 Well, good morning everyone. It's Wednesday, January 18th and we're gonna start the morning by talking in regards to the right to farm bill. And last year the bill was in the house passed it over but it ended up in judiciary and kind of got there and so we're we're back at trying to update that law and we we have with us Jasperson Michael Grady Bill Rall is with us farmer from Highgate also folks from the Department of Agency of Education and I think I've worked off and on this fall with Bill and Amanda to try to get some language that the committee might be able to use to update the president's right to farm law the I don't know we'll run around the room and introduce ourselves and then we'll get our guests to introduce themselves and we'll get started. Brian Collamore, the senator from Ruffin County. Hi, I'm Bobbie Starr from Orleans County. So Laura, would you like to introduce yourself? Good morning Steve Collier from the agency of agriculture. I'm a Shroudice with William Shroudice and Associates. I'm Tucker Berches from Fairmont Farm here and he's my player. And we have Linda Lehman who's our various able assistant and I don't know Michael did you want to give us a little overview of where when this all started and the last time it's been updated and something like that? Sure, I mean the break the farm law was first enacted I believe in 2000 and not actually 1985 or 1981. The men who the last time that I know of in 2003-2004 that was in response in part to an Iowa Supreme Court case that had ruled that a similar bond Iowa affected a taking of neighboring property. Consequently the General Assembly had revised its law to address that and also to address a case the trinkets versus a case in which the court had found that a change of practice at a I believe they were an apple farm constituted in new sense and so that the law was amended to to address that as well. It hasn't changed since then what has happened is that there was a case last year in which a superior court judge determined that farming practices at a dairy farm Addison constituted both a trespass and a nuisance and the court held that the farm did not qualify for the rate to farm because they could not show that they were in conformity with law and that there and I think she also determined or determined that there had been significant changes and then she had some what was referred to as dicta in which she said even if they had qualified that the plaintiffs would have been able to overcome the presumption that it was not a nuisance because there was a noxious interference their use and enjoyment significant the noxious interference their use and enjoyment of the dairy farm. Well so anyways we're we're trying to update our right to farm Bill and we have Bill well with us to lead off the testimony this morning who's spent quite a lot of time of working with some other farms as well as a professor from Wisconsin University of Wisconsin I believe it is Penn State University in Penn State or Penn State and the University of Arkansas. Okay so you want to lead off Bill with where you folks are and and we'll go from there. Well I guess I'd start by Bill Raul for the record dairy farmer from Franklin County. We build 900 cows three times a day and you'll notice that Vermont is under 600 dairy farms at this point 572 I think it is so a nuisance soup knocks more farms out of the picture it discourages the next generation from wanting to have anything to do with farms when anybody can come along and throw a stone at you so this is this is quite important how important is it this country produced year ending 22 produced just shy of 227 billion pounds of milk 18 percent of that milk was exported in the form of milk equivalent products like cheese powder and that sort of for a for a total value of nine and a half billion dollars that's three and a half percent of the gross domestic product for this country and that's across this country over three million jobs so I know I know the farm numbers down but agriculture really produces and we're not just feeding this country but we're feeding other countries as well so to have some some simple tool that would protect the farmer seems to me like it's a must if we're if we're interested in growing our own food in this country if we're interested in having farms left in New England Vermont produces two-thirds of the milk produced in New England so now is the time I mean we're getting close to where the time is going to be behind us if we don't pay attention so this is really quite quite important the guy that we were talking with on the zoom conference from Pennsylvania State University is an attorney his name is Brooke Duar he teaches law he was the chief he was a staff counsel for Penn State University for six years he's very familiar with right to farm law because Penn State University has a national agriculture law center which works in conjunction with the National Agriculture Law Center at the University of Arkansas so rather than reinvent the wheel I thought it'd be kind of handy if we could pick his brain and and he has some good ideas that the one thing that he said and and I think Michael Brady agrees with this that he said short and simple is easier to get past than something that's voluminous so Michael has something that's that fits that bill so to speak the thing that I was interested in was seeing that the right to farm law gets tied the short and simple version gets tied to the required agricultural practices for for this reason for one if it's tied to the RAPs and the farm is following the RAPs and is in compliance you can't go to the farm and say we want to take you to court because of this or that or the other if you're in compliance they now need to go to the agency of agriculture or the agency of natural resources whichever the matter applies to and and have that discussion there before they come to the farm the other thing that it does my opinion I'm not an attorney so my my understanding is if if it's tied to the RAPs the farm is in compliance the agencies agencies not not saying anyone in particular but I've noticed over the years that agencies tend to want to at times exceed their authority granted by the legislature so if if everything is going according to the way it's written they can't exceed their authority they only have that granted to them by the legislative body and I think that's where we want to keep it so we don't have a road secretary so to speak deciding they're going to do such and such now what do you do you have no control over you're upside down so my opinion for what it's worth short and simple tie it to the RAPs and and have it granted by the legislative body then one issue that I think he raised you talked to it a little bit earlier today was a trespass issue yeah and he I think it was his intentions you should stay away from that particular issue if you can should I read this yeah I mean okay so so the attorney to our uh I've been after him uh in back and forth for the last three weeks and I said look we're going to end up in in the Trump Senate ag and there's going to be a discussion and I I want to doesn't have to be exhaustive but I'd like your opinion on the revised bill and so finally I got last night and uh here's what he said he said as I have said previously if this bill were to pass as is it would certainly be better for farmers than current Vermont law and here's some notes on under uh 5751 it only refers to providing protection from nuisance suits but the text of the bill also provides protections from trespass throughout he said I use parentheses here because the term trespass is really a generic word it could be interpreted by a court in the future as including many and various different legal causes of action lawsuits those causes of action potentially included for protection could include a multitude of types of claims for money damages and other legal remedies on the other hand nuisance is a very specific legal term that includes only one legal cause of action which can be characterized as either a private nuisance or a public nuisance and the precise meaning of that term is not ambiguous then 5752 he says no comments looks fine serves the purpose intended 5753 he had uh three different points he said this provides protection from both nuisance and trespass suits and the flaws with that are addressed above including trespass generically would presumably draw immediate attention and the objection from the plaintiff's bar the entire bill should be amended to say nuisance and trespass to property if anything beyond nuisance is included within the protection grant next is page five line one to two for maximum protection of farmers the text and act and the activity was not a nuisance or trespass at the time the activity was initiated is not desirable including this text simply invites the plaintiff in a case to simply it'll allege when it started it wasn't a problem but things have now gotten worse he said that's all a plaintiff would have to do to defeat any motion to dismiss a case the credibility of the plaintiff's testimony about whether things have gotten worse will always be made a question of fact for only a jury to decide so by including this text every case could easily be made to require a jury trial and and the accompanying expense next and last is page five line eight or nine for maximum protection of farmers the text which excludes from protection and claim which results from the negligent operation of an agricultural activity that just invites the plaintiff in the case to simply allege that the actions upon which the case is based were not negligently that is all a plaintiff would have to do to defeat any motion to dismiss the case at any time perhaps ironically alleging that the claim is based upon negligent acts may be helpful in invoking insurance coverage on any policy of liability insurance held by the farmer suit and senator star has a copy of that so he could yeah distribute copies to your committee yes they all have a copy of the okay good and the I don't do you have other witnesses that wanted to chime in at this point or well is Amanda joining us yes there's Amanda morning Amanda just a second Amanda you know how many lawsuits how many farms have been sued in the past decade roughly very few 100 and no a small number I believe it's hard to say okay in the last decade I would say probably under 15 okay in the past year past year I only know one okay but see when you say farms you're not talking just dairy you're talking everything right vegetables sheep or so you're saying dairy farms could be the number could be smaller any other questions I wonder if we can get a copy of the right to farm statue when does get your eye okay that would be really helpful to have that side by side as we're thank you I think Mr. Great is doing a side by side also for us on the before and after so what we're trying to do thank you so ready to go to Amanda you good morning everybody my name is Amanda St. Pierre welcome new new senate ag members and I currently am the executive director of Vermont dairy producer alliance which formed about seven years ago now I think we might be losing my voice so I pardon if I keep doing that about seven years ago and we are made up of dairy farms in all the counties and certainly our businesses affect every county economically and we formed to represent dairies at a time when we didn't we just didn't think that we had a presence in the state house and we wanted to educate folks about what we were doing and the changes we were making and the unique things that we bring to the table that other industries may not do so we're excited to be here today and we're excited to work with your committee on all things related to dairy and ag and certainly the right to farm is a important issue to us and I'll tell you a little bit about myself prior to getting into my testimony on this bill I currently farm with my husband and as January 1st came around we were excited to have our two sons join in the farm so we're transitioning to the next generation