 Good morning, everybody, and welcome to this joint meeting with the House and Senate. I want to certainly welcome all the people from rural Vermont and NOFA that's on the call. And we had a good meeting, maybe a month or so ago, and I think that went very well and was helpful. I think maybe before we start officially, I'd like to have run through the members that are with us to introduce themselves. So anyways, I'm Bobby Starr and I chair the Senate committee and our committees will, members will introduce themselves. I'm Chris Pearson, Senator from Chittenden County. I'm Anthony Polina, Washington County. Brian Collamore, Senator from Rutland County. Corey Parrant, Senator from Franklin County. And what the House members like to introduce themselves and I think you should have it figured out in what order so you can run through it fairly quickly. Thanks, Bobby. And I'm sorry, I was a few minutes late. I'm trying to deal with an issue that's going to be on the floor tomorrow. So I'm Representative Carolyn Partridge. I represent the towns of Athens, Brooklyn, Grafton, part of Northwest Minster, all of Rockingham and my hometown of Wyndham. And our vice chair is Rodney. So Rodney, why don't you start and then we'll go to Tom and Terry and et cetera. Where's Rodney? All right, let's go to Tom, who is our ranking member. All right, thank you. I'm Representative Tom Bach. I represent the towns of Chester and over Baltimore and part of North Springfield. Okay, Terry. Representative Terry Norris. I represent Benson, Orwell, Shoreman, Whiting. Vicki. Good morning. I'm Representative Vicki Strong. I live in Albany and represent Albany, Barton, Craftsbury, Glover, Greensboro, Sheffield, and Wielach. John. Good morning, everybody. I'm John O'Brien. I represent Roylton and my hometown of Tunbridge. Heather. Good morning. I'm Heather Supernon. I represent Barnard, Pomfret, Quiche, and West Hartford. And Henry. Henry? No. Henry might be in the barn. Go ahead. Anyway, thank you. Thank you all. And the I think I should announce before we get started, the Senate committee did vote out the raw milk bill this morning. So I think some of you folks have been supporting that and promoting it. And so we voted that out, you know, with a good solid vote this morning. And hopefully by the end of the week, it'll be up for action on the Senate floor and and may just a couple of very minor changes to the bill. So that, you know, the sort of good news for everybody and and we'll we'll be doing other House bills at the the rest of this week and next week and try to wrap our bills up because we for your information, we're planning on getting done the second week in May and the last week or two or for conference committees. And so it's important that we that we move forward with our bills and both committees to to get them passed and and hopefully make Vermont a better place to live and work and and do business. So this morning, I'd like to ask Maddie and Caroline to kick off with a couple of statements, brief statements, and then we'll get right into a discussion. So I don't know, Maddie, if you're going to go first or Caroline, but I'm sure you've got it figured out. I think Caroline's going to kick us off. Thank you so much, Senator. Yeah, thank you. Thank you all and welcome to our last small farm advocacy day here in the virtual arena. This is the last of a six part event series where we partnered with Nova Vermont and Action Circles on first the virtual advocacy training followed by this today last meet and greet with legislators. And of course, we're extremely grateful for all the legislators of both committees making the time to meet with us here today in a rather informal way, because what this is is really an open forum to give farmers in the state an opportunity to bring concerns that are, you know, closest to their hearts and businesses to the to the committee's attention, whether they're inside or outside of our respective organization's priorities for this session, you will see there will be quite significant overlap, but it is it is an open forum and, you know, attendees are free to speak to what's on their minds. Yeah, I think everybody knows sort of the Zoom spiel, just keep yourself mooted until it's your turn. And other than that, I'll pass it on to Maddie to greet everyone as well. Thanks. Thanks for everyone coming and especially, of course, also given the unusual heat of our spring weather here, it's also really not we don't take it for granted that farmers make time come to this event because everything is in full speed approaching the summer. So also from my perspective, thanks. Thanks all the farmers to come today. Thank you, Caroline. Maddie. Yeah, thank you so much, Caroline. And thank you to all of the members of the House and Senate Ag committees for having us. We really appreciate you making this a joint hearing so that our farmer testimony can be heard by all of you at once. It's really, really hugely beneficial. And I just want to say to tack on to what Caroline said, you know, I think taken individually, I know you all understand this, these farmers testimony might represent, you know, a particular issue or a particular type of farm that in and of itself may seem small, but it's just so I love these events because it's such a great reminder that these farms really make up, you know, the totality of a thriving working landscape. And so just want to encourage you, you know, as you listen to farmers testify on particular issues. So just always keep that in mind, as I know you do, that these issues taken together really have a huge impact on farmers ability to thrive in Vermont and, you know, Vermont's ability to access locally produced food. So just want to say that and really appreciate also all the farmers making time to be here on a beautiful day. Thanks for having us. Yeah. I can't see everyone's hand that goes up. I've got, I guess, 12 or 16 of you on on one page, but then I have to flip pages, but who would who would like to lead off with this open forum this morning. Senator, if you want to go any hands, Senator, if you want to go just in order of the sort of the agenda that's online and just kick us off with the Union Brook Farm. I don't have that list in front of me. So who's the first one, Caroline? That would be Rose and Emily. Yep. Are you there, Rose? Oh, there you are. Hey, good morning. Yeah, morning. Yeah. So good morning, everyone. And thank you for hearing from us today. My name is Rose. And this is my partner Emily Bursey. And together we own and operate Union Brook Farm in Northfield, Vermont. We're here today to advocate for the expansion of the eligibility criteria for new businesses to be able to access the working lands initiatives to include construction costs of new meat processing facilities. And we'd also like to advocate for the expansion of the on farm slaughter exemption to allow for animals to be able to be sold as a whole or half animal, but allow for the farmer to be able to butcher those halves or holes into individual cuts for the consumer. This upcoming season will be our second in production and we'll be raising and processing on farm 1000 meat chickens and ducks. We currently sell this product as unexpected under state exemption and offer it for purchase directly at our farm or at the Capital Cities Farmers Market as a whole frozen chicken or duck. Emily and I have been raising and harvesting meat birds every summer since we met working at Maple Wind Farm in 2015. Raising meat birds on pasture and having them harvested on farm is a paramount value for our personal meat consumption in our business operation. On farm slaughter decreases the stress of the animal on the day of harvest and increases our profit margins for the enterprise. We are currently limited in our sales avenues for unexpected meat birds harvested on farm because they cannot be broken down into further cuts or sold retail. We will also be utilizing on farm slaughter for our lambs that will be sold directly to customers who purchase the entire animal for a flat rate. So since starting our business in 2019, we have met weekly with a business advisor thanks to services provided by the Intervail Center. And this winter we participated in the farm beginnings course through NOFA Vermont where we were provided with tools for decision making and a mentor to learn from. And through these processes of analyzing our first season, planning for our second season and projecting our business to bring us to a place where Emily and I can be supported as full-time employees, we have decided to embark on investing in a multi-use building on our property. And this building will allow us to move towards state-inspected poultry processing as well as state-inspected butchery of pork, lamb and goat. This building would allow us to scale our meat bird operation and offer safe humane and value-added processing to other homestead and farms in the area. Securing funding for this building has proved to be a barrier for us as I reached out to the Farm Service Agency