees might want to dig into a little bit more but I think my understanding is that these other committees are just trying to put together a picture of what is necessary for the transition and for the longer term so having that these things on the list but saying hey we've got this the ag committee as a plan is I think helpful um but I don't think every committee is as awesome as our committee body so they're not all going to have plans speaking from experience I think that's hard I've never done anything without a plan and a b plan because usually I don't plan anything unless I am expecting myself to accomplish it right here we go so I just want to add another thing to the list um in the short term we had talked about the migrant um farm worker uh sort of aid program we've got some testimony on it and I've been working with Michael on a draft I sent you all just at the beginning of the meeting uh just forwarded you the latest draft that I just got from Michael before just a few minutes before we started today um and we're still trying to get numbers on you know more precise numbers on the number of migrant farm workers um but as it's drafted right now it's just specific to migrant farm workers it doesn't capture a huge you know the larger picture because at this point sticking with you know ag committee work it seemed more logical to do it that way and also because um uh it gets really expensive what when you add in a larger universe so trying to keep it focused on ag is what it is right now but obviously we can talk about that but that would that would I would add to the short term is what would you what did you add what are you thinking about putting in there to help them with the growth so it would be the way it's drafted right now is for any farm worker migrant farm workers who did not qualify for the federal stimulus package they would they would be able to get and who worked during the COVID emergency would get a $500 uh payment a sort of stimulus payment and it would be um it would have it would be state general funds that's the safest way to do it so it doesn't get clawed back by the feds um the agency of administration would contract out with a uh a non-profit organization Michael suggested the community action organizations as a possibility um but it's not named in the in the draft right now that they would then administer the program and take applications there's provisions in there to require confidentiality so there's no sharing of any personally identifiable information um so and it would so that's that's the basic idea right now that the problem is trying to secure numbers um and Michael I've gotten a little bit more information since you and I exchanged emails earlier and the sort of I had heard I had remembered that we've gotten testimony of around 500 but apparently that is not correct um I heard from Dan Baker who is the UVM professor who testified to us and he said that UVM in 2018 estimated 672 farm workers um but he thinks that's probably low um that human rights commission is estimating much higher um like three times that which I think is high um so but Dan thought saying 800 to 1200 in that range is probably um accurate but that would also include family members so I would think that we would just be doing it for the actual workers so 800 may be a good number so that would come to my math right to 450,000 yeah now would there be any administrative costs added to that I would think there would probably have to be you know that the the they would have to give the organization at least some percentage to be able to deal with it because it'd be a lot of paperwork and cutting checks and that kind of thing an outreach okay why why Ruth wouldn't that be chargeable to the covet money uh seeing these farms were considered um you know they were accepted as essential workers so why wouldn't that be able to come out of the 1.25 well I guess uh I would defer more to Michael on that but I think there's some uh concerns about whether or not they would be eligible to receive federal funds but Michael why don't you weigh in sure the the concern is how the federal government would um opine on funding uh undocumented workers because they have um they have expressed some um reservation about uh funding under the CARES Act for sanctuary cities and sanctuary states um they have uh been looking at things like um I'm trying to find my email from Becky Wasserman in our office has done um some immigration law in the past and one of the things that there's a second circuit decision in February of this year um which allows the federal government to tie immigration related conditions to federal funds so our concern is that some of these CARES Act monies might wind up with conditions about not being able to be not allowed for award to to certain categories or classes of of immigrate immigrant related people and we're just trying to avoid that kind of issue or or that there could be an audit and right everybody gets revealed right but but I think it's a fair question it's the one that jumps to my mind is is in the era of a 400 million budget shortfall um you know we were two months ago we were leery of asking for a million bucks for local food and schools um I don't know I I guess we can advance it because it's the right thing to do and see how people react or or what we learn well you don't you don't think there's a way to funnel that money through um whoever as a farm worker a farm worker essential or essential farm worker payout and cannot list the the details of it the what farmers were talking about you know maybe if we tied it to the other thing that we mentioned before about providing financial assistance to farmers who need to adapt or expand you know regardless of what kind of farmer they are whether they're dairy or vegetable whatever those folks who need to make investments whether it's you know a website or supporting their their farm workers or developing a farm stand or setting up a csa there's a couple of funds that might like I mentioned before the center for ag economy has something like that they call it the Vermont farm fund and NOFA has a COVID response fund they've been what they've been doing is hiring I don't know what their hiring is right where we have to talk to them about but they've been providing relief milkers for farmers who are under too much stress and are falling behind on their milking at times too so there are these other funds out there that we could put money into and some of the money could go towards the migrant farm workers and others and the money could go to like vegetable farmers and each set up websites and I don't know if that seems too diverse of a way to put it together but it'd be one fund that to support farmers in a time of emergency or you think Mike or Rose well I I mean just to respond to what Anthony was saying you know I've been as I have said before I've been thinking about all of the stuff that we're talking about is a big package for agriculture and including the migrant farm worker payments as part of that package and then also having the funding for the farmers who need things for their websites or like what we heard last Friday from those farmers the farm stand setup all that my concern and and Michael and I talked about this a little bit is is that if we have it I want to make sure that the money actually gets to the farm workers themselves try it to farmers themselves having to apply for benefits on behalf of their farm workers they we can't