this has been a couple years in the making I have a son who is going to be 28 in May Jamie and he's married to his wife Ellie and they are actively both on the farm today she does run on the side her little side gig is running but currently she is working on the farm as she awaits her first child and then my son Bradley is also married and he has two children with one on the way and he is 26 and they both came back from college and joined our dairy operation I say this because it is a matter of pride for us so I'm using that a little bit but there are a lot of dairies in the state that are looking to transition to the next generation and some of what we're talking about in the right to farm offers some security to doing that our farm is located in Berkshire we have around 100 employees and we are considered a large farm under the state permit we're currently diversifying into taking our methane digester and instead of making electricity we're looking to make renewable natural gas and I'm saying that again because I think the right to farm is another key component of farms diversifying into that field so at this point the testimony on this bill is we have been looking at this for several years in researching and looking at other states and talking to other farmers and other dairy associations and just trying to see what would make sense to really update a right to farm bill that we already have and that's kind of how the conversation began we're not looking for the Cadillac we're not looking for the strongest language like Oregon you know really the ask is simple we would like it updated we are required in the state to follow certain guidelines and we do not feel at this point that even by implementing those guidelines and following state statute that we are offered the protections that we need and I wanted to just talk a little bit about as our industry and I just looked it up in 2020 Vermont generated 0.7 billion dollars in ag cash receipts and the highest value commodity of that was dairy and again this was back in 2020 so you know 2020 was a time of great change with COVID I bring that to the forefront because dairy continues and has been a player in our state economically we're a driver and we bring in money that comes from outside the state invest it in state businesses and to do that and not get minimal protection under the law is concerning we're investing every day we've been investing every day since my husband and I began farming in 1986 and we have practices that we have to invest in and I I did hear Michael Grady when he spoke last about the investment into manure storage you know ponds basically and into storm wander ponds into silage leachate ponds and into digesters Franklin County has the highest number of digesters in the state in the county and all of these things took great investment and it could be someone could say the smell from there is noxious they'd have to prove that in the court but it would just be good to have something that could say that they did this in accordance with the law and that's really what we're asking and I think a lot of one reason you don't see a lot of lawsuits up to this point is because we try to work with our neighbors we work really hard with our neighbors we communicate with them we're sending out newsletters to them keeping them updated on what we're doing we have if they have a complaint we try to address it you know there's a lot of work done to avoid these types of things but in the case where you just can't resolve it it would be it would serve us to have this right to farm bill updated and we talk about diversity and I want to bring up this gas project because I think you're going to see more farms coming in that have digesters um one of the benefits to having a digester is that it created an economic revenue um it was using something our cows do every day which is produce manure and it captures the methane and stops it from going up into the ozone and then it creates electricity which we were able to sell markets have developed in the last 20 years 10 years 5 years aggressively to offer our dairy farms an interesting place to be because a lot of us have digesters currently and those that don't could maybe join together and and build a digester but it gives us another market that we can um you know kind of meet our goals on the carbon side but still get an economic revenue so it involves infrastructure right we have to build we have to do different things and it would be nice to be covered under the law um if someone didn't like particularly like you know um you know the way that the silo the digester looked or or or anything to that effect or again um manure has a smell the digester kills a lot of the pathogens that cause the smell but when you land apply and your manure injecting you could smell it still and so those are all concerns right they're all concerned that somebody isn't going to understand what we're doing and um and and you know take it past the point of like compromise or or discussion so as we get more involved in um diversifying our dairies and I say dairies because I'm a dairy farmer but again this right to farm covers and last year we heard testimony from Christmas tree farmers who they have a very short window selling their Christmas trees and the parking has become you know you know people who've moved in don't like the cars park there when they're going to get Christmas trees and we heard berry farmers you know we've heard um from sheep farmers and this affects really all of us this right to farm coverage um so we are here today to just offer information of the types of practices that we currently do that we're looking to do in the future in hopes that um you can ask questions and and get to better understand the direction we're taking this but also why a protection um like this could be helpful to be updated and uh again we're following state statute we're not asking for protection if we're not under the required ag practices or we're doing something that's not um you know not under the regulations we're asking for protection from doing things that we're regulated to do and I'll open it up to any questions that you guys may have yeah um have you folks uh because you have several farms right and and have you ever been um bothered with any of these uh nuisance suits Amanda or um where you felt that you know or have you not been bothered because Franklin County is a big agricultural county so um maybe it's not um you folks aren't bothered as much or well um so interesting interesting yes we have um farms kind of scattered throughout the county different land bases if you will and I think you know Franklin County and I don't have the right statistics a lot of the land we farm has been land trusted so it is required to be used for ag purposes so you know um there's manure being spread on the fields um we're cultivating we're growing corn we're doing that kind of thing in the last two years the um the demographics and the people who have moved into the area is a very different mix of people welcome everybody but I'm not sure that they are used to dairy farming or farming activities on land that the state has invested to keep open so this is the concern senator is that as we're using this designated land for the purposes designated for is there going to be an issue are we protected um currently no we have been able to work with neighbors who have had concerns um we have been able to work with agencies if a if a neighbor has had a concern and the agency has come out the agencies have you know tried to work with that neighbor and explain they have a buffer they're applying it correctly but there's always the chance there's always a chance that someone has deep pockets and is willing to pursue this and it would be a just a source of um you know just a source of comfort for my two sons and their wives who will be taking over this very very business that they'll be able to farm and farm within the law yeah yeah we're certainly getting um a lot of a lot of folks are moving north uh to our state and they certainly are coming from you know a lot of different places and different backgrounds and and not accustomed to our local people in the way they react to uh you know their neighbors and things so hey i started to get your point there are other questions brian thank you mr chair so a minute thanks for coming this morning it's good to see you again and i'm sympathetic with your view about the uh digester how much is a digester well back when we put it put it in it was in 2006 and it was around 2.1 total investment into the digester now that was 2006 um so yeah if they're very expensive it's not it's not cheap and it's not cheap to run it's not cheap to maintain and a lot of our digesters were put in around the same time so we're looking at some huge investments to upgrade um and so i really feel farms are probably going to look to the same route we're looking to because it it helps flow those upgrades and there's opportunity there um so yeah they're they're they're very expensive i think the one that they're putting in um this time um is going to be over 10 10 million dollars yeah so as i say i i if i were a farmer before i could make that investment i would feel much better knowing that there was some legal protection behind it so i get what you're saying for sure yeah are there any uh brian uh thanks this is really helpful testimony uh and it's good to see you so this might be something that we'll get from ledge council when we get to side by side but do you have a sense of what will be protected under the new law that wouldn't be protected right now in terms of actions and activities on a farm so i i think my interpretation and i'm not in a term but my hope is that we're going to be protected for the practices that we're required to do currently under state statute i mean that is a hope for me it's very concerning very concerning and keep in mind we started work on this before the bolster bell trial even happened and last year you know as we were talking about this it really had no involvement in what was going on with their farm but since then the ruling has come out and it really shows shows holes in our current um current right to farm where we can't be offered protection for what we're being asked to do and what we're being asked to spend considerable amount of money for i think there's a misconception that our practices are financed by the agency of ag or nrcs or fsa there is money available but most of the time it pays maybe 20 percent 10 percent of what they're asking us to do never has it paid 100 percent of the investment um that we're asked to do and and sometimes to be quite frank in order to get that practice implemented quickly the farmer has to pay for it directly because there could be a three to five year wait to get this practice in place thank you well and just just for the committee's uh knowledge um we did a little cost analysis uh this summer the task force on uh what it costs a Vermont farm to operate compared to our neighbors uh New Hampshire mass uh New York uh Maine was another one but it it costs our farmers uh what's projected and and estimated to be a dollar in 76 cents i think it is 100 weight more to produce milk in Vermont than it does uh say in New York or mass or New Hampshire to meet these like RAPs and in all the different regulations uh which Amanda just alluded to um they get some help toward meeting the uh different regs but the bulk of it's borne by you know the farmer and so um you know there are some facts to back up uh you know these things so can it be the same center it's more expensive that we have more regulation in the other states in part well a lot of that's what's doing to the you know the lawsuit that that was brought against the the state for water pollution and and but okay nobody i don't think it ever done a real cost analysis so what it does cost to meet those uh requirements that and um not saying that those are bad but you know it's uh rule and the law that we follow the RAPs and the RAPs when we put this