and the Vermont Community Loan Fund. As a new business without at least three years of actuals and not enough collateral on the business, it will be very difficult for us to get an affordable loan for this project. And despite being a new business, we collectively have 15 years of farming and processing experience and both have off-farm jobs in the industry. Emily has been the pork program manager at the Von Trapp Farm Set for five years managing everything from piglet sourcing to meat sales and distribution. And I have worked for the last two years at Babette's Table making USDA inspected value-added products like salami and whole muscle charcuterie as well as providing co-packing services to local farms for sausage. Currently, the Working Lands Initiative does not allow funds to be accessed for construction costs despite this project being in line with its goals. I personally believe that the bottleneck in slaughter and processing that the state is facing would be alleviated faster if new businesses had the opportunity to access grant funding for new facilities instead of having to operate at a smaller scale and under exemption for longer than necessary. As a new business, it would be advantageous for us to be able to first access grant funding to get the project off of the ground and then seek out further funding through an FSA microloan program, etc., to improve marketing, invest in new machinery, or help to cover operating costs as we scale. So that's all from us today. Thank you so much to Roe Vermont for organizing the advocacy around these very important issues. These are the members of the House and Senate ad committees for hearing from us today. We really appreciate it. Well, thank you. Did Emily have anything to add? No, we wrote the statement together. You guys have questions at the end. I'm here to help answer any questions that you guys might have. Yeah, well, very good. I don't know if the House has done it yet, but on the slaughter issue, we, yes, I think the House has voted in past the bill. We did an early budget bill, and there was extra money put in that to push the slaughtering and the processing issue forward starting earlier to set up a training program to help people in the processing and learning the processing business, as well as helping slaughterhouses get started with refrigeration, additional refrigeration, and expanding their slaughter facilities if necessary to handle more animals than to get that out. The loan issue that you brought up, I don't know about grants other than what we give to working lands, but I guess you didn't fit into that category. But I'm wondering if you checked with ACCD if they had any type of grants and FSA as well to help you with your building project. But those are a couple of areas that you could look at. So who's up next, Maddie or Caroline? Yeah, next would be Sean. Hi. Hi, good morning. Thanks for the opportunity to speak and thanks to the committee for taking testimony on these important issues. Really appreciate it and fortunate to be of a and have compassionate people lend an ear. In the limited time that I have, I wanted to focus on this great opportunity I see as Vermonters to empower small farmers, provide rural economic development, and strengthen the Vermont brand as we roll out our recreational cannabis framework. I believe this committee can accomplish these goals in two steps. I think one by allowing farm direct sales of safe lab verified place of origin agricultural goods. And I think two second step would be allowing the craft cannabis market to meet the demand rather than licensing large growth facilities. A quick background. My wife, my two daughters and I are Kisman farm. We're a small diversified farm offering organic craft hemp flower and as well as cut flowers out here in beautiful rural Rochester. We currently sell our goods locally at farmers markets, CSAs and weddings. As we transition to recreational cannabis, we see ourselves continuing to sell our high quality craft cannabis to our local community, both in a safe and secure manner. We value our customer safety and currently test all of our products for cannabinoid levels, as well as mold insects and heavy metals. We see the same procedure occurring with all craft cannabis producers as we as we must have customer safety be our highest priority. We Kisman farms see ourselves continuing the tradition of Vermont farmers and crafters, providing high quality commodities directly to our customers. We already have Massachusetts online and New York is next to neighboring states that will offer recreational cannabis on a large scale. How does Vermont cannabis stand out? I think simply simple by continuing the tradition of high quality small craftsmanship and not providing the inferior mass produced goods that tourists can find in their home states. We see our farm as well as other craft producers being destinations where customers can come to experience the natural beauty of the area and taste the tuar of our lands. As a result of this, we see our local communities benefiting from this agro tourism, local shops, restaurants, gas stations, etc. will all benefit. As we see the continuing centralization of funding going to bigger towns in Vermont, act 46 school consolidations, lack of cellular and broadband access, etc. I think we have a great opportunity now to empower small towns. The backbone of the Vermont tourism industry. I know here in Rochester, we struggle to fund our schools and would certainly welcome the added tax revenue and job creation. A few more points. I know our time is precious. I know Vermont is smart. We do have models in front of us to use. I feel like Oregon had the right model when they allowed unlimited craft licenses. The problem now with hindsight is we know that they did not limit the size of those grows. As a result, the market moved to mega grows. Now we're seeing a rebound with craft small farms, but small farms were pretty much low bald out of that market. I think if we allow Vermont craft growers to meet the demand of the state and not rush to licensing large facilities, we've so far through this whole thing we have been slow. This whole recreational cannabis process has been slow. I don't think we now rush into this because dispensary lobbyists think they have this all figured out. Personally, I have worked at these facilities and no firsthand that quality and customer customer health is not the priority. These large grows require large investments, which disenfranchises small farmers. I think that limiting the size, keeping quality high, empowering small farmers, and keeping the Vermont brand strong is how we move forward in recreational cannabis. I greatly appreciate your time. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. Thank you, Sean. Chris, did you want to have any comments on this? No, but I know we as a committee have talked a great deal about keeping this small and the cannabis growers. It's got a long ways to go. I think we haven't done a whole lot with that. It's been dealt with in the judiciary committees and not in the ag committee, but we have weighed in and do support, certainly support our small growers. Any committee members have any questions of Sean? If not, who's up next? That would be Chris. Hey, everybody. Thanks for having me. My name is Chris White. I own an operate West Crescent Farm out of West Brookfield, and we're a cannabis farm. I have definitely like policy suggestions and things like that, but since this is more of an open dialogue, I think I'd just like to talk about the two types of economic development that I see in the state. One being not a good look for Vermont, and then the other being quintessentially Vermont. I'd like to ask what these two types of economic development really measure. The first is top-down economic development. An example of that could look like Meryl Weinberger, the mayor of Burlington, taking large donations from Netty real estate and building luxury condos in Burlington in the middle of a housing crisis and scheduling retail environments underneath those, which only corporations like Starbucks or Chick-fil-A could afford to even rent and get in there, especially after a pandemic when people like me and small farmers don't really have money to create the kind of experiential environment, at least that people will come to Vermont for in cannabis. Then we have Phil Scott allotting half a million dollars to just give away to people to work on their laptops and buy those luxury condos and just kind of stay in that environment. That doesn't really, what that measures I think is more just numbers within the context of one apartment complex, and then politicians can point to it and say it's on paper, it's economic development. Meanwhile, nobody else sees any benefit from that. The people like my friends who are here looking to buy houses because they're inspired by farms like the ones that we're talking about, they just drive right by those, those sorts of economic development activities because they look exactly like