really use those string thing you can only get a grant if you do this for your farm workers Michael and I had that conversation and also just making sure that these people get their fair share and it's not dependent on where they work yeah no I actually agree with that I didn't I didn't mean I mean I would prefer to do what you just said Ruth not do not go not doing what I said about lumping it all together I was just thinking about that as an alternative way of doing it if we want to make it harder for the feds to claim where the side where the money's going I would rather be two separate funds I really would yeah Chris um first of all this is just nice to have a conversation with us and and why you're there are thinking so I appreciate you setting that up I I've been I've been trying to think about some some themes and principles maybe that could guide our work and and the one that strikes me is food security this is widely documented that should be on the short term west uh and long term yeah yeah and that they they you know in terms of the the succession or transition I mean it was remarkable I noticed secretary Tebbitts said farmers are are dying for it that's new that's something I really want us to take advantage of so I like the idea of if we're going to offer some relief to dairy coupling it with that and logistically how we do that we'll have to figure think through but that was just a moment that I want us to to hold on to because that is different and then when it comes to this money we want everything to work through the COVID relief money we have an extraordinary situation where we've either spent it four ways depending on who you ask or we may not be able to spend it all and so that's that is incredible dynamic and it seems to me you you mentioned Mr Chair a plan A and a plan B we ought to have a good backup plan ourselves and it can be informed we can use it to inform the task forces to share it more broadly with the senate to to really have some good strategies in place if we in fact land at a time when people are going we're going to lose some of this money we need to figure out how to spend it when you think about don't worry don't worry Chris the big dogs will eat eat it all in the bone stew if we let them have it if we can solve the puzzle though and so as we think about you know the the the sort of straightforward this farmer had to invest in this website this whatever this contingency plan because of COVID that seems straightforward and we should help farmers in that situation have had clear expenses related to COVID that's what the money is everybody understands is for but to me the food security principle should also come to play where we're saying let's have these investments solve two problems solve the short term and start to address the food security and that's where you know that will be that will require some creative thinking and and so it's obvious if people need to invest to recover from loss of income and and you know there's a story in the free press about some heinsberg farmers that pivoted quickly and managed to using front porch forum sell all their products that we're supposed to go to restaurants you had we had that same example from madison county the other day so it's working for people my question is what about the farmers that are actually seeing increased demand and they don't have the infrastructure themselves they don't have the washi station they don't have the freezing station whatever it is how do we help them so that we're more resilient in october when the next round comes and we want to be touching food we want to be protecting against food insecurity and i and i and then i would just add and i finished my list and um i think it's essential if we're going to help dairy and i understand that people feel we need to do that there are going to be people that will bring up water quality and they are going to bring up the fact that funding for water quality work last year we were all very proud i played a role in finance to link it to a portion of the meals and rooms tax so we're i don't know how we're going to figure that out that's not for this committee to figure out but that is a real dynamic that we as of this moment are not clear how we're going to meet our federal lawsuit clean water obligation and so we need to be careful um if we're uh you know as some might characterize going to be bailing out dairy at the very same time that we're going to struggle to come up with water quality money there needs to be a linkage and so this transition plan is at a minimum something i need to feel comfortable and i think allows us to support farmers in a way that is more sustainable i i just even if we are struggling to get the money out the door or return it i really want us to see us investing in dollars that are going to also pay dividends in two years well dairy is hard to justify that to be frank from my point why why can't we buy water quality practices on farms you know that they have to continue to to meet their water quality standards and and this you know this extra money we're going to give should allow them to to do that or be in good standing well i heard like four different proposals there um so a uh the last thing i heard was senator pierson saying that they have to be in good standing that would be very easy to do because there's a definition of good standing in statute that you could just link to as as um a requirement for for assistance uh the the the proposal by the chair to have them to to be in compliance well they're already required to be in compliance um but you could say that they would need to use a percentage of whatever they receive on a all documented water quality project that's a good idea and uh and then i can't remember what the third proposal i heard was rose uh yeah i i just want to say i i mean i agree with chris that we need to have the short term and the long term in perspective and anything we can do to uh ensure that we don't have this problem in the future would be great um and i i i'm not sure that i think have requiring them to be in good standing is a really good idea especially if there's already a statutory definition that michael can link it to i'm not sure that we could it would i don't know fair is the right word but if it would be okay to link it to you have to use this money for a water quality project the whole idea of this would be is to help them through this crisis i i think linking it to if you accept this money you have to um agree to um transition counseling or planning or whatever we want to call it um to uh with vhcb and the farm viability program and their partners and we can sort of make it more broad if you want to but um that that they have to go through this kind of planning process to see if they are viable for longer than 2020 and that if they're not viable they can take this money and help transition to another thing but the buddying the waters no pun intended with also linking it to them doing a water quality project i think would divert the attention away from the transition to a longer term solution for farming i also want to make sure that if they do transition they they maintain themselves as a farm because we don't want them to just say oh we're going to development then develop with transit yeah i would be a good one transition into housing yeah i mean housing is one thing but it's profitable it we wanted to we wanted to remain farmland and viable environmentally friendly economically