together many years ago weren't really in place i don't believe um so things have happened uh to try to make our farms more sustainable and for the long haul that's caused some of this in some people to want to revise our right to farmers so uh yes thank you senator just for the record caroline born with blue roma also very sympathetic to all the issues raised this morning um and hearing from amanda um definitely support that amending right to farm to uh cover also farm diversification succession planning but also on underscored currently no beginning farmer no new farmer moving to vermont putting up shop on good agricultural soils next to a neighbor that has been there before is protected from nuisance lawsuits currently yeah so um the amendment i'm looking forward to studying more but if we can change it all together so that any any type of farming that is regulated under the RAPs and that is covered with the new amended practices that are now included can be protected no matter when they started business that that's i think one step towards incentivizing farming in the state even though it doesn't solve any of the under underlying related issues like affordability of farm that or so on and so forth other questions for bill or amanda at this point well that was the premise of the whole thing was to be all inclusive as far as farms it doesn't matter if you're growing doesn't matter what you're doing if you're a farmer you're a farmer yeah included it's very good yeah i would i would i would say um the the act 248 permit process that we had to go through for the digester that's a fairly exhaustive process and and it's a it's a worthwhile thing to do we had to do it twice because we started with one big engine and then we put in a second so we had to go through the process again which seemed foolish but we went through it twice but you know it if you do that it indemnifies you to some extent because you've already passed the test so to speak and our digester cost us 2.75 million dollars but the reason that has to something to do with it was we had to build 3.2 miles of three five three phase infrastructure yeah that was 256 thousand dollars out of our pocket for something we never owned yeah but the idea of working with people that don't understand what your practice is i'll i'll speak to that for just a second over the over the past we'll call it 12 years 12 13 years we've hosted tours for over 33 000 people from out 48 countries if you include the us 48 countries and the the most common thing that you hear as you go through and show people this this this this the the animals they're they're housing their feed how they're handled try to do it all in an open transparent manner and when you show them something the most common thing is they say well i didn't realize it worked that way no but you have an opinion anyway say that's the problem and the opinion has to have a factual base that it's going to be legitimate so the idea was my brother would say why are we doing this again yeah because we had a lot of people coming at us but i think it makes a difference i think it was worthwhile people want to know they they they want to know so if you've got something like that share you give them an idea we're a lot of these people neighbors and people are we all over the world i mean i i'm my picture is on the ag call a fame wall oh and my picture includes four guys from turk menistan wow they came to this country because they were trying to understand modern agricultural practices and with the idea that they need to better feed their people more reliably uh feed their people so when you're working with that audience it's a different conversation people that are challenged for food or the the system's fragile they're more respectful of it they they don't have the attitude that we have in this country you know oh well i don't want it in that size packaging i want something else and it's too expensive those folks appreciate nutrition and it's quite the different conversation but anyway that's i guess that's all i have to any other questions for amanda no right now uh joe or are you with us joe joe's president of prime bureau so he's on yeah the morning joe understand you've been away hey yes i just came back from the american farm bureau annual convention in san juan porto rico but my car broke down so i'm having trouble getting back to vermont but hopefully by monday we'll be back and i'll be in to see you guys so senator star thank you very much for having me on so um i uh joe tisbert from valley dream farm an organic produce farm in cambridge from on we are a small farm um we are also uh working on a transition plan for my daughter to take over the farm um she'd like it quicker than i would like it but that's uh you know you've got a lot of energy and a lot of great ideas so um you know speaking to the right to farm not only is not only is for dairy and as a farm bureau president we support all levels of farms where we want to support the largest dairy to the smallest vegetable farm or beef farm you know we need we need this we need an upgraded right to farm bill um just a few years ago uh bullet got loose went to criminal court you know we we are if you follow the state's uh future of agriculture and you want and they want a lot of smaller farms and they want a lot of this well you know the smaller farms are not as efficient as the bigger farms they may have a broken fence that they don't see right away or they may not be able to cover something enough an animal gets out similar to that bull and they get criminally processed you just throw you just throw a knife into that whole a bunch of people who would be farming at some level um so you know this is really important across the board you know the a lot of the farms uh that we work with um you know need programs just like anybody else in order to survive we also need uh just to know that our backs are when we're following the right processes uh we should be we should have the state should have our back and right now I don't believe it does so um if you look at the nuisance laws and you look at getting sued criminally sued over a tragic accident um so my uh from our from my point of view as a small farmer we need as much protection as everybody else I have people walking onto my farm all the time my door is open if you want to walk on my farm I live in the most beautiful place in America and if you want to walk on my farm it's I I allow that but on the same token I don't want you coming back at me and saying well I think you sprayed something over there or you did some of this and you're organic and you're I mean we get this all the time so to strengthen this law would be good so I spent a majority of uh I've been a lot of time uh talking with my brother and my 50 other brother and a president so from our farm bureau and I'm going to tell you that the right to farm laws are very are all over the place and most states have a lot stronger right to farm than we do and one of the things that came to me most uh was actually our neighbor in Massachusetts and I said how are you guys handling this you have a lot more folks and a lot less farms and they said you know basically if you're following the best farm practices then you're covered and we exhausted the RAPs and a lot of us and a lot of us talked against it and a lot of us talked for it we came up with a good plan and if you look at all the farms in the state there's so many great climate practices being done on the farm and if we eliminate that and we build more housing we what are we doing um but the my point being is that if you're following the RAPs if you're following the laws then why should you be able to be harassed and and farmed and and um and prosecuted or try to be prosecuted and taken to court spending money you shouldn't be able to do it that's why you guys did a great job in setting up the RAPs and the best farm practices and they're all listed across the state we need to protect our farms and we need to protect our industry not only for that little farm but for the bigger farms and the medium farms and all farms yeah thank you Joe Bryan thanks Joe good to see you I'm just curious I mean period you know in every profession every business sometimes there are bad actors so I'm wondering what kind of protection should an adjacent landowner actually have what kind of you're not telling everyone you have no protections at all so I'm just wondering what kinds of protection should be in place for adjacent landowners well from my point of view if I'm following the practices then I should be protected um you know let's see for these local landowners I mean I know from my point of view we work with all our neighbors I think most farms in a state work from all our neighbors if you're not following the practices then the name should have the right if you don't follow the practices that are in place then there should be some there there should be something that protects the neighbor but I don't know a lot of farms that are not doing I don't know any farms off the top of my head that are not following the RAPs that are not doing the practices even if they're a small dairy herder vegetable grower there's still rules that you have to follow and and you know setbacks and and all kinds of things that we need to protect our neighbors so I think I think the first step is always to talk with your neighbor and I think Amanda said that really well and we do that all the time we work with our neighbors all the time uh most farms have to uh a lot of times our neighbors want us to help them out by you by maybe using a piece of their ground uh to to make it worthwhile and worth and and working so Michael Grady Church Council so is that accurate that if if a neighbor if a farm is not following then RAPs the adjacent landowner does have the possibility then to sue under the new draft um under the new draft yeah potentially potentially but not definitely one thing we all have to remember is these cases are fact-based cases yeah so to say that it's always going to be there or never going to be there it's it's hard because it depends on that okay okay thank you Jeff I'd like to clarify that I have not seen the new adjusted rules from Brian from Mr. Grady and I'd love it if we could get a copy yeah we're we're gonna be holding you know at least a couple more hearings in regards to uh the draft it's only a draft at this point and uh so we've got um you know we've got a place for um you know save dealt but uh this is something that um you know I intend I intend the committee to rush through um we you know because it'll be another 10 or 15 years probably before it gets changed again and so we we want to do it right you know as right as we can so we're uh you know we're gonna spend some time putting you know the new draft uh together uh the new draft is on the website we just got it yeah and it's on the second okay thank you thank you yeah Joe you could go to our website and pick what we have in print up from our website if if that's of interest to you okay thank you I appreciate that appreciate that you know we have to look at you know how farms protecting themselves today I mean I mean you know um not only uh financially if you look at the water quality issue and the climate issue the farms are are so important to the solutions that you know the harder we make it for farmers to go forward the less farmers we have and and I think we need to protect all farmers yeah uh no questions no further questions for Joe thank you so um welcome and you're you're new to this like so my name is Dr. Burgess and I'm an operating fair mall farm here in East Montpelier thank you guys for the opportunity to come and introduce myself um so I I farm with my aunt and my two cousins so there's five of us that currently own the business we melt 1,000 cows in East Montpelier 450 cows in Craftsbury um we crop 3,800 acres in 13 towns so we're very spread out we've got a lot of things going on um so I've been involved I'm I'm not actually from a farm family um started working um at at