Boston or New York. There's nothing different about that and why do people come to Vermont if not to experience something different? Let's definitely stay true to our Vermont identity as we continue to develop our economy. The second type of economic development is just ground up economic development, which is taking place on cannabis farms and small farms all over the state, bringing young people to the state. While the full potential of that economic development is not being measured on paper yet, the more important ancillary value that's kind of gone missing in America and in Vermont values like community purpose, happiness, hard work, the things that make life worth living not measured by a GDP or just being squandered by the former type of development. So I think when we talk about at least cannabis legislation, labeling it with like a conservative or a liberal bent like is this conservative or is it liberal? I think that defeats the point because what we need really is just smart economic policy based on what's happening now just in Vermont. Like forget about California, Massachusetts, Vermont is its own beast and I think we need to respect that and just look at what's happening and let the people with the experience lead the way. And I think this meeting is an example of that. Although cannabis being controlled by the Judiciary Committee, I won't get into that. But yeah, the state talks a big game about needing more young people and it's happening, though we're not really getting the support we need. And I think sort of to finish with a sentiment, if this is a revolutionary time, which I think it is, we have people coming into these committee meetings talking about blockchain economic modalities and how to use that to account for quality on all of our farms. These are revolutionary times and in these times we need to let the people with the experience lead the way because I don't have any evidence that anyone in a leadership position has any experience with cannabis and that's not anyone's fault. It's just that it's been legal for so long. No one could have had any experience other than just being brainwashed by the ad council. So yeah, in matters of culture, swim with the current because it's just going to go that way and that's life. And if you're swimming against the current, you're just going to feel tired and unfree and we don't want that for you either. So just maybe swim with the current, listen to the people who are doing the work and let happiness and community and all these things that Vermont wants from its youth, just let them be byproducts of really smart policy. Don't try to write them into policy because we're already doing it. It's already happening. We just need to be lifted up. So if anyone has any specific questions on what a cannabis farmer like myself, entrepreneur would like to see as far as policy in cannabis, I'd love to talk to you individually, but I don't want to take up any time with that. Just the broad sentiment of maybe swim with the current on this one because we have an excellent opportunity. Thanks. Thank you, Chris. Any questions from anyone on to Chris? If not, who's up next? Yeah, next on our agenda is a young woman that I don't think has made it to the meeting. So I would suggest since we are are shugging along with quite some significant speed here through our agenda, and we have quite some time. If it's okay, I wanted to ask the committees if there's the testimony that Rose just gave for Union Brook Farm in reference to the Workingland Enterprise funds and the question of whether these funds that are earmarked for expanding processing capacity for livestock, whether there was a question from the ladies of Union Brook Farm, whether that money is potentially eligible for constructing a new business, a new slaughterhouse facility. And I was wondering whether the committees have an answer to that lingering question if we could go back to that for a second before we move on. Yeah, I know we put, not a, there wasn't a ton of money in the early bill for the slaughter and processing, but it was, do you remember Carolyn, how much money we put in there? To get them started on between now and July 1st, was it? I think, Bobby, did you earmark $500,000 for that? I believe that was, we started at three and then bumped it to $500,000 to get them started between now and July 1st. But you also had language, you didn't necessarily limit it to $500,000, you said at least that $500,000 would be earmarked for it, but I think the total was what, $3 million? So when I consulted Alice and Eastman at the Agency of Agriculture, she said, we could spend more if we wanted to. And that may climb, but 3 million is, it's a pretty good hunk of change, but there are hundreds of millions that we've gotten received from the, or will be receiving from the federal government that's going to get handed out. Chris, did you have something you wanted to throw in there? If memory serves, we're also being told that there's five or six new slaughter facilities coming online. So we were digging around about how to make investments to help with the backlog. And it does seem that people are in the process of bringing new facilities online. So now we're, we've shifted a little bit to the processor as opposed to the slaughter backlog, but to the extent that information helps, we were pleased to hear it, obviously. And I believe the processing training would be done at VTC with the help of a couple of slaughterhouses in Royalton and maybe Royalton, South Royalton and Bethel or in that area. There's some slaughter facilities there that could offer some people to go to VTC to train young or other people to do cutting and processing. In the capital budget to help with buildings, we haven't really talked a lot about that, but working lands, I mean, we put a lot of both the House and the Senate put a lot of money into that process. I think what we would have to do is talk with somebody from the agency to see if there's any room to add structures to that particular granting process. But I'm sure that there's a post and beam timber outfit that got money from working lands. And I thought they constructed a new building just north of Montpelier, right there almost in the city on a post and beam building that they're working out of. So I don't really know if you can use money for building or not, but I don't doubt, Rose, I don't doubt your word at all if they told you that. Have you applied, Rose, for working lands grant for your building? Well, we haven't yet. I first spoke with, and I guess to your point too, I think training is really important. And the class that's offered through Vermont Tech is posted at the facility that I work at, 151 Warehouse in Weitzfield. And this year I helped facilitate all three of the workshops. And so I agree that that's one place, but acknowledging too that we need workers to fill the bottleneck in processing and slaughter facilities, but also to helping them go off on their own ventures as we seek to do. And so in my understanding of talking with the FSA and the Vermont Community Loan Fund, I don't have the exact quote in my mind, but the person that I spoke with from the FSA agreed with me that it would make more sense for us to be able to access a grant to get the building itself constructed. And then as the, because we really just, for poultry processing, we really just need a building with dairy board. We have the plucker, we have the kill cones, we're able to just begin right away. We really just need a hand-washing sink and a concrete floor with dairy board walls. And anyway, it seems to me like the Working Lands Initiative does not include construction loans as far as I've been told, and that once that we have a physical building on the premises, we can access working land grants for marketing help, for a new stuffer machine, packaging, et cetera. But until the building is standing, I don't know that there's grant funding accessible to us, especially to being a business with only one year of actuals. That's provided, been difficult as well. We have an LLC formed, but without collateral for the business to match the loan amount, our house and our property would be used as security, which is not something that I'm interested in at all. So that's kind of where we've left off in our personal experience, and I think it does relate to the larger picture of getting young people into this industry and allowing for new opportunities to get going and begin to address immediately the need of farmers and homesteaders to provide local and humane slaughter and processing. And what kind of numbers are you talking about for your poultry operation? Yeah, in the future, I think we are looking at wanting to slaughter and raise and process 5,000 birds of our own, and up to 2,500 birds from other homestead and farmers around us. And also, I think we really like the idea of this building being multi-use in daily communication with all the state and federal inspectors at my day job and also am able to ask them a lot of questions