sustainable farmland and that may not be dairy that might be something else but yeah we still want them to be farms brian thank you senator so i agree with ruth i think the more strings you put on this um covid money the harder it gets to justify getting it for one thing um and the more likely that there may be some federal roadblocks that that you're actually creating that you don't need to so if i can just go back i think the five of us are all in agreement that we want to help dairy farmers we want to help vegetable farmers want to help beef farmers and we want to help migrant workers those to me are the four groups that need our attention if i'm remembering back and michael can correct me if i'm wrong the draft that we had had about eight point eight million dollars set aside as an appropriation request for the dairy farms depending on the size of the farm i guess what i'm wondering about is if we could make that a larger number and somehow include all the rest of this in it without what are you doing it's up it's up to 42 or 3 million now it is yeah that's good yeah i mean i don't know where the heck it's gonna go but how did it go from 8.8 to 40 well anson got mixed up in it somehow with those farmers from franklin county and and uh yeah they're losing uh they're losing the farm dairy farmers together all together are losing uh about 14 million dollars a month so somehow it got up to 42 43 million in losses and that's only three months so because milk went from like 19 dollars to 12 dollars 12 50 dollars 12 dollars and a half and so those numbers got way out of way out of whack and i think that's why uh we could put in the language that you know they should be in good standing with with the state of ramon and that that they should band together or to be a long term to a long term viability and and consistent programs rather you know write that language in there where they would have to attend some planning meetings for a long term sustainability okay well i guess i'll back right out of the conversation then because i i think i'm on a much smaller scale but well i'm sure that number is going to get work down yeah yeah that's that's a lot of money i mean i think good risk now i was just gonna say i mean 40 million that's that's way bigger than what we were talking about and i understand they're taking those huge losses but i don't i don't know that we're going to be able to get that kind of money and and that it's gonna give us a bang for our buck and i just that's you know the eight million that are 10 million where that range we were talking about seemed reasonable to me but 40 million i just i just don't see that as something that we're going to be able to get and and to brian and and and anthony both mentioned that sort of other farm things i got some numbers from michael who got them from ryan about the number of farms non-dairy farms and there were 53 i believe michael um that are certified farms and so if we did a grant program for sort of you know non-dairy certified farms um with a grant capped at maybe five thousand dollars per farm that they could use for um covid related expenses whether it's hiring consultants to do their website or revamping their you know turkey processing or whatever you know setting up a farm stand whatever it is that would be a sort of smaller grant program for the diversified farms to help them through and i would just i would just i want to go back to one thing chris mentioned before because i think part of it is when you talk about the grants ruth to adapt we we use the website as an example because it's an easy example to use but some of them may need to expand those chris mentioned to meet the needs as well so we should it's about adapting and expanding but i also just want to go back to the i mean the 40 million dollars i mean to be blunt to invest 40 million dollars in a failing industry when you've got a lot of folks out there who are on an industry that's forward thinking around vegetables and meat and other kinds of products i mean it's hard to justify 40 million dollars to a failing industry without putting something comparable into an actually growing industry so i'm not saying we would have comparable the ability meaning we're gonna do 40 million here 40 million there i'm saying that 40 million sounds like a lot to begin with yeah that i'm sure that figure is going to get you know chop way down i mean to get 40 million dollars on agriculture moving forward and make sure that it's spread out to other kinds of producers i mean that would be one way you're looking at i wouldn't mind spending 40 million dollars on agriculture to get it back on track and help it grow and adapt to the future but 40 million dollars just to one part of agriculture doesn't seem to make sense uh brian and crash and i'm sorry chris i didn't mean to jump ahead i'll be really quick though um i like ruth's idea of a grant versus uh doing something else because let's remember every time we ask someone to prove that they've lost money especially vegetable to me um that means someone in an administrative capacity in some office somewhere has to take time to look at that and make a judgment and we're just adding admin cost to this over and over and over again i think it's easier to just say here's whatever the number is if it's five thousand dollars great you figure out how best to make it work for you and you know there we go yeah sorry chris i just want to mention michael said in the when i was talking to him a sort of self-certifying process where they say these expenses are related to reacting to the covid crisis and they self-certify that so that they have to sign something saying that that's what it's for okay see i before i get to your chris um i thought you know under we have non-certified we have certified small firms and we have uh small firms and i thought that under the small firms and the all the certified firms would be covered under our plan and the small under under certified firms would also be in there am i wrong on that michael no and and what you propose for dairy the small farm certified small medium and large would all receive a a payment based on their category i think what senator hardy was referencing were those farms that are not dairy that are certified small farm medium farm and there's a couple that are large farm um and how to get assistance to them i do think you then have the issue of those small farms that are non-dairy and how to get assistance to them as well i think the program that you were just talking about of of a self-certification of losses or or expenses um due to covid i i think you could do that with uh um kind of based on usda's disaster relief assistance uh and with a significant kind of consequence if there's any fraud or or miss you know intentional misstatement in the application process and michael could that be done through some kind of non-profit or would have to be done through government aids like community loan fund or the farm fund that that's up in hard work i'm just wondering if it needs to go through some bigger bureaucracy or whether we could give money to a non-profit have them distribute it well i i can't speak for the agency but i i think i think the agency might support that because uh they're going to be facing budget pressure including potential furlough of staff uh they already are pretty straight out um in my opinion maybe not in others uh so if if some contracting with someone to implement the program might be