Fairmont when I was a young kid um went on to New York to college I graduated in Cornell um and then I was out in California for a little while and at that time there was five owners on the farm one two of the owners decided to leave that gave me an opportunity to come back um as a manager and then in 2005 we bought out um one of the senior partners in 2007 we bought out two more senior partners so um just a short period of time there in five years there was a lot of evolution of ownership um and movement we also bought the farm in Craftsbury um and I lived up in Craftsbury for about nine years um my wife is not from a farm at all she we actually uh went to high school together she was living down in Washington D.C. moved back to Craftsbury um and now I think she shares the same passion for agriculture and and community as I do um so she worked at uh Hyde Park Elementary um for for quite a while um we lived there yeah she works at Eastmont Pillar Elementary she also helps run our market that we just started um and run our summer camps um so we do uh a lot of different things there on the farm um I've got two girls nine and six um that uh we actually live at the old lilac farm create opportunities some of the opportunities on these larger dairies aren't great for kids just because we've got so much going on this farm uh gives us the opportunity we have sheep we have pig we have calves and those kids um I work 12 days and take two days off so if you ask my kids on the weekend what they want to do probably I'd say make cinnamon rolls first but the second they're gonna say they want to work with dad you know they want to go to the cow farm they want to cow out cows name calves and ride in the mower um so anyway that's a brief history of me and and and what I'm all about um I think I think in my 20 years here on the farm we've seen enormous change on the farm and I think that's important because I think you know dairies always evolving and and I think even going going ahead it's going to evolve differently um so um from 2005 until now I think we added on to barns or build barns 10 different times we built four manure pits um you know our equipment changed our crops changed our you know equipment I used to use a 3500 gallon sprayer now I got 72 who's and so a lot of things has changed um when the pandemic hit um it it changed a lot of things from milk price coming down um and it really you know in agriculture I think we need to be we learned that we need to be flexible and creative and we saw an opportunity um to start what we call Fairmont Market um so it's it's uh we thought there's an opportunity to provide local meat and food to you know our local community they come in and buy either online or or or come into the market a safe environment so um we now have our own pork our own beef and our own lamb um and then we sell all sorts of cabinet products we I skipped over we shipped about 130 000 pound of milk to cabinet every day they turn that into about 12 000 pounds of cheese depending on if your daily intake is an ounce of cheese or two ounces of cheese a day um we probably feed close to 100 000 people every day from our farms uh so we sell cabinet products there we sell local honey local maple syrup um and uh we have coffee anyway we sell a lot of local products there um and that and that is one way of diversifying that we've done we also like Christmas trees we raise our own beef and sell that elsewhere you know we've done a lot of things to diversify but we couldn't do it without um I say we have five owners um the five owners have uh we have seven kids among us and um my cousins um husband and wife and my wife are greatly involved in the business run the market um we have uh some commercial cows that we sell and then we have some registered cows that we sell they're very involved in all those things um so we're very focused on water quality um and changing our cropping processes those have changed a lot in 20 years um we're currently planting winter rye on all our corn grounds about 1600 acres of corn ground um some of the newest practices that we've uh that we started doing is is uh it's a manure injection so we're running two manure injectors um so we have uh you know we don't worry about any runoff or soil erosion um we can do a single application of uh moral manure um and and utilize all the nitrogen in that manure um so use less uh less commercial nitrogen um yeah have you have you noticed uh drop in commercial fertilizer since you've been using the injectors we have yes for multiple reasons though for one for the cost of nitrogen um has just has just come up a lot and um you know so we're putting all the manure and then we're capturing all the nitrogen in the past when we used to broadcast if you weren't working it in you lose a lot of that nitrogen um so um so we're using a lot less nitrogen on on our corn land we actually didn't talk about any of our corn land last year with nitrogen um which is the first time we've ever done that and I I don't know if the committee knows uh how much do those injectors cost those manure injectors so um probably about $35,000 for a manure injector and then we have a flow meter put on it and so we're and then we've got what's called ag leader so we're mapping every field so you can pull the map of a field and it'll tell you exactly how many gallons were applied to exactly every part of that field um and those go into our manure records you can show you know our setbacks from you know upon the lake a well and exactly how much was applied um and and we have you know from our nutrient management plan we have um you know an amount we're supposed to apply in the spring and a amount we're supposed to apply in the fall and uh then you go look at exactly what we did and it's mapped out and it's 7,102 gallons on that you know it's it's it's very exact um so the flow meter and ag leader software is about another $15,000 how many about $15,000 for that technology um and that's something um you know it's really hard to find good operators and I mean 20 years ago we weren't keeping track of any manure records and now we're keeping track you know handheld records and there's just room for error so when you go ahead to this uh you know field mapping stuff um there's no room for error really um you know it's it's it is what it is um and so we made an investment to do that and and I mean we're proud um we're proud that you know we've done that I think a lot of these farms also have but um we know we're highly regulated um you know and we accept you know that we're highly regulated late we accept the regulations you know for the vitamin of our farm um and for mom itself um but um so when my first daughter you know was born um you know I always wondered if there's going to be an opportunity for her to return to the farm ever or or or my cousin's kids um we're very we're super involved in youth my uncle run a 4-H group for years and so between the 4-H group we're bringing kids in and then our summer camp summer camps we've got 125 kids that we bring in for five different weeks we get I'm sorry 25 kids each week and they come in they learn about agriculture and we got kids coming out of Massachusetts we got kids coming out of I you know Vermont lots of local kids lots of returning kids that just love it um but we teach a lot of agriculture um and teach these new people they're moving into our towns what it is to be on a farm they see our equipment they see our cows they scare me know where they get to take care of an animal and I think that goes a long way so the 4-H group is really super impressive I think um so right now if I think about it we have five kids at Cornell University studying agriculture and dairy four of them well five of them we're in our 4-H group the Algroopanese Montelier one of them is from a farm four kids or not and I think that's one of the reasons that that this farm bill is really important to get these young people a spot to be here whether they're on farm or just working in agriculture to support all the reasons we live here all the reasons that people move here for open lands for you know water quality for great products coming out of this area um so if uh if you ever visit my farm you'll see everybody is wearing a fair washer in the back our motto is farming for future generations and that really is their motto and and and I think that's why you know these bills are so important that we have um a spot for those young kids to come back to and continue to produce the milk um that we do here in Vermont um all the changes I talked about um in the last 20 years I think going ahead we've got a lot of different changes coming in my mind um Agamert we shipped to Agamert they have a base program so I can only make up to so much milk um and looking forward you know I used to be able to just build a barn and grow cows and that's how I grew my business um now looking forward I think it's going to be more diversification um and to bring in some of these young people we're going to have to continue to grow our business and we're going to have to do it differently and I think that's something that's different you know you ask how many people or how many farms um have had that have had lawsuits well we've grown the same way for a long time looking forward the next five or ten years we're going to grow differently so we're going to grow differently and we're going to grow with different people in our communities so um I don't know if the past you know lawsuits is really a good thing but things will happen differently um and I think that's one of the reasons um to you know that I'm here advocating to update this um older bill and uh last you know um thank you guys for giving me the opportunity to farm a thousand cows 10 minutes away um you guys are all more than welcome to come as a committee and visit individually to bring your families bring your colleagues um I can I can forward along my information and uh I I uh I tend to ramble when I'm passionate about stuff and if you think this is ramble then wait a minute for me to farm um I uh I hope you have some time I'd love to I'd love to give you guys a tour thank you thank you very much yeah well thank you uh Dr uh very interest yeah uh thank you mr chair so Tucker I'd like to think that I don't spend a lot of time in the chair watching game shows all day but I'm not sure I could follow you around all day you're moving at the speed of light here and even just having you sit here I can tell that you just come on get this thing done and then get to the next thing and uh so thank you very much for that that was really really impressive I'll slow down next time don't you don't need to do that either yeah and to have that uh succession in mind already is really important too and well we're we're we're a little bit different so uh my aunt and uncle are about 13 years older than I am and I grew up um in a single family home and they pretty much took me under their wing as a as a young kid and they brought me and showed me colleges and they got me into agriculture and and uh um you know I spent some time away in California but I had an opportunity to come back and know about my dream to be honest with you but then my cousins are about 13 years younger than me so we're you know we don't have this big generation yet um but then we've got seven kids we actually um my cousin uh is pregnancy a good eight eight kid coming about we have seven kids coming from nine to two currently um and they're all involved and super excited that's great great uh Brian thanks with my other hat on I chair senate education in the afternoon I just want to add a couple things Brazil I think it's our committee without a doubt is interested in getting young kids in schools involved in things like forage and and how we incorporate that into you know school curriculum a little bit more perfect and that maybe we can have an email conversation yeah the other thing that we've been talking a lot about is school meals and getting local farmers you know to help supply the food to school meals