about this endeavor that we're seeking to do. And the idea is as well that with this building, it would allow for us to achieve state inspection, but it's not to be said that we couldn't pull state inspection for three days and do custom processing for two. So we're also really interested in the idea of providing custom processing for farmers who don't want to pay, have a structured pay scale for halves, quarters, individual cuts or value added down the line. So yeah. And how big a building are the costs and the cost of the building is projected to be what? Yeah, so we are looking at a 30 by 70 building on our property and we currently have an old corn crib foundation on our property that's that size and needs to get removed. And so we are estimating right now that the building for removal of the current slab in pouring a new foundation will... You're pros, Rose. But, Ramon, I know he has received grants to help. Maybe if you turn your camera off, Rose? It certainly proves that we need to do a better job with it. Amen. And Bobby, while Rose is trying to unfreeze, I don't know if you can see hands and stuff. John O'Brien knows his hand up. Yeah, go ahead, John. But Rose is unfrozen now, I think. Well, Rose, we heard it's a 30 by 70 building that you're thinking about construction and then you froze up to us and I didn't hear too much beyond that. What was the estimated cost? Can you hear me, Rose? She's muted. Maybe she could turn her camera off. Maybe that would help. I don't. I think, yeah. Can you hear us now, Rose? I think we lost her. Well, why don't we switch to John with your question, John. Thank you. Thanks, Bobby. While we're talking about bottlenecks in meat processing and the internet, I just had a question about, for Chris and Sean, about what they see as the bottlenecks in the coming bottlenecks in the craft cannabis market and whether working lands grants, for example, are even going to be available to craft cannabis farmers or potentially because of federal legal snarls, whether that's something the agency might stay away from. I'm happy to field that one, John. Also, a big fan of your work. I think the biggest snag is going to come down to access and how it's accessed right now. It seems like the state is setting up a dispensary environment, not unlike Massachusetts or the states that adopted cannabis many years ago. I think Vermont did the right thing. They did the measure twice, cut once thing, where they look at what the other states do and what works and what doesn't work, and then try to recreate that in a unique Vermont way. My concern is that out of state operators with access to debt and liquidity will come in and be able to scoop those places up immediately and create these dispensaries, but dispensaries isolate all that ancillary value that I'm talking about that's not recorded on paper. A lot of the things that people come to Vermont for, looking for, and a dispensary like a darkened window dispensary doesn't really create access. It just recreates an environment in which cannabis continues to be stigmatized with security guards and no access to even looking inside. I want to see a place where I could bring my grandmother in to a general store, and that general store has created a job for a person to operate a cannabis booth or kiosk out of there. I think one thing the state could do, which would be progressive, but also I don't think it would really change anything visually in the state, is to allow for the incidental purchase of cannabis of already successful businesses, because that allows me as a farmer to create a local relationship to sell cannabis in a place where nationally it doesn't really appear, like a general store or a cafe, like think about like Amsterdam. I'm not even talking about on-site consumption. I don't even think that's a good look for Vermont, because people in Vermont are more likely to like stop at a cafe or a general store, buy local cannabis from that county, whether they're in state or out of state, and then like take a joint to the river or to their friend's house or to a farm where there's a barbecue happening. So I think if we isolate cannabis and dispensaries in this format, we're isolating the value, both the value that goes on to paper and the value that's not on paper. And I think right now people are coming to Vermont for that value that's not on paper, because they recognize it. Like I have two friends from Massachusetts who've been here for three weeks looking for houses, because their work has gone remote and they want to fill their days with things that they find purpose in. So I think that's, you know, Sean, if you want to take it from there, that would be my policy advice. Yeah, sorry. No, no, go ahead Sean. Just to piggyback on what Chris said there, you know, he mentioned some fear of out of state investment. That's already happened. Out of state investors already run our in-state dispensaries. So if we allow that to continue, I just foresee that continuing with this dispensary model that we have in place. I do like also what Chris said about place of origin sales. I do agree there's a value to say maybe not on site consumption, but having the same vineyard model where you can come and experience our natural beauty and again, maybe not consume on site, but to take that experience and place with you to share back in their home home states. Another thing I think we have to realize is there's a big company down in southern Vermont, the Hempikurian, and very close and on the border of Massachusetts and they have legal cannabis there and it's not meeting the mark. People are still coming up from Massachusetts asking if when is Vermont going to have sales? The market is there. We just need to produce that craft small, high-end value that is us, that is Vermont. We can't be what the states around us already are and that's my take on that. Go ahead John. Just to follow up on, do you see sort of like what we just done with raw milk, CSAs and farmers markets also being those places where you can buy a more craft product? Yeah, look, I think like Vermont has such a robust agricultural economy. It's almost like in many respects like a pre-capitalist agrarian economy where even like in these rural environments trade happens. So if we can use, if we can inject cannabis into the current economic modalities we have in Vermont like CSAs and things like that, what we're doing there is allowing like a business owner like myself or Sean to make, we have our sovereign right of choice to make a relationship with a store or a third space like a retail space perhaps. We have the sovereign choice to make that relationship with a general store or cafe where cannabis doesn't appear anywhere else in the country right now. So I think the smart thing to do would be to look at where California is, they're starting to approach incidental purchases that are successful businesses and just meet them there because like I said, just like swim with the current on this one because if you can think about cannabis legislation not in like a two-year or a four-year term, if you can think about what is cannabis going to look like in Vermont in like 25 years and then reverse engineer the legislation from there, I think we could skip a lot of this and we could watch what economic development from the ground up really looks like because it's already happening. So and the out of state people like Carol Leaf and these other companies are coming in. So yeah, I am super appreciative of this committee even though cannabis isn't really being discussed apparently in the agricultural department of the government which also frustrating. So rather than approaching it from a position of control, if it's about economic development approach it from a position of access. Thank you, Chris, Senator Pearson. Sure, I just wanted to weigh in not to be too much of a downer but you know a lot of us have been fighting for tax and regulated adult use cannabis for a lot of years. When I was in 2016, I was in the house the Senate passed it over, the house basically wouldn't take it up. This is you know, so what I hear is folks interested in a more perfect model and I guess what I mean to say is we're lucky to have anything. I mean it was it was passed against basically a Speaker of the House and didn't support it, Governor didn't support it. So it's clunky and it has a lot of compromises you know we were forced to accept if we wanted anything a preemptive vote of approval from a town just to have a store. So you know not to say not to discourage you from keep continue to ask please do keep asking it's the that's how this whole process works but the reality is tricky and not you know the vision in the legislature is just simply not there in the way you're saying. Then we do run into a lot of tough issues. We have a lot of what you asked for that we've empowered the cannabis control board to look at and make their own decision about and I think that's kind of appropriate. It's hard for the legislature to delineate square footage and things