the best administratively efficient way to do it right chris i just wanted to throw in there the did you say 53 center hearty of the certified non-dairy farms there that is gotta be just a small portion of the people that i'm hoping we can reach because i but i don't know i mean that seems really small to me so i guess i'm wondering do you see mr chair that the non-certified small farmers is a whole other you know tier um look i have a lot of farm we we i don't know we have over a thousand farms um i want to say even like 1400 or something 1300 so i hope we'll just pay some attention there and and obviously have that factor into our calculations because it seems you know that if they're small certified that i'm guessing is animals um anyway i don't fully understand all that but i don't want us to leave thousands out could i ask clarifying michael or someone what what do we mean by these small certified farmers who are they what makes them certified as opposed to farmers that i've run into at the farmers market who are not necessarily certified uh they might be certified the certification requirements are in um the RAPs and its section i think it's 4.1 might be 3.1 hold on a second um there's uh requirements for when you submit a certification um we don't have to spend a lot of time on it now it's just a question so so here it is a certified small farm means a parcel or parcel of land on which 10 or more acres are used for the raising feeding or management of livestock that house no more than the number of animals specified in in statute um which is 199 cows and then the Nellis arc that house at least the following numbers about livestock which i'm not going to go through um but it's livestock those are livestock farms it's not just livestock no it's it's farms on a parcel or parcel of land greater than 50 acres used for the preparation tilling fertilization planning protection irrigation and harvesting of annual cropland so a 50 acre farm or bigger um or farms on a parcel or parcel of land greater than 50 acres used for preparation tilling etc um where fertilizer manure ag waste are mechanically applied um or one that the secretary has designated on a case by case basis so you've got the farms that are based on animal numbers then you have the farms that are based on uh acreage um and they're harvesting of cropland and then you have the farms that are used for harvesting vegetable production where fertilizer manure ag waste are mechanically applied so i just want to go back to what chris said i want to be clear i want to be supporting other farmers not just these small certified farmers well the way you get the way michael and i got to the numbers if you're small certified uh you have a number right michael we had a number there if you're right medium size you have a low number for cows to a medium number like up to 700 and then the big farms are from 700 on up so you start at the top and you subtract your way down through and it leaves you the number at the end which would be small firms not certified i thought that's how we came up with that number right michael right for for dairy the small non-certified firms or there's 271 and there's 268 certified small farms for dairy there's 105 medium farms that are dairy and that there are 33 large farms that are dairy now there are 53 other farms whether they're beef or heifer or vegetable or hemp that are either certified small farm medium farm or large farm so that leaves the difference between that if you add that to the number of dairies that that will basically get you 700 farms and then the difference is whatever existing farms that there are which is between 12 and 1300 so you you have about 500 to 600 farms that are not dairy and not certified medium or large farm can i just mention thank you michael for explaining that um and my my intention was not to leave out all of those other non-certified farms it was uh i was just trying to get numbers and so anthony i would agree and chris or whoever said it um so we want to try to help those non-certified farms the question is you know they're pretty small so um you know we make it say if you're a certified farm you could get up to 5000 because those are the bigger ones and if you're non-certified you could maybe get up to 1500 or 2500 or whatever we put it at because if we if we're talking about 600 farms it could get really expensive really fast um and they're really tiny farms so um but but bobby got us 40 million so okay i mean we have 40 million done yeah let's absolutely do that bobby let's find out the universe and go from there well we're all agreeing it would be easy i think to put michael you have the number we wouldn't figure the numbers and those little guys that you know that don't do a lot but yet they do enough to can be considered a farmer i think you have to generate a certain amount of money to qualify to be called a farmer for tax purposes and we certainly want to do something for the other farm sectors anyway but maybe we could set if they are fairly relatively small uh set them others at 2500 um 2500 a piece or something like that did our maple producers get whacked because he couldn't congregate and nah they they're making they're doing well as far as i know i mean you'll get the Dave marvins of the world that'll come in oh it's rough you know i need money for this or i need money for hell with the ppc program and and those things those guys are going to come out of this making money um but anyways um i mean unless you guys have heard something different um you know i think the maple sorry bobby the maple weekend was canceled that the open house weekend so i don't know how much money they they make from that but that was the one thing that that got canceled that usually is a big big affair for maple because that was what the third weekend in march or whatever you mean the same with the same thing i'm thinking of the st alvin's maple festival also i think they're all the same weekend around the state those festivals and they were all canceled i'm not sure how much that affected bottom lines though i think a lot of that is just i don't want to say for show but it's to promote the idea of maple i don't know that they actually sell a lot of stuff during that time maybe they did now you're probably right um well uh uh so on the dairy have we given you any direction michael uh how to proceed with uh with well with a drafting part of that see so for dairy i i uh i think i would use the chair's proposal add to it the requirement that as a condition of acceptance that the um farm agreed to an evaluation by response team or representative of the response team regarding methods or mechanisms to approve the operation of the farm uh including potential transition of the farm to additional or other commodities yeah yeah and you're gonna go ahead without adding in the the farms that are smaller you know the other farms that the five or six hundred or whatever it is so that even the little guys would get you know the vegetable guys and in the sheep guys and goats and whatever the milking goats would be included uh because they're considered dairy but we want i thought the committee would like to add in the the vegetable guys am i wrong with that no you're right you're right we need but could i do you want those farms to have to go through an evaluation of whether or not they should transition no no so maybe it's a separate maybe it's a separate piece right that's that's what i was thinking yeah you