yep is are you in that supply chain at all with schools so or our colleagues or just trying to get a sense of that if you supply any of the schools so the short answer is no okay um so we've done we've done um some fundraising so we did a live activity for two nights here in East Montpelier we had about four or five hundred people attend yeah I mean we've done that two years in a row and we match every donation that's a free event we match every donation um and then we matched it actually with products out of the market um and then we brought that to the school and the school distributed that to 10 families that I think chose yeah so unfortunately this past year I'm not sure why the donations weren't weren't what we expected um you know we don't want to hold this event and asking people for money um uh but the year before we did it and we had $1,500 with the donations and then we supplied $1,500 so we gave 10 families $300 worth of product out of the market you know half of the donations and half of what we matched but as far as in the school school lunch programs um I was just curious yeah we're just trying to find are there bottlenecks to do people need help getting into the schools that kind of thing for some farms I also would get that some farms are going to be more interested in others so yeah yeah just curious okay great thank you you know we we supply a lot of the concessions for soccer with their burger and meat yeah like that they're selling but um as far as in school lunches no um we're less than we're less than like half a mile from the school we have tours every week during the good weather so the kids do come in they walk to school and they yeah yeah they walk from the school to the farm and uh we usually go to tour about 45 minutes and then we have probably one of the most beautiful places in in central Vermont um you just climb up on top of the hill you can oversee the farm you can look 365 degrees around just amazing if they go up there they eat lunch at our lunch spot or pay on tables with volleyball and all that stuff and then they come back down they do one more quick tour than they go back to the farm uh back to the school thank you you have uh some relatives down on the south too right down in the so uh so Richard my uncle so my mother's sister Mary Richard um so his sister farmed down in Bradford yeah yeah Margaret well that's so they they do a good job or the public and they do a great job in the public they do a great job on the dairy and they diversify a long time to go into pumpkins uh you know and and and that's another thing it's it's it's different farming than what we're used to um and it and it presents its own challenges yeah uh operating in 13 different towns you must run into quite a few neighbors uh yeah so we dropped 3,800 acres and I think we are about a third of that land so we rent the rest of the land so we rent a lot of land and and uh we run into a lot of different neighbors we will run into a lot of new neighbors um by the first neighbors and if you go up into craft spirit you've got a very diverse group of people living up there um or vacationing up there is that where you live so I currently live here in Eastmontville here so um who's your family in craft spirit um so we actually don't I lived up there for nine years and we bought Randy and Louise Calderwood's farm sure so right there on south Albany road my family's on Urie road oh sure yeah okay yeah yeah so we use uh like Bruce Urie's land yeah um Allen Young's land all all the creek roads so we use a lot of land we have about 800 acres we use up there um but it's a very diverse group it's you know yeah yeah yeah and that that was a super inviting town to move to um when I moved there in 2005 and and I'm gonna stress for it actually today yeah it's a great you guys are definitely well there yeah it's a great to be the great somebody yeah so other questions for Tucker well thank you guys very much yeah I look forward to working with you and um I definitely take me out if you ever want to get a great farm that's a great author where's your uh you have a farm store or yep so right uh right up my house where I live is uh Lyle Hayden road and it used to be used to be um Lyle Hayden a farm and Jerry Rathaport from Boston overnight it was kind of an investment firm and we had been using all the land and cropping all the land and when he decided to sell it um it was in 2014 and it was a very good year in the dairy industry and we decided to buy that um farm and we thought we would make go of milking 60 registered cows there and sell some registered genetics um since 2014 um the dairy industry has been tough and we realized milking 60 registered cows there was not going to work um so we now raised some heifers and dry cows and pigs and some sheep and we actually have turned the whole front office at milkhouse into a farm store with a full kitchen um and we do lots of community events on Friday night we might you know cook something up and have people come in and try it we uh do a recipe bag every month you know so people can buy four recipes and pack a bag with $65 worth of stuff and you know with those recipes they can you know make make different meals for themselves but um yeah it's right there at Lyle Hayden Road yeah and we're not always open we've got a big online following if you go to Fairmontfarmain.com you get right to the market pretty quick and then and then you'll see you'll see a lot of what we do um our our website is a lot about us um a lot about our farming practices our animals our locations and then our market and and and uh it's Fairmontfarmain.com yeah well if there are no other questions uh thanks for your time thanks Dr yes thank you guys thank you yes some energy that's yeah i know hope you've been 40 years he'll slow down i think you're still energetic okay well um steve did your lawyer come to testify on this yes senator star if you'd like us to yeah no yeah well we'll we'll take a break and we can get through uh the agency and we still haven't had michael yet through the draft uh good morning welcome good morning senator star and thank you good morning to everyone Steve Collier from the agency of agriculture i'm the general counsel there so every time i talk with farmers i realize how much better they are everything including public speaking so so they've already all said what i came to say in a much more effective way but i i'd like to just focus on the law for a second if i might because i and i plan to talk more about what's problematic about the current law than instead about how we should move forward because i think that's the impetus for the change is the purpose of my and our judgment the purpose of the current right to farm statute is all exactly as it should be it's designed to protect farms it's designed to allow farms to diversify and change their practices the way the statute is worded the implementation of it is not in any way aligned with the purpose it's porous it's riddled with holes when you look at the protection it's a plaintiff's attorney's dream in my opinion and what i mean by that is when i look at litigation and i want to start by saying whenever you're involved in litigation you're losing whether you win or you whether you win at the end or you lose at the end the cost of litigation itself is really extensive and that's why i think the statute is so flawed because if you look at what the statute requires there's four different factual questions that are in the current statute one is are you meeting are you conforming with all the laws okay that creates factual factual questions the other is are you using good agricultural practices again factual questions the other is were you there first again factual questions the other is are you change have you changed anything significantly again factual questions the reason that matters is when you get into a court the court can't decide factual questions until a trial which is either by a judge or a jury factual questions don't get decided by the court legal questions do so when you in the statute when you include all those factual questions that just a recipe for litigation instead of clarity so if you want to actually have protection i think it's really important to describe what is protected right now this series of factual questions means that you get sued you go through months or years of discovery which when everybody changes information you're likely going to have to pay an expert hire an expert to be able to assess these factual questions when you think that a lawyer probably cost you between two and three hundred dollars an hour some maybe a little bit less some a little bit more but just to pay for an attorney for a week's worth of time is week forty hour week eight thousand to twelve thousand hours just for that one week of time one week of time is nowhere near enough to go through discovery defending the claim filing motions going to trial it's just a really big cost so what i think is problematic about that is most neighbors i don't think want to sue one another so that works pretty well and back to senator campion's question about how many lawsuits have there been i don't i don't think that's the right question because i think the question is what is the protection and does it work and and the reason i say i'm always looking for what's the problem that we're trying to solve this might be the way for me to rephrase that and that's what i'm trying to explain now is what is the problem is that i don't think the protection that the statute was designed to include is actually was ever effectuated and i think part of that is you when you think about this law being adopted and or enacted in 1981 farms weren't regulated then their land use practices there so so maybe at that time the only remedy for a neighbor who didn't like something a farm was doing was through a nuisance action since that time there's been a as you are all very familiar with has been a whole litany of additional regulations many targeting water quality but others targeting other things so there's this whole rubric of requirements now so i think our perspective is that rather than farm practices being decided individual being decided sorry and individual civil actions between neighbors and farmers the state meaning you all should be terminating what is an appropriate farm practice because farmers are in the unique position of living where they work most of them so they they are you know they're at their home and they're doing practices that do have impacts manure stinks it just does some people don't mind the smell some people do at various different times but if if the state thinks that manure smell is a legitimate nuisance claim even if the farmer is doing everything right to manage it that's a huge risk to the farm if the farm does everything proper with its manure according to states according to state requirements but it's still subject to civil suit that i mean that just the cost of defending that suit could put a vulnerable farm out of business so the way that i think about this is instead of individual neighbors deciding what's a good farm practice the state should be citing what's a good farm practices but good practice and and if the farmer is meeting those expectations and is reasonably and responsibly running the farm they ought to be protected from a distinct civil action which literally can drive them out of business and where this really can get exploited is if you have a wealthy neighbor and a farmer because wealthy neighbors the cost of litigation can be irrelevant and just through the threat of litigation and then specifically through the cost of litigation a wealthy neighbor who may not who may be new to the area or not but just may not like the practice can literally drive a farm out of business and since the goal of this protection is to keep Vermont productive and agriculture the idea that somebody who's well healed can can take advantage of someone who isn't by bringing an action against someone who's doing everything within the scope of the law is