like that but we set out some parameters and so they will they will do that and so bring this conversation to them that's also appropriate and and but we run into federal limits we can't say you know you only have you can only give a license to somebody that's lived in Vermont for 10 years you know so if people bring outside capital to Vermont we have tried to preference Vermont businesses but there are legal limits there so anyway just some of the context is helpful because I hear people asking for more appropriately a lot of us have been asking for more but recognize this is a process that is one where we don't get what we want all the time and it will evolve it absolutely will evolve. I am quite hopeful that after a year people will realize the sky's not falling and and you know it's not rampant but rather more of a solid piece of our agricultural economy so anyway just some some thoughts. Yeah thank you Sean. Sorry to interrupt. Just to make a comment about the outside investment piece there I think the way you the way you combat that is by limiting size. I don't see outside investment being a major issue in Vermont unless we open it up to large gross. I think if it's small the investment will be small the if if we keep canopy size small that will limit outside investment and we'll just empower craft growers not large investors. And I think we're likely to do that I mean that that is totally within the framework that the cannabis control board is working under. Thank you. Senator sorry you're muted and I was wondering if I could just make a follow-up comment before I move on or I don't know other folks have questions. Yeah my phone ringing and I tried to shut it down. Did your other witness get back with us sir. We have we have two more witnesses on the list but I just wanted to make a follow-up comment on the the topic of cannabis before we move on. I really appreciate this discussion first of all and I just want to say you know this is how the legislature will develop more of a vision around cannabis and I also recognize that you all have been working on this some of you for many years but I think by having people who are really engaged in the industry and or wanting to be engaged in the industry and in to testify directly that's the only way that the legislature is going to grow to have more of a vision and more support for a craft industry. So that's why we're here and we are going to you know keep showing up in your committee and in others because we understand that there are some reticence you know from the house side maybe or from particular committees or individuals so that's partially what we're here to do and then I also just want to draw an analogy you know if you think about the trajectory that our dairy farms have undergone the commoditization of dairy has really not worked in Vermont. We are a state that produces high quality products on a smaller scale that don't really compete in a commodity marketplace and if we set up a cannabis industry that is based on that same commodity model you know it's not going to lead to a multitude of thriving Vermont businesses. I mean just look at that really devastating number of businesses that have gone out of business in the dairy industry and now and I know there have been many iterations over the years some of which your committee members have led of trying to create a Vermont brand that is based on quality and sort of a craft angle within the dairy industry and I think we have a real opportunity here with cannabis to do that now from the ground floor versus letting this play out maybe as Sean was referring to in Oregon where it takes five or ten years for that for that model to emerge so I think that's really what we're trying to accomplish is you know not we know we can't make it perfect but let's get it as close as we can and support craft producers as much as we can right now so that we don't just set up the same you know failing commodity system that we have in other areas of our ag economy. Thank you Maddie. Any other comments in regards to this subject before we move on to our next witness? I don't see any hands so who's up next Caroline? So next we'll have Steven Leslie speak to the committee and him and also Kat both have been here at the last small farm acting day as well but you know both are activists themselves so I think the message they bring to the committees are just you know to be expanded on so Steve will go a little deeper into his vision of a So Health Restoration Act and I'm excited for this presentation to come so Steve kick it up. Thank you. Morning Chairman Starr. Good to be with us. Yeah thanks for hosting farmers here today. Caroline said you might remember me from the last small farm action days when I spoke to you about So Health Management Systems. Today I'd like to talk about the broader context that has brought So Health to the forefront and why I believe the next biennium of the legislature should pass a Vermont Healthy Soil Protection and Restoration Act. I want to back up a little bit by just looking at you know like for any generation it's difficult to imagine that the world of the past was so radically different than the present. So like here in Vermont with our rolling farm fields and forested mountains the land appears so healthy and you know the northeast region has this built-in resilience of abundant precipitation and this temperate climate. The land has recovered to such a degree that unless you study our land use history it's not evident that European settlement brought about really the near ecological collapse to this region. You know contrary to popular myth New England was not a place of poor thin and rocky soils. The deciduous and evergreen forests that blanketed the hills and basins of our region were a species of organism that evolved over 12,000 years since the last glaciers moved out and all the tons of carbon that were held in the trunks and branches were dwarfed by the real long-term stable carbon that was built up over those centuries in a substratar of deep humus. And that's the carbon bank that we farmers are still drawing on today those ancient old growth forests. You know when the Europeans arrived here they thought it was a wilderness and we know that now that there were tens of thousands of Western Abenaki people living here and they saw that forest as food forest. The thought of taking that forest down would have been just complete insanity to them. And now the Abenaki person alive in 1850 would have seen their world completely undone. And so I think if you know for me as a farmer I started out I'm a kid from the suburbs of southern New Hampshire and I didn't actually become a farmer until I was 30 years old 30 years ago. So I've had needless to say this incredible long wonderful hard learning curve to make my living as a farmer. And when we landed on this property here in Heartland 200 acres 270 acres in 1999 it had been a you know your typical milking 110 holsteins you know making silage and hay all over town on properties and set stocking the cattle out on the 50 acres of pasture every night on the same 50 acres just and you know really good hardworking for monitors but just caught up in that kind of treadmill of the Kamari dairy cycle that Maddie was just referencing and eventually had to sell out and when we inherited the place it was pretty beat up it you know probably continuously farmed for 200 years the cornfields you know in corn year after year with atrazine and pk being applied and a lot of manure because back then you could put raw manure out on the fields all winter long so particularly the fields closest to the barn were quite you know relatively good organic matter but nonetheless pretty beat up land and I guess as a as a young farmer I really didn't understand the extent to which our land had been degraded like if what had been done in Vermont when it was done in other parts of the country that are more brittle as we say uh desertification has occurred you know they talk about parts of the american southwest where the spanish explorers were riding through on horses in grass up to their shoulders on horseback and those places now are desert and you know uh what I understand there is what we have in Vermont is this incredible opportunity for restoration but I think we need to understand first just how incredibly degraded our environment is compared to what was once here when I was a student that got a college back in 1980 I got a chance to go to Lord's Hill in Marshfield which is one of the last remaining stands of old growth in the forest I think there's like less than one percent of our our woods are still truly old growth and it was a revelatory experience for me to see these trees with nine foot diameter of crowns just enormous 150 200 foot high crowns of anywhere where we had fallen there was this whole understory of regeneration and varied habitat and the thing is that these forests were very complex they they were dynamic they weren't in some kind of static state they were continually evolving and