do one for dairy you do one for for non-dairy and then you do some of the other proposals that you want to do so that's what i was thinking then then you do a program for non-dairy they have to be subject to regulation as a farm or they have to be a farmer and that the question is how do you want to do that there are as the chair indicated there are income thresholds say the current use income thresholds or there's the federal income thresholds for in order to declare yourself a farmer or you could say they have to be a farm subject to regulation under the RAPs um which is a different standard and not necessarily income based so there's different ways to say who's a farmer and once you've done that you would go to basically a payment program just like dairy by category um and that could be implemented as i think senator hardy uh requested by a non-profit or or another entity see the problem with i mean i want to do this but the problem that we're going to have with it is we haven't heard i don't think any testimony or verification that they have lost money and you know it's really just to help them out but i we haven't heard a word about about their viable business and what some of them have come in and said they're doing better than before so we got to be careful uh i don't Ruth or or yeah i i mean i think we did get some testimony about the drop in um for example um blue ledge farm uh Hannah Sessions testified that in her first week their sales dropped by 50 percent and then she pivoted and was able to you know set up a farm stand and set up a website to do online ordering and all that stuff so then their sales increased again so i think it was more tied to not necessarily a loss in revenue but expenses related to pivoting and and then you know the turkey farm needed to change up its operations to make it safe to do their meat processing or you know transport their workers or whatever they're going to have to do um so i think it's more not unlike dairy it's not about loss it's about expenses related to to changing operations so the meeting our food and meeting our food security needs as we go forward which is the other piece of what we're trying to do we keep you should i'll get you chris uh michael is that the way you were intending to set that up that's not what i just proposed but i can easily what i think you can do and going back to the center of hearty's reference to self-certification earlier you set up this program that it's available for those farms that have experienced the loss or or incurred an expense due to covid they self-certify that they have that expense and it's up to a certain amount per category of farm right and and then you have an audit authority which will probably never get exercise or it'll be exercise very rarely and then you have a penalty for those that provide false or or um intentionally misleading information and so that that is it's based on loss you reduce administration costs by having the self-certification but you have significant penalties and an authority for audit um which will help people stay within the lines now do we need a qualifier in there like you have to meet uh the the conditions to be in in current use or federal guidelines on uh becoming a being taxed as a firm wait what's the committee think about that you know whether we need those qualifiers in there well i i do think i do think we need something rural vermont just sent me a clip from from the usda ag census from eight years ago but it it fits that that claims there to be seven thousand farms in vermont so um we had better use that definition we we need to understand the universe it needs to be fair i like the direction here that we're we're you know we're gonna create this we're not going to send them all checks it's an opportunity based on expenses or losses but i also hope we can talk a little bit more about the broader infrastructure things related to food security and i've been wondering if if that might look like uh increased funding to some existing programs whether it's working lands or whatever with a clear directive to have them uh help us um you know shore up food security uh with the presumption that this crisis will last longer than three more months um so i i don't need to move us there immediately but i think it's an important part of the discussion and and has to be a priority yeah why don't we try to get this one kind of wrapped up so michael knows where we want to go and and then we'll get into your other suggestions and in a couple of others after that ruth yeah i just wanted to uh since people are watching us on youtube uh jackie fulsome who would normally be in the room with us um told me that just related to maple that their restaurant orders are way down so they're hurting because normally they would be selling to restaurants and events and institutions so they they're their sales have dropped pretty significantly and she said that the maple open house weekend does bring in a lot of revenue for them um just to correct it yeah i mean i didn't know that i didn't think of that either so thank you jackie um and also the just a question for you michael about the certification that the farms the those 53 farms that are certified those would be required to meet water quality requirements right because they're certified with agency of ag so with the other non-certified farms are there any is there any requirement for them to meet the raps or or the water quality so all farms are required to meet the raps at a minimum and they have been since since the 90s um so yes they are subject to water quality requirements okay can i step away for five minutes now that i have to go deal with something sure i'll be i'll be back in one second yeah um so um pretty helpful having michael with us you know some of the other uh what about like hemp we we've got that coming over in a bill but is what about um talking about a manufacturing type deal for hemp so they could at least sell the the stocks and things for fiber is that anything that would be of value to you know it would help they'd have to employ people if we had something along those lines i but i don't know if if that would work under under public money or or not well your district mate has told me and i think kary has backed this up that the um most hemp in vermont is and nataka white if i remember remembering who's been a long time hemp guy in vermont yeah said that they're not that sort of industrial hemp that's grown in huge scale out of out in the midwest whereas our folks are much more interested in the cannabinoids the cbd and the dietary pieces of that so i'd need to be convinced that and and they're all summer season so so maybe we will see them taking it but i'd need to be convinced that they have experienced a loss at this point they have or haven't i would need to be convinced that they have i oh my guess is just because they're um just because they're not in the ground yet that they probably weren't as badly impacted but that is part of a diversification discussion to some degree that you know but that i mean that so that really isn't an issue that we need to deal with right now because they haven't come forward with a loss uh what about uh we talked about supply chain have we also got that tied into something for to go out long term i i i really want us to i think that is clearly an infrastructure need and a food security need um but i beats beats me how we do that at this point um well somebody somebody well i i think