a little unsettling so to back to your question senator campion i think what we should be trying to do is determine on a state level what's appropriate and then farms are meeting those standards and they ought to be insulated from legal liability so that may be part of the reason that several have talked about uh if a farm is complying in good standing with the RAPs which are a lot of practices that we've required um that should be an aspect that needs to be in the in the bill yeah and that to me is a really interesting question because right now the way that the statute is worded currently there's these four thresholds that a farm has to meet it's generally speaking when a plaintiff sues somebody they have the burden of proof meaning they have to prove that somebody violated the law but the way the statute is set up right now it's kind of in my view and i'm not sure that it's interpreted that this way but it's almost set up more as an affirmative defense which means that the burden is on the defendant to prove it so the way it's worded is the farm has to prove that they're complying with all laws well that's kind of crazy that's the way that's the way most laws are written anytime i've gone to court i had to prove us anything more than the plaintiff had to prove us guilty i mean well that that i don't know if that ever happened to anybody else but but i i think the scope is really broad to say you have to conform with all laws i personally believe that the law that should matter is the one that's related to the nuisance and what i mean by that is let's say you know farms have to have buffers that meet certain requirements on the edge of the field depending on where the field is located if somebody doesn't have the appropriate size buffer that's a violation of the reps that absolutely should be addressed but if a neighbor doesn't like the smell of manure and that's what they're complaining about in nuisance that buffer doesn't have anything to do with a manure at all so so my opinion the burden should be on the plaintiff to prove that there is a legal violation meaning the farms not meeting state requirements and that that is causally related to the nuisance itself because it's just too broad otherwise again it's a discovery i mean if a farm literally has to prove they're doing everything right that's impossible i mean you can't it's not something you can actually do to prove it's almost proving negative so what should matter is what is the source of the alleged nuisance what is the farm doing that's causing that alleged nuisance and are the activities related to that activity following state law so i i recommend sort of tightening the scope putting the burden on the plaintiff to prove that the farm is doing something that doesn't meet the requirements and because of that there's this nuisance activity nobody suggesting that neighbors shouldn't be protected from bad practices neighbors have a right to the use of enjoyment of their property they have a right to live where they do they should be able to do so without unreasonable interference by a farm but if the state decides these farm practices are appropriate and since we do want farming and we do want farms to be able to diversify and change it seems like that should be the threshold not an individual neighbor's tolerances for those activities yeah so if all of a sudden you know you've got two neighbors they've been living side by side for 10 years great relationship neighbors growing i don't know strawberries big piece of property and all of a sudden they sell they sell to somebody out in california landlord lives out in california they're running the farm kind of in california and then they decide we're going to switch this phone around we're going to put a couple manure pits here we're going to put something right over here and it's really not what folks as you can imagine may have signed up for what happens that person's like hey jeez you should have thought twice before buying this 10 years ago well i just wonder under this under how this is drafted under the current law no under how this is drafted i haven't um had a i quickly looked at the draft but i haven't really studied okay but i to me whatever draft is there right now the bigger question is what should the policy be and i guess what i'm suggesting but i'm wondering from the neighbor's perspective they've lived there 10 20 years now they're looking they were looking at strawberry fields now they're looking at manure pits right on there do they have any european issue they have any recourse at all measures yes or no question no it's not because it depends on how you construct the protection and i think there are a variety of ways to do it i think the issue you're bringing up is coming to an instance but which carol gordon also raised the question whether or not people who pre-existed are the only ones who should be protected or whether agriculture more broadly shouldn't be protected and i think that's an important policy question i think there's a reasonable position to take to say if you are changing your practice yeah you're doing it appropriately meaning you're managing your manure appropriately you're following all the laws and requirements then there's no reason that because you've changed i mean another neighbor somewhere down the road who has to deal with it when it pre-existed why can't this name but that's a policy question right now it's set up to only protect those who pre-existed whether that's not testifying on this current bill you haven't read the bill i skimmed it quickly last night but it was more i was trying to highlight the the the flaws that i think exist now and i think they're important policy questions about and a lot of options about how to design that protection moving forward yeah thank you sure no other questions for steve no i'll just say one thing i appreciate the steve and i think the committee when we took a look at the presumption of the rebuttable presumption at all we really realized i think that that's something that we need to look at first how we do this with our council remains to be seen this i'm sure will change over the next few weeks yeah but to your point the the current law just doesn't do it i don't believe um i'll just add to joe tisbert who was there i was in the courtroom for more than one day with that case back in rutherland with the ball that got up loose and there was a fatality involved and i could see the absolute distress on the face of the farmer who was involved so i can sympathize with that i come from a long line of uh broadcasting that's what i did for 4550 years in rutherland so the publicity associated with that case because that's how we sell newspapers and that's how we keep listeners to radio stations made it pretty well obvious how the media felt about it that it was the farmer's fault and the bow got out and somebody got killed over it so it wasn't a fair situation if you were the farmer for sure because there was no negligence in my view well i guess you could argue that but anyway it was one more example of putting farmers in a bad light and that's the way i saw and to the chair's point earlier if in fact if let's say the price of 100 weights 19 bucks and we're not talking about a level playing field if for mine is really and if i did the math right 17 dollars and 24 cents when all the surrounding states are at 19 we're really behind the eight ball by a dollar 76 to begin with i think we need to do something here in this committee and i think most of the committee members agree what that may wind up with i don't know yet but i i think we're definitely going to take a look at work in that direction so yeah yeah uh bill i'd like to say one other thing in good testimony but i'd like to say one other thing uh the the attorney uh rick doir he said i think the bill drafted is certainly an improvement over current brawn law head and shoulders better so so that's so we got something that gives us an idea that we're headed enough in a positive direction yeah but you know like mr. college was saying the farmer and imagine that also said the farmer is presuming that if they're following the law and they're in compliance that it indemnifies the farmer but i'm hoping that's the case but is it not necessarily so that's the question yeah you can't you can't protect everybody from everything you know some states do have attorney class provisions built in so that the farmer is awarded attorney cost if if the litigation is broad and then the suit is dispensed from college why yeah man this question Amanda thank you i just wanted to weigh in on the example that was proposed earlier about the neighbor and the farmer changing from strawberries to dairy and i would just say that in most towns and certainly with the regional planning our land is designated for certain practices and certainly when it's land trusted land so if the strawberry farmer wasn't able to afford a living growing strawberries and he wanted to look to a different type of agriculture and it fell in the realm of the regulatory of the town and the county and and you know went through those adequate measures then i would afford the the argument that um they should be protected and i would say the same thing is happening in the housing development how many houses were one family homes that are now being developed into apartments or condos or townhomes there's a field a neighbor you know was was next to a beautiful field that all of a sudden that developed not all of a sudden there's there's you know act 250 and different things but yet this is where they located to and now it's changed to a townhomes i think that that's society and that society drives the changes in our environment and for us to have the makeup we have ag land designated either by you know town zoning or regulatory you know county planning or investment in land trust really needs to be protected to be used as ag and if you can't make a living growing strawberries i'm just using the example and you need to switch the type of agriculture that you do i think that that affords uh the vermont it offers some protection and it keeps our lands open as a working landscape thank you thanks thanks amanda um well um we've we've got a rosie uh and people are coming yet uh quarter the quarter we love it so uh lord did you add or something you want just a couple things i do you're trying to get moving um just a couple things real quick just want to make sure you're aware of um in the r.a.p.s the way that we operate um we don't have nuisance protections within them per se so like in the large farm rules we have direct authority to regulate nuisance so odor flies noise traffic and other pests but in the r.a.p.s we do not specifically have like this you will regulate these these nuisance but we regulate farming activities right and just to share with you some of the complaints and types of things that i've been getting over at least the last year i've been getting them for years but um generally what i hear is well one people who are frustrated and call us because they're seeing something like an example would be manure trucks going back and forth and there there's a billion of them and how could this be and they must be taking it somewhere and it must be a flood of manure wherever it's going when in reality you know we we we investigate we do the work and they're moving it from one manure pit to another manure pit so that they can maybe do digestion in one place and do the energy and all the climate goals that everybody has but then also make sure they meet the nutrient management goals so um that doesn't satisfy some of those people they don't understand that it doesn't work for them and but we say that that's how that is right um the other area is cannons and sounds that's one area that people get very frustrated about a lot of times it's blueberry crops where people are shooting off cannons to get birds away so they don't eat their crops um that one comes up about every three years i would say um and it really bothers people because it's a very