and and because of that kind of disturbance of one giant tree going down they were this very varied and highly diverse biodeverse environment and you know and now you know I think of like a 60 acre cornfield that we have removed all of that incredible biomass from right we reduced it to bare soil and then we get this GMO fungicide treated corn seed and we plant that 60 acres to that single crop we put we inject raw liquid manure into it we put atrazine perhaps glyphosate on it we put mpk pelleted chemical soluble fertilizers on it and and we let it grow for four or five months and then we come in and remove that biomass for silage then maybe we put in a rye cover crop for five months and in the springtime we'll come in with 150 horsepower of tractor and a disc and turn it all up again and because we've done that cover cropping we're going to pat ourselves on the back and call it regenerative well it's a step in the right direction right but it's a tiny step we can do so much better so much more if you think about that field and you think about taking that old growth forth holding it as our measure of what could be what once was and and where we need to try to get back to in terms of soil health and you know with the the thing with soil health is we talk a lot about carbon sequestration but I think here in Vermont it's really evident after Tropical Storm Irene that what we're also and of course with the health of our lakes and Lake Champlain what we're also of course talking about is water quality and you know so as the globe is heating up more and more water in the water cycle is being held in the atmosphere as water vapor up to 90 percent of the atmosphere is water vapor whereas like zero point zero point four percent zero point four percent is carbon dioxide still way too much at this point but it's it's a fraction and it's that water vapor that's thriving all these hydrologic events of hurricanes wildfires rising sea levels mega precipitation events flash droughts in Vermont and one gram of soil carbon can hold eight grams of water so when we and you've probably heard these figures from NRCS one percent increase of soil organic matter in an acre of agricultural field will hold 20 to 27 thousand gallons of water I mean it's an incredible ability to infiltrate and hold that it's really healthy soil has but how do we get there so like all right and I know I somebody wave it when I need to be quiet but so I started out um as I said a small diversified organic farmer uh with my wife Kerry we milk 24 cows have about 70 total head we raise beef animals we do a csa uh we're diversified we make hay um and you know we worked off farm jobs we started farming in 1992 as apprentices we worked off farm jobs until 2009 uh we've always paid our employees for mountain and wage or more we haven't done the apprentice route uh and we've always ended up paying our employees more than we pay ourselves there's a lot of times where we qualified for food stamps and just because we have food we didn't capitalize on that we went uninsured until obama care came along uh you know and it's not that we're bad managers because we could think that but we look around we talked with other farmers we look at the national statistics I think I quoted you last time that in 2019 the average farm family in the United States made negative 1200 dollars so um for farmers then to uh like us we our goal has always been to farm for healthy soil first now it's we're learning and learning all the time what that actually means but um uh you know more but even the commodity farmers that are farming for yield and efficiency they're not doing any better and in some cases worse and we know all how much debt it takes to run a dairy farm so my point being that if we're going to attract new and young farmers like to uh uh BTC and and and really uh not just have the hype about our local food economy but actually have a local food economy uh um we need to make this uh a living that you know farmers need to make a livable wage and it seems to me that when we talk about payment for ecological services uh we really need to be talking about kind of a base universal income for farmers who are willing to adopt uh soil health uh management systems uh working very closely with uh farmer to farmer training and um the best science and and uh best innovation but um you know so the payment for ecological service just can't be based on uh quantification of oh there's so much carbon being stored but rather these this farm is adopting this whole raft of practices for their specific context you know including what crops they're going to grow because of what the social context is where they are and all of those other larger ramifications uh so um if we were to pass a soil health uh protection healthy soil protection and restoration act here in the state of Vermont we could then make it statutory that soil itself is protected and I think that's the the critical thing that the main point I wanted to bring to you today that you know in 1972 we passed the Clean Air and Clean Water Act EPA was established under the Nixon administration um and we didn't pass a soil protection act at that point because we didn't have the ecological understanding that we can't have clean air and clean water without healthy soil right and so we put the cart before the horse with the best of intentions but I think the time is now where we need to recognize that without healthy soil we don't have it is the only true wealth we as human beings and as incarnated species have here and we're losing it we're the the FAO of the UN has given us about 60 harvests left worldwide um you know we say we have three to four percent organic matter in our commodity farms the state of Vermont at best but and that sounds great compared to the one percent or less nationally but it's still we're still losing topsoil with our current farming practices now as an organic farmer I didn't understand that photosynthesis itself is what draws carbon that creates the liquid carbon pathway that feeds uh the soil microbiome and that's what actually builds soil I was also in this whole input idea I've got to put more compost I've got to keep putting all my cover crops I do need to do those things and I need to learn how to minimize disturbance maximize photosynthesis it's that minimize this minimize disturbance part that isn't just no-till or reduced tillage it's also not overgrazing not putting the same crop year after year not putting chemical disturbance that acts as biocides so um there's uh I'll try to wrap up thank you so much for your time and um the yeah just just if I could just finish with this last little statement so the roots of all social injustice are bound up with the exploitation of land water and air the colonial capitalist system that historically and currently inflicts so much cruelty on poor indigenous people of color and small farmers everywhere is the same system that exploits and degrades the natural world reparations to one without the other will be meaningless progressive soil health policy can be a first step to reestablishing the commons recognizing the rights of all limit of all living beings climate scientists the world over have declared that the transition to organic regenerative land management and habitat restoration must begin now in order to stave off the worst effects of abrupt climate change and loss of biodiversity soil health protection and restoration is our last last best chance to pass on a livable planet to the next generation we need to elevate healthy soil as the essential ingredient to solving the climate and ecological crisis soil is such a critical resource that we can no longer leave it unregulated ownership or leasehold for any other form of land tenure can no longer mean free license to degenerate or destroy soil government must protect this resource and offer transformational incentives for the adoption of main and maintenance of soil health management systems thank you well thank you thank you Steve and I think maybe since our last meeting we we have in the legislature awarded Ryan patch a couple hundred thousand dollars to get his ecosystems soil health program started at the agency and I don't know if you're on any of those committees at the agency in regards to proper soil protections and soil health but Ryan and and the committee our senate committee heard the importance of soil health and and proper soil ingredients well this earlier before this meeting we talked about inputs and and who should be looking after those inputs and regulating them to make our soil stronger and better and and healthier so you know we're we're headed in the right direction it's just slow moving and I don't know if other committee members have questions or concerns that they want to raise but we we did put that allotment of funds in that early bill that we passed and so that crew at the agency should be firing up and and getting going on that right away because we have approved the the resources to to move that forward Maddie did you