i know how we how we could do it as a lot of our fruits and and our veggies are you know black river produce you know they they've done a lot to enhance that with with their trucks running all around the state and being able to pick and deliver um well they you know they aren't just big here in Vermont they're big elsewhere and somehow we got a set i think a a a committee or somebody up with them to work with Reinhardt or Black River whatever we want to call that company uh to to make a deal with with farmers that they have these little hubs that they would take all their produce to and they would stop there once a week twice a week and pick that produce up and market it through their sales people and and that that could also work like in Massachusetts they could get that stuff to Burlington or wherever they hook up congregate it you know in these big totes and ship it down to their place in mass to be distributed out but we need somebody to coordinating these little hubs to where farmers could take their stuff maybe maybe that's something we could find some money for and direct working lands to sort out you know and and normally we just say they they've got their mission and we give them what we can but that strikes me as as it would be more of a directive than we've done but I'd like to I'd like to use systems that exist um and and has some expertise already but the need is clear the strategy seems good how we execute it is the question well should yeah but couldn't we use covert money to uh to build that system I mean there's certainly a loss of market there or for regional food security there certainly isn't a market there right now this would help put that together no I think you're right I think we just need to figure it out a little bit more it's also because it is a food security issue as well if we want more local purchasing by schools and hospitals and institutions and we want to build up those programs of Vermonters feeding Vermonters those kinds of things it means we want farmers to produce more but if they're producing more they have to find have ways to store and process things as well in order to keep them on the market year round well Michael it can the money be used to for long-term food security or is that something that it can't be used for so just looking at the Treasury's guidance and what they define as a secondary or second tier of expense it includes providing economic support to those suffering from employment or business interruptions due to COVID-19 related business closures I think you could make an argument that farmers and the food system itself is suffering from a business interruption due to COVID-19 related business closures and to address future pandemic outbreaks we're going to develop a secure food system or strengthen the food system something like that well I think you I think we've got our answer guys it's all we've got to do is have Michael work the words and figure out this could go on the short-term list maybe short and long but to develop a food security regional food security type system and I think short term we could put it on let's get it going it might be medium or long term before it's actually an operation but short term we beat it yeah we we ought to get on that right off and and you know back I mean back a little bit ago in this meeting we talked about the 40 million how you know it's a lot of dollars but if if you break this thing down so you can really understand it instead of getting caught caught up in trillions and billions and millions and get it down to dollars and cents the 40 million I don't maybe I told you this already or explain it it's like if you had twelve hundred and fifty dollars in your pocket and you got to a point where god I'd really like to take care of this situation I don't know if I can or not well you'd take forty dollars out of that twelve hundred and fifty dollars and that's what our forty million is like against one point two five billion so we aren't we aren't asking for a lot of the big pie it just sounds like a tremendous amount of money so don't you know don't let anybody fool you about talking about all those millions Ruth and then Chris that's a great analogy Bobby I just want to make sure that we're there that if we do get lucky enough to get the 40 million for ag that we spend 40 bucks two twenties in my pocket um that we get that we spend it broadly on agriculture and not just on on ferry and that we think long term in big picture about how to make it more resilient I love Michael's explanation of how this ties to COVID I think that's really great I wanted to put in a plug for one other thing that we heard in testimony which was the Spanish language farm safety and health training and it sounds like there's one already in existence in New York state that we could probably just you know copy for Vermont in some way Vermont ties and maybe we could direct UVM extension to do that since the ag department is or ag agency might be overwhelmed but they already work a lot with farms so I'm thinking that might be something to put in the package and that's relevant to COVID because making sure that all of our farm workers have the relevant information for farm safety and and health and safety on the farm is important if this keeps coming that is that okay you've got that on your list for short term rules well I wanted to bounce it off you guys and thank you see what I thought if we could include that in our package sure yeah that's fine with everybody Brian yeah yeah so add that on okay Chris I just want to go back to the the broader conversation and the idea of invest infrastructure strategies to deal with food security processing you mentioned hemp you know one of the limitations as I get as I understand it is the processing end of that and I guess I have a question for Senator Hardy has there been any discussion in your afternoon committee in education around the state college campuses because you know we we had a few years ago we had the idea that the old Windsor prison would be used for as a hemp processing facility and that didn't work and I'm not saying we want to transition Johnson State College to hemp processing but ag processing somewhere in the northeast kingdom near the farms you know that seems like I just while we're in the early stages I want to make sure we're connecting dots if they meet if they're smart to be connected if we find they're not to be well then let's not do it but but it does strike me that you know we've talked about food hubs we've talked about aggregating we've talked about distribution and we've talked about processing and we may well have intense need to use current facilities a little bit differently and we happen to have two that are in the heart of the ag community the Vermont and I just want to I don't want to take that off the table I hope we can explore that just a little bit yeah that's I thank you for bringing up the state colleges Chris we haven't had that conversation in our in the education committee at least since this crisis has happened because the the sort of crisis management has not we're not that directly part of that crisis management in the Ed committee unfortunately I would love us to be but we're not but I think that your point about connecting the conversation about the state colleges to ag is really important in that I've heard from a lot of people about the fact that for example Vermont tech is really important to the ag economy and you know creating uh not