intense um regiment of cannons going off very loudly but i have personally found it very interesting that in all these cases that i've had people complain the actual farmer lives there too so um they were all they're both dealing with what's going on um so the last one i'll say that we've had a few this year um is livestock moving off the property and you know what is our role in terms of keeping those livestock on the property and we don't have a role in that space right we we can cost share for fencing potentially if there's a water quality issue but otherwise it's the farmer's responsibility to maintain those animals and keep them on their property um and then it becomes the potentially the life not the livestock sorry the health officer of the town or towns control or the police jurisdiction so um a lot of people think we have that role and responsibility to be able to deal with that but um we don't so i just wanted to explain some of the things that the rips don't cover necessarily but we're somehow tangentially involved manure on the road is another one that comes up quite a bit especially around at stop signs because the the stop and go um may have a release and then if we could control the climate then the mud on the road might slow down so anyways so yeah our jurisdiction over these nuisance things are specific in LFO authority but no other authority within the agency good to know thank you yeah thank you well um it's been a michael wish i haven't gotten to you to go through the uh draft and i i don't know what your schedule is uh for the rest of the week but um friday morning i'm scheduled but thursday tomorrow i am you know uh is that most of the morning uh it's as soon as they get off the floor until you know well we we uh we operate you know starting at nons and we've got that open right one yes so we could uh run through that with uh with michael and get um what he has uh down and that of course will be on zoom if any of you want to listen in and take part um you know your morning welcome uh linda can send uh a zoom like help to to everybody well didn't i still listen at least well yeah you listen but you can't say hey you guys you're going the wrong direction here with that so you know if you want to get on hey feel free because uh you know we're uh we're here to serve uh you people not just listen to ourselves so we appreciate the effort thank you yeah and talk to our gav ton that you know your crew and hills uh feel free to uh you know if you just email linda she can give you a link there just before i'm brave but i hear a lot of now is the more and more tractors traveling further equipment traveling further and further i hear a lot of people complain about um agricultural equipment on the roads oh yeah and you see big backups of traffic with and as they're moving equipment back and forth i know you guys move stuff from this small pillar to crass barrier um and as farmers get bigger there and they travel further and further field to get further to get to their fields and get to their crops and you know whether it's shit or whether it's um i can sit on room 15 and i can see traffic backed up at times half a mile or a mile everybody's in a hurry and everybody's in a hurry and they can't wait to pass and there's um i know last year there was um one incident in town an accident um passing tractors and i hear about that all the time now just a reminder in the last decade for sure maybe a little bit longer than that um we have pushed farmers to make more liquid right so water quality regulations mean total collection and that means you have to move it farther so you know the policies that we also set up are also driving some of that distance that farmers have to i'm not i'm not i'm just raising the issue and it isn't just manure it is um feed the whole line the feed when you know when they're planting in the spring or in the fall if you're um cutting corn and again it's all of the above no uh that's where that some of that dollar and seventy eight cents comes totally right i just but i keep piling on the regs and uh ways that we want people to operate it costs more money so it costs our farmers more so they have to go from a thirty two hundred gallons straighter to a seven thousand gallon spreader so that's bigger wider longer heavier but anyways um hopefully uh we'll uh we'll get something he's drafted up and rolling uh shortly uh so uh we're going to take a little bit of break rosy we'll be back in five minutes so so so we're back uh live and uh we want to call the committee back to order um we have uh rosy river uh with us from the department of ed and um we're going to get a little update maybe in regards to the universal school meals program that uh we uh over the last several years have spent quite a lot of time uh talking about and and finally uh getting uh the universal meals program set up last year um and uh it was set up for a one-year period uh and then we're going to get reviewed uh this session and try to get it some of us are trying to get it renewed um but uh we need to know you know how it worked and and uh how schools are managing their sign-ups and getting their people to fill out their disclosure forms and all all the uh knowledge that goes along with trying to get a bill reauthorized uh for this uh mixture so uh rosy we have three new people uh one brain you know uh Irene uh so we'll introduce ourselves and uh we'll go from there Brian Calvamore from the Rutland district by Reem Renter and then Norris which includes Fairfax and Franklin County Brian Campion Benneken County uh Rich Weston and William and Bobby Steyer from Orleans so uh welcome and good to see you so um thank you for the record um Rosie Kruger I'm the State Director of Child Nutrition Programs at the Agency of Education and I oversee a team of uh eight and a half folks who um helped me uh implement we're the the state agency that is responsible for implementing um all the federal child nutrition programs in the state of Vermont um and so um we uh conduct all the oversight of those programs and pass through the funding to schools um child cares nonprofit organizations around the state who are actually the ones um providing the meals uh to children um so um the Agency of Education has submitted the requested universal meals report um updating you on the implementation so far this year um so that's available on the reports section of the Legislature's website and then just yesterday we submitted the local foods incentive report as well um which you might be interested in you know that's not the the topic today but um just giving you a heads up that that has been submitted um and we've shared that with Linda as well um so I I didn't prepare extensive testimony today um I can kind of walk you through a little bit about what's in the report but I'm really happy to kind of follow your lead in terms of what pieces of of um information you're specifically interested in um so I can kind of start with telling you a little bit about what we've done to implement universal meals um this year and how it's gone so far um and then we can kind of go from there in terms of your questions yeah um so the Agency did a lot of work over the summer months to prepare um we uh maybe I should start for the new members um with kind of describing um how uh CEP and provision two which are the two federal options that we've used to provide universal meals um those are two options that have um the long existed schools have the option to offer universal meals that way um but they require local funding um and so that was kind of the the rug and um some schools in Vermont prior to COVID had been using those options to provide universal meals um but uh during COVID the federal government provided funding for all the schools to provide meals at no charge to all students um and so then coming out of that um those those federal waivers to allow that ended in June of 2022 um that's when we started implementing this one year um universal meals uh bill that the legislature passed last year um so that bill um provides federal funding to cover the cost of what we call the paid student share of meals so under the federal programs um we have three categories of meals free reduced and paid and the federal government reimburses those meals at a different rate for each category um as long as the meal meets the federal meal ad requirements so it has to have certain components to be considered a reimbursable meal um and so uh the free meals are reimbursed by the the feds at the free reimbursement rate um which is meant to really cover the cost of the meal um the reduced meals are covered by the feds at that free rate minus 40 cents per lunch and 30 cents per breakfast which is supposed to be covered by the student's family under the normal circumstances but in Vermont we have long paid for that at the state level um so those meals are still at no charge to those students but we're drawing down a little less federal reimbursement and then we have the paid meals um which still actually do draw down a little bit of federal funding those are still subsidized by the federal government um but those are um not fully you know it's it's just a little bit of federal funding about 40 cents per meal um and then the remainder normally comes from the household um and so what does a full meal cost uh is that very much it varies um so the the just generally right now about 450 um if you were to pay for that meal the the paid meals can't be subsidized by the free and reduced price meals so the federal government sets a minimum price for the paid meals and then the schools can charge more than that if they want um and again this is not happening in Vermont public schools this year because the state's paying that difference um so uh act 151 which is the universal meals bill last year um that provides for state funding for the difference between that free reimbursement rate and that paid reimbursement rate if the school operates either the community eligibility provision or provision two which are these two federal options that allow us to draw down the most federal funds um act 151 also requires that schools offer meals at no charge to all students this year so theoretically the school could choose to not operate one of those two options but then they'd be missing out on the state funding so all the the school's why is they chose to operate those options um and we're we're drawing down the most federal funding we could be um so um under the community eligibility provision um meals are reimbursed for um uh we we look at the number let's see let's go back to um how a child might qualify for free or reduced price meals um so uh if a household makes under 130 percent of the federal poverty level they can apply for free and reduced price meals uh for free meals via an application um showing their income if they uh make under 185 percent of the quality federal poverty level for their household size they can apply for reduced price meals via an application so that's the group that qualifies via applications and then there's this other group of students who could qualify for free meals via direct certification and that's when they participate in another means tested program such as three squares Vermont um and so um DCF kind of communicates to AOE every month the names of the children and households participating in three squares Vermont and reach up and we then push that information down to the schools they match those students and those families don't have to sit in an application so households may qualify for for meals in those variety of ways under the community eligibility provision we don't collect applications at all we just look at the number of kids who are directly certified for free meals and we multiply that by a multiplier of 1.6 um and that is the percent of meals that we're able to claim at the free reimbursement rate and then the remainder of those meals are claimed at the paid reimbursement rate and that's where that state funding is coming in for those CEP schools for schools operating provision