have a question or yep um not a question but I just wanted to share an update with you all in case you in case folks don't know that the PES working group has started meeting again and we had our first meeting um and just about a year actually last month and we'll have our next meeting I believe this Thursday um yeah tomorrow so we have started up again and I think um Stephen's points are really well taken you know about just the context of that conversation being you know really taking a holistic look somebody put it in a meeting the other day that I was in that um there are no regenerative practices only regenerative systems um and I think that that is a good way to sort of sum up a lot of what Stephen is referring to in terms of where we should be moving with these kinds of policies um touch well that's good that you're so you're already started uh meeting and that's great uh did we have another witness um Caroline last but not least will be uh Kat Buxton speaking with us and actually Kat is um not just representing the Vermont Healthy Soils Coalition but it's actually also a working group member of this PES and Soil Health working group so take it away Kat. Oh good morning Kat and welcome. Good morning Chairman Starr and Chairman Partridge thank you all for um being here to listen to farmers and farm advocates uh this is a really critical part of our government process and I'm really um really grateful for you all to make time to listen to us and to NOFA and rural Vermont for organizing these important events um it's also been really nice to hear the testimony from others coming in today um I will just mention on the cannabis um conversation this isn't I'm I'm going to be talking about compost but I one thing I didn't hear and I know this may not be um in the agricultural committee's realm but I certainly hope that as we move forward with cannabis legislation that we don't forget about home gardeners and our right to grow food and medicine for ourselves um avoiding industry just like we have always done um in our agricultural heritage so please let's make sure that we take care of the Vermont people who grow food and medicine for themselves um what I really would like to talk about today is composting um so Caroline mentioned I am the uh co-chair of the Vermont Healthy Soils Coalition the co-founder of that organization I also run a business called Grow More Waste Less where I do education throughout the state around composting soil health um and I work with elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, and adults um running compost systems at schools. I work with the Composting Association of Vermont and Farm Working to produce an on-farm composting toolkit to help us manage our local nutrients in the state of Vermont um I work a lot with farmers on site who need technical assistance to understand the processes of composting so that they can produce healthy soil like Stephen was talking about so the way we compost does matter in terms of the outcomes of those products um I also am finding that farmers need technical assistance in an ongoing way and so do homeowners and towns and municipalities when it comes to composting um it can be done very badly it's a very simple process that our grandparents and their grandparents knew um but we don't we've we've lost so much in just a few generations and when we talk about healthy soil and the need to regenerate healthy soil in Vermont to mitigate climate change to adapt and transform to build our healthy soils to build the water holding capacity in our soils it's really important that we optimize the local nutrients that we are producing as waste products and turn those into healthy soil builders and the way to do that is through proper composting the state as we all know we have our universal recycling law which has mandated that everyone needs to be removing organic matter from the landfill um and that is happening to varying degrees I get calls almost every week from individuals from housing complexes from municipalities and towns that are trying to figure out how to best manage their organics without jeopardizing our wildlife which is incredibly important as we continue to fragment our landscapes in Vermont we are jeopardizing all of the wildlife that lives here and right now when bears are active if we don't manage our compost well we are jeopardizing their lives as well as the citizens of the state and our water quality of course so what I would like to ask to get to my point is that as the agricultural committee if we could please invest in the technical assistance that we need to be able to make sure that our universal recycling law can be met that we are optimizing our local nutrients and investing them back into the bank of soil for future generations and if you could please ask the agency of natural resources and the department of agriculture to please work together in a holistic fashion to manage our nutrients to help our farming communities and our residential communities in our soil these two agencies have not been working very well together and it's really causing some problems in terms of how people are being able to meet this very basic requirement which I think is a good one I'm also very concerned to see the rise of de-packing plants and shipping our nutrients out of state and mixing them with plastics it also concerns me that we may not be thinking of chickens as a very helpful tool in managing food scraps and building soil on farms so I would like to offer an ongoing discussion with any of you who may have more questions I do have a view of sort of the whole state from a pretty unique perspective as an educator and a farmer technical advisor and soil health consultant so thank you very much for your time and I hope that you will consider all you can do to advance composting holistically and soil health holistically in our state yeah well thank you thank you cat and I think we we just have done a very strenuous discussion on composting and and we I think we've been fighting for about two or three years on we call it the chicken bill where farmers want to pick up waste and take it to their farm and create a feeding the chickens and making compost and we we have gotten that past I don't know if that's over on the house side now the chicken bill and we're Bobby we're about to we're about to vote it out in the next few days yeah and so it's been a long hard battle I I don't know if the house has had this Bobby I think you're frozen well maybe I'll take the liberty of jumping in and ask cat have you been able to check out that bill I'm 102 maybe and and had any input are are there things we missed in there but what we were trying to do was a lot of what you're talking about is is make it easier for farmers to set up small compost operations make it very explicit that farmers that were feeding chickens through with food scraps were were able to do that continue doing that in perpetuity and in fact to get the agency of ag engaged as you're suggesting so I don't know if you've had a chance to look at that but we have spent a bunch of time particularly in senate ag and now on the house ag working on just that thank you senator Pearson for bringing that up yes I'm familiar with the bill and I also sit on the rule of Vermont board so I am pretty familiar with the policies that rule of Vermont advocates for and I'm a big fan of that bill and I thank you all for your ongoing work on that I do think it's a really important step and just one step I'd like to see in the agencies working well together toward that holistic view of composting soil health and managing our universal recycling law thank you is Bobby back with us or not he's not here okay um yeah cat we are about to um we're about to vote that out there was some consideration to adding some other things to it um we are working on the second part of the bill which has to do with registering animal health supplements and that will require a fee and so I'm working on that aspect of it uh with ways and means sort of as we speak um and so my I anticipate that we're going to vote that out in the next um day or two and that it will then go to ways and means but I I think everybody recognizes how important um the that that aspect of of composting is to um all sorts of folks it's a it's you know a multiple win if we can we can create a good situation for them um so I'm wondering if there are any other questions or folks who would like to testify Caroline or Maddie the cat you want to go ahead could I just follow up um just just one more thing uh thank you again for responding to the the chicken and egg or the chicken bill um part that is a really significant piece um but I do also want to just advocate for um you know the state passed the universal recycling law which I think was a really good move but we did so without any enforcement or funding um and as I mentioned I get calls from people all the time and a lot of what people are wondering is where can I get money to build the facility I need to be able to manage my compost