workers and and and uh you know systemic change in in the agriculture industry in Vermont and we if we lose Vermont tech and the Vermont state colleges that could have a big impact on agriculture so um I think that that's important to remember in this and I don't know how we could necessarily connect it um but I think that's worth exploring and putting it in our package and I can put it on the list too um but if you have ideas that would be great to include Brian thank you Bob um another thing Ruth maybe on the list I know this is small potatoes unintended um but I'm still mystified why we couldn't figure a way to let people who are grocery shopping know that there's plenty of milk there's plenty of cheese there's plenty of all that sort of product and in the end I don't know whether if everybody bought an extra gallon of milk or pound of cheese it would have made too much of a difference but to just have a sign up that says that you are limited to buying a certain amount to me is absolutely ludicrous when we know that we're making plenty of milk I mean we're producing it now maybe it's not getting to the the shelf I understand that and that's a supply chain problem I understand that too but there seems to be a disconnect between what people are being told and what reality is I know we've been called I think on our regular committee means that all the signs have come down and that they you know I have um the ag agency has um issued uh letters to the stores and all this about getting those signs down and uh you know and letting people buy what they want to buy because what I've heard is you know the older folks uh like me uh could catch uh the can over buyers pretty easy so you send the kids in and then they go to the store and they want to buy three or four gallons of milk so they can bring it home to the older folks and they can't get it they can only get one one gallon but I think that I think the agency is taking care of that to some degree and then on food and food security um you've probably all seen um on the news about DFA uh taking milk uh to hoods and to the yogurt factory and and you know I don't know if there's some way that we could get in on we could get in on that through uh culvert 19 to funnel some money to promote that type of thing rather than wasting that food that milk um you know destroying it uh I think it costs $50,000 to do to do that one trail or load of milk or something so it's about a dollar a gallon it gets to the food shelf or to the food bank it gets to them and it costs about a dollar a gallon for milk and it costs 42 cents for for the yogurt stuff and I don't know if we should get some money to the food bank somehow if that would be possible um I think community loan no what community loan foundation is has picked up community foundation community foundation yes I mean is that anything worth talking about or probably yes the Vermont community foundation that's that's gotten at least they did the first load and I'm not sure if they're doing the second one but they're trying to raise more money for it but I Anthony do you know if this is part of the Vermonters feeding Vermonters request from the food bank would they be putting some money toward that type of thing you you've been more I don't know I don't know if they've imagined doing much with dairy but I imagine they'd be open to it I don't know we'd have to ask them whether dairy is part of what they're I imagine they're thinking more like shelf longer shelf life stuff but I could be wrong didn't they be open to the idea even before all of this they were in asking us for money and how much were they asking for do you remember I really don't remember but I remember they were there asking it's both in the committee and in the hallway so yeah I think it was 500 thousand is what I remember something like that yes and at the time that seemed like a ton of money seems like a lot of money right now it may be not now we got 40 million to spend it's not much when you got 40 million in your pocket I mean if Bobby's talking about 40 bucks we should just make it 50 I think we but we we're gonna need to wrap here Mr. Chair I wanted to remind you that you wanted us to talk about scheduling yeah next week yeah what what do you think about the Mondays or see Linda's got a comport I think on Tuesday are you on there Linda yes yeah is it Tuesday that you're tied up yes the house agriculture committee meets Tuesday morning that is a possibility somebody else could host it I did get permission from Tim Ash's office that you can meet on Monday if you wish so it'd be Monday and Thursday well no you're on the floor Tuesday and Thursday we uh usually have the Wednesday Wednesday Wednesday 9 30 to 12 has been a regular time so we could do Monday skip a day Wednesday or we could do Tuesday and and Thursday you're on the floor you're on the floor Tuesday at 9 30 and Thursday at 1 pm so we could do a shorter meeting I'm happy to host that's not a big deal I do zoom calls for work so if that takes care of things I'm happy to help that way so you want to do like we normally do then meeting meeting Monday and Wednesday well I'm confused which day what days are we talking I think we should meet twice next week one to get all the farm groups in and and here if they've got suggestions and and things they they want to talk to us about and then the next the next second meeting Gus wants to come in and we so we could do Gus and we've got something else I've got listed that we need to do a walkthrough a walkthrough of the house bill age 60 56 on the Michael to present the the the miscellaneous bill to us Michael so uh I would recommend or someone you might want to hear from is Cassie Bohemus from Vita and the ad credit corporation she might might have some options that would be available to both dairy and non-dairy farmers that are financed through Vita um and uh so she said the the interest buy down that's in the current dairy assistance draft isn't going to work as especially with the money that's appropriated for it but she'd be willing to talk to you about options that that she could think that might help both dairy and non-dairy um how long how long would it take you Michael to run through the miscellaneous ad bill from the house that's coming our way you're right Michael you're muted you it's about 27 sections long um and there's some some interesting stuff in there like feral pigs and uh hemp um but you've already done hemp so you wouldn't need to to spend a lot of time on that but can we do that after we get this pulled together in a little clearer picture yeah we put we could um we could push that out here from the lady from uh Vita and work go back to work on this stuff we have time as a committee to just to to get to where we want to with all of this and if we get too many people in here testifying then we're gonna not have our own time to work on the bill since we have a shortened you remember we usually have four days a week now we only have two shorter periods yeah y'all like to talk so i'm wondering if Michael could put together this whole big package you've gotten some pieces drafted if you can put it together as one package so uh i just made an outline for myself about what the package would be um should i just run through that quickly yeah sure so first there would be uh dairy assistance that would be based on the chair's language but adding a transitional provision uh requiring it requiring an evaluation of a farm um then there would be a program for standing and good standing good and then uh a non-dairy program based on losses that a farm incurred or expenses that they incurred due to COVID-19 would be on a self-certified basis administered by a contractor with audit slash penalty authority to ensure um to ensure the credibility of the program then there would be a farm worker assistance program based on Senator Hardy's language um still need to vet out those numbers a little bit but we have a general like a thousand to twelve hundred worker number right there um then there would be a public health training component for a Spanish language um for COVID and worker safety uh then there would be a food system um food security component with a short term and a long term stage short term would be basically creating a either the working charging working lands board or some other entity to develop recommendations for the long term food security of Vermont based on strengthening the food system and then the that would lead to the long term implementation probably in August or September of of their recommendations is that consistent with what you want look good sound good guys yeah can i just i was yes it does um things that were not necessary on that list maybe there don't need to be but we've talked also about um increasing the supply the program that the hunger programs basically the nutrition programs better more fully funding those things and also encouraging more institutional buying so i don't know if they have to be part of this package but because we haven't talked about them in any detail but the idea of um better funding for the farm vermoners feeding vermoners and the farm share program those things as well as increasing the um requirements for purchasing local foods by schools and other state-funded institutions yeah that was my and piercings bill that now what you're talking about anthony the yeah basically pushing it up as far as we can realistically setting setting goals yeah the one problem is i i don't want to put any stress on schools right now they are so to the extent that that requires schools to do extra stuff no not now not in the short i mean i agree with what you're saying oh in the long term yeah okay got it and michael part of it would be also i think we'd have to you already know this but in terms of the transition we would need to there's been talk about hiring more business planners that i guess vhcb or somewhere that already does this stuff so we might want to put in a placeholder just to hire more staff help with the transition of dairy farmers well we had that tied in somewhere didn't we michael you have like five or six people on staff and we're doing any more people than that to do it right right i think you're going to have to create some sort of team or or or task force that's going to be doing the evaluations of dairy farms i received the assistance right and that's that's that's part of what i've got down okay it might be interesting as an idea just the brainstorm but um having active farmers actually meet with the dairy farmers you know have vegetable farmers or meat farmers meet with the dairy farmers to talk about how they're how their operation could be different brian you had a question yeah well i'm just anticipating linda's needs here as best as i can so if the house is not going to vote on that miscellaneous bill or housekeeping whatever it's called until wednesday it doesn't seem to make any sense for us to meet until thursday to consider it because if they change it we're going to have to go back over it again anyway just a thought so i would say tuesday and thursday next week assuming michael could pull together by tuesday all the things that we've talked about on the other part of it is so on on tuesday i'm already scheduled in senate natural to do solid waste issues okay and and the senate's on the floor tuesday at 9 30 what about thursday linda thursday the senate's on the floor at one so wednesday and friday wednesday and friday yeah wednesday and friday morning because then we could do two and then we're not on doing the same days that we're on the floor does that work or we could do monday monday's a one two yeah why don't we do monday and wednesday and we can that way we can get back on to this uh maybe before we forget where we are and that would give us the option of deciding we want to meet for a little while on friday depending on how things go okay you want to how long would you need michael to do your work on this subject that we're on this morning uh to flesh out the entire package that's probably not going to be done until well i have dairy assistance i have farm worker assistance i can put together the non-dairy pretty quickly you know i i could probably have a framework for you by monday morning so why don't we get back on to this monday and then we'll do the or have you called the farm group slender no we can and you also need this we could do them on wednesday but we also need some time for gus would you want him on wednesday or monday well either wednesday or friday we'll see how we make out wednesday but we'll get back on to this while still all question our minds all right but what about you talking about farm groups where they would invite a few of them in on monday is that what you're saying well that's what i was thinking yeah i agree i just want to be clear that that's what we're talking about i think that's going to i think because i think even with groups like world for modern opa they can fill in some of the gaps in our thinking like what size grants would make sense for vegetable farmers that kind of stuff that we're sort of floundering around and brainstorming they could give us some more concrete ideas as to what we're talking about yeah we'll get there we just got to do some calculating so we'll do we'll do the farm groups on monday will meet on as a committee on the next the second time and then we'll do gus and his crew on friday it'll be a short meeting would that work sure sure as long as we have time on monday before we hear from everybody to just take a peek at the bill that michael puts together for us what time is convenient for you guys well anthony and i have a meeting at noon on monday so we just have to be done in time for that but we start at nine eight thirty i don't care the earlier the better for me eight thirty nine sounds good to me nine okay we'll start at nine with us punch in at nine thirty live and get the groups in okay so we could punch in at quarter of nine sure but we we have to be live for the whole discussion bobby yeah yeah but so if we start punching in at at nine then we'll go live at nine thirty no we have to be live if we're talking about the bill if we're talking about policy we have to be live so we we just we start at nine the first half hour we all live and we talk about the bill and then at nine thirty we can have the groups come in okay yeah well michael said he'd need about 45 minutes so could i have the groups come in at 10 giving you an hour i thought for the house bill right we're not doing that oh okay so you don't need that that's our bill the bill that we're that we're brainstorming okay ten's fine too i mean we can we can certainly talk look we've proved it today so well are we all set then are you good blender so you know the schedule um you if you'll stay on a minute after we go off air so i can confirm the schedule that would be great okay i gotta go we'll go off the air now yeah thanks buddy thank you