well to protect wildlife and and to manage soil health and so if there's any way that we can take some of this uh four billion dollars coming in from the feds to invest into the proper facilities to protect our wildlife and and make sure that our farmers have what they need and our land managers to manage these nutrients I think that would go a long way into the investment of soil health in Vermont and and cat what do you envision when you when you say an investment what what do you think people would like to um invest in I think that um oftentimes people would like to invest in say a concrete pad that is covered so a space where you can um you can manage your compost and you can manage the water and um who comes in and out of it so that's certainly what I'm seeing on farms and many farms need to do this to be able to comply with the wraps um and also to be able to work with entrepreneurs that are say collecting food scraps to bring them onto their farm I work with one particular um a set of people in the upper valley we have Willow Tree Community Compost a new entrepreneur picking up food scraps from area residents in the five boroughs or the five villages of Hartford and bringing them to Sunrise Farm uh they were able to get some money through a working lands grant and a local crowdfunding campaign to build a composting facility that they also put solar panels up on top of the roof to maximize the energy collected so funding like that um those were some savvy people that also were working with me um and we were able to somehow get them funding but it was really difficult to do so that kind of funding for facilities concrete pad maybe aerated static composting to be able to speed up a roofing structure and then ongoing technical expertise assistance is is really critical as these farmers are learning they need somebody to come in you know every three to six months to just sort of check and make sure that they're doing things right great thank you um Maddie your hand is up do you want to go ahead yeah i just i'm like i'm thrilled by your comments cat um and i and i just want to tack on to them that i think an analogous um situation exists on dairy farms where we could really use some targeted support for dairies to manage manure and alternative ways um to digesters which could include composting you know similar to what cat's talking about um bedded packs things like that that are really i think largely popular among organic dairy farms at this point but could be widely applicable um and very similar to what cat is talking about these practices have huge benefits for water quality for you know animal health in some cases for soil health um and i think similarly a really targeted investment from the state to support um dairy farmers who want to transition or start those kinds of practices along with um really robust technical assistance because there is definitely a learning curve to transitioning to those practices um would be really exciting to see in the in the dairy community thanks maddie um i just got a chat message from from our assistant linda that bobby is probably he's looking for a connection but he's having a hard time all the more reason for more broadband um we have about two minutes left are there is does anyone else want to testify does anyone else want to have um to do you have questions john your hands up go ahead okay i just wonder thinking about what steven said too is as far as building soil does your average vermont forest or open land that's left alone actually build soil better than a lot of you know once once there's sort of humor human interaction with it whether it's farm and so right most of our focus has to be on watching what we do does that make sense i think so you broke up a little bit there was that question for me john or for steven yeah either one um i'll go i'll go first and i'll just say that um yes humans certainly impact the landscape um but i think maybe what you were suggesting is if we leave a land alone will it will it regenerate on its own and and the answer is not necessarily in the way that it was so we've we've really taken a lot out um as steven talked about historically and we now understand a lot more in fact we're learning every day more about the soil microbiome and how to um how to communicate and understand what's happening down there in the soil it's really dynamic um so there are many things that we can do on our managed landscapes manager whether they're managed well or not um to increase um soil health uh and and increase the ability for plants to photosynthesize so maximizing biomass species diversity um changing the way that we graze animals using holistic grazing management etc i could go on and on but i don't think that's what you're looking for so i'll stop there and then steven do you want to add sure just just quickly i'd say so i came across a figure john from uh uh ethan topper who's a chitin county forest who's uh don't does a lot with ecological forestry uh teaching in the state he's a great resource um but he um ethan quoted uh that forest ecologist estimate that if you let a new england farm field go fallow it will take about 120 years of forest accession to reestablish something approaching a healthy uh soil biome and in part because of what kat described um you know over the last 25 years we've learned so much about the um role of mycorrhizal and saprophytic fungi as kind of like the keystone species of soil health and and when those are wiped out that's a big part of what takes a long time to be established but with organic regenerative practices we can speed up that process by at least 10 times we can build as much as a an inch of topsoil in a year uh with management intensive practices but of course that's not on really large acreage that it requires it is more management intensive and more labor intensive to work in that way now if we have a uh a healthy uh economy supporting a local regional food system and that's opportunity for more people to be involved with uh regenerative agriculture so it's not necessarily a problem that requires more people are in trend over the last 120 years that's been to remove people and replace them with machinery on the farm I think we're talking about taking some steps back to uh more of a middle ground where we have more management intensive human-centered agriculture and happily so I see that Bobby is back good for you Bob yeah I finally got I had to change devices but anyways um page that two or three or four computer systems I guess around um so anyways um it sounds like the soil health and healthy soils is uh picked up uh some good discussion uh are there others uh or any other discussion on uh it is on my watch a 12 little after 12 noon um so I didn't know if there was any last minute comments from Caroline or Maddie um maybe just really to reiterate that we extremely grateful for your time this this late in the session and that that we could that you offer to facilitate this as another joint hearing um just to be clear otherwise it would have not come to any sort of forum meet and greet with legislators due to the busy schedules of of you all so this was really the one and only way that we could have such a facilitated conversation with farmers on on various subjects uh whether they're currently in or not in legislation so thank thank you all um both sides farmers and legislators again for making the time uh and I hope that this has led to some common understanding on where some of these items stand in legislature currently and also just um from the farmer side clear appeals to to move these these all these issues forward from a legislative perspective so um thank you all for being here today yeah thank you Caroline Maddie do you have any closing statements it's basically just the same as Caroline thank you so much for your time everybody farmers and legislators alike we really appreciate it and this was a great conversation thanks so much yeah and on behalf of the legislators I want to thank all you folks for coming on and spending time with us and hopefully I don't know if we'll make another one this year like this but hopefully next year if we get well if we get back to Montpelier I'd like to have this same type of setup setup so you guys don't have to all drive for an hour two to get to Montpelier uh unless you feel comfortable and have the time but yet we can meet and and hear your concerns and you can hear a little bit from us on how what and how we're doing and and uh it works very good this way um to have a meeting this large and not for you folks not have to drive for an hour or two to get to see us solve it if there's a way we can arrange it for a rainy day next year I'm sure that would be appreciated by the farmers well you you pick that day I don't want to get saddled with picking the wrong day no um yeah it would be very helpful if you we can pick pick our days so so thank you all very much I appreciate your comments and advice and direction and we'll hopefully stay in touch through Maddie and Caroline and we'll