two um you collect applications in the first year of a five-year cycle uh or sorry a four-year cycle um and in that first year you count who eats um and you claim based on the status of the kids who eat even though meals are served for free to all those students um but then uh in the subsequent years you're not counting which students are eating you're not collecting applications you're just applying those claiming percentages established in that first year to the total number of meals that were served is three squares a different um um poverty level than um um and the first two programs a hundred and eighty five percent um so three squares is under 130 percent i'm not actually sure if they're cut off is right now but it's it's below who who does all this uh checking the local school or so yeah so the the schools are the ones who are the determining officials who are determining whether or not a child is eligible for free and reduced price meals but the agency has an oversight role and so i mentioned we did a bunch of work this summer to implement universal meals our oversight role is that for um schools participating in the community eligibility provision we have to look at a sample of all their directly certified students and make sure that they actually correctly directly certified those students we did that over the summer months the other thing that we need to do is um schools can participate in the community eligibility provision based on either their own status as a building or we can combine them with other buildings in that school food authority which in vermont is the supervised union and if the average of those buildings um is if more than 40 percent of the students are directly certified for free meals um in all those buildings then all those buildings can participate in the community eligibility provision even if a single building there would not have met that cut off so we spent a lot of time this summer kind of mixing and matching to figure out um which schools within school food authorities should be grouped together in order to maximize the number of schools participating in cep so we got the 91 schools um which is uh more schools than previously have been participating in cep um and then the remainder 221 are participating in provision two so the agency's oversight role for provision two is that we have to um look at both the direct certification and the free and reduced meal applications for those schools that are in their first year of provision two to again make sure that they've done it correctly because in the subsequent years all their claiming percentages are going to be based on that base year um and that work has been more intensive than we expected um it's been time consuming for the schools to get us that information um and my team is still finishing up we've been working on it all fall and we're still finishing up a few of those reviews um and struggling with a few schools to get information from them i'm sure because they're very busy um but that's that's held that up so um but but we did all the cp work we're in process on the provision to work um schools are serving meals at no charge we've provided guidance over the summer months on how to do this um and uh the agency also did a big fill the form campaign this fall um really pushing households to return free and reduced meal applications if those were what was requested for the provision two schools or the household income form for those schools participating in cp now do you have to do that each year or is this one of the ones that will come for four years yeah so um cp and provision two both have these these cycles um so for provision two um you know i mentioned four-year cycle so in subsequent years we don't need to collect applications for the school meals programs but schools do still need individual student poverty data as a metric of student poverty for all their other educational programs and so one of the ways of collecting that data because we can't collect the free and reduced meal application at that time for those schools is to collect a household income form so that work if we need individual student poverty data has to continue on each year um if that's the metric that we're going to use yeah and the agency has been doing a lot of work over the last few years to figure out you know is this the correct metric to use is there an alternative available um and can speak more to that if that's something that you're interested in um so um we let's say we've done uh that that work um schools are offering meals at no charge um we have participation and claims data for the first two months of the school year up until the end of october schools have 60 days from the month end to submit that those claims information that claims information to us so we don't yet have information for the later months and we'll be watching that really closely um based on that information for the first couple months of the school year we are seeing an increase in participation um we for lunch uh this is in the report um but we've gone from about 50 percent of students participating daily to about 60 percent of students participating daily as of october so definitely an increase in participation so it's only 10 I don't know where by red 16 percent you've probably heard that from somebody who talked to me I was looking at some initial data for september um and kind of analyzing that and came up with 16 but now we've got better data well not just that it's leveled out it's it's it's more solid data that was kind of some preliminary stuff missing a couple of schools so get this right so we have 60 participation with 100 percent everybody cut meals are free to all students and on each day about 60 percent of students are eating and we we think that um that's up for that's up for 50 um so participation is one of the big factors in terms of how much universal meals will cost you know we you know jfo had done a range of estimates based on you know a lower level of participation or kind of staying at the same level as previously all the way up to 100 participation um and we knew the true number was going to fall somewhere in there but we weren't sure I want to caution you that I don't think september is necessarily it's not going to stay at 60 there's a couple of factors that we think could be suppressing participation right now um and I can go through those for you um one is that in these provision two schools um where they're having to count the actual students who are eating this year the the names of the students who are eating rather than just okay that's a reimbursable meal that's a reimbursable meal um that takes more time to count that and that is a just a base year problem the first year provision two um in those schools the students as they go through the line they have to enter either a pin number or swipe a card or somebody has to check their name off a paper roster or um you know type their name into a computer system because we need to record this actual student is eating because then somebody back in the office needs to figure out okay this student is a free eligible student or this student is a paid eligible student and that's what makes up the claim that goes to the state versus prior um in prior years when we were doing the the last couple years when we were doing universal meals under the USDA waivers it was just counting you know meal meal meal um and so that's taking more time to go through the line so um the lines are longer uh because participation is up and it takes each student more time to go through the line some schools have responded to that by moving uh school food service staff from the serving line or from the kitchen where they're preparing meals or serving meals to the point of sale um and so that's an attempt to bring those to make those lines shorter but that of course impacts the offerings available so we've heard from a couple of schools that they've had to eliminate you know to make your own sandwich bar which is really there's a staff person there who's helping you make the sandwich um or eliminate some of their scratch cooking culinary options um some entrees and that sort of thing so there's fewer offerings um so that could be um decreasing participation for sure and we have heard in some schools you know kids complaining about we really liked this option and we can't have that anymore in the other way that that may be decreasing participation is that um a typical school in Vermont um has a lunch period of 20 to 25 minutes and that includes the amount of time it takes to stand in line to get your meal so if you have other options which might be bringing a meal from home or just choosing not to eat you might use those options rather than spend time in line because you might want to you know obviously you might want to get to the table to eat quicker you might want to spend that time socializing going to recess um so that could really be decreasing participation among students who have other options. Students don't have like students don't have ID cards or their name on so first wiping well if they if every student had an ID card many many schools do what they have to do is at the end of the counter put your card in pull it out and then you're checked through so many schools do and many schools are using that kind of a system but that still just takes just a little bit more time than you know just checking off like tally marks which is basically what they were doing previously. So breakfast versus lunch how many kids participate in breakfast? Yeah I have those numbers on my report and let me there is a difference and and why um so breakfast is a little bit lower although we still saw increases in participation I want to give you the actual number so I'm just going to pull the report up for you. Sorry it's taking a minute. So we have definitely seen increases in participation in breakfast participation this year but it is lower than lunch you know obviously a lot of kids do get lunch at home sorry breakfast at home and so they may not be taking an additional breakfast at school so that probably explains most of it. Schools have done interesting things about offering meals in the classroom so that it's definitely available for any kid who needs it breakfast so breakfast after the bell grab and go breakfast you know having like bad breakfast like I was saying that can be taken to the classroom but it is lower and I assume that that's because some of those kids are getting that meal at home. Let me pull out the participation for you. So for breakfast prior to COVID we had a participation rate of 28.56% and as of October 2022 it was 38.63%. It's great so it's up to 10% and so is lunch yeah. So you know that was one big factor that we think might be suppressing participation at those provision two schools when schools are pulling workers off the line we mentioned that that might be impacting meal quality. In addition there are just big staffing shortages right now in the school meals programs and I'm hearing from lots of directors who are having to substitute in the kitchens these are the folks who normally would be doing the menu planning the training the ordering and so they're not as able to spend as much time doing that and so we don't have any hard data on this but it feels like meal quality might be a little bit lower this year because of those those staffing pressures. In addition those those programs are also facing supply chain issues still and that has meant a lot of weird substitutions and so we do see you know parents complaining or kids complaining that like well they serve this item with this other item and that didn't really make any sense and usually that's because of a substitution so that meal quality is just being still still being impacted. So those things could be reducing participation for sure for a lot of kids who have other options and then the last thing is probably attendance. We don't have attendance data yet for this school year but there were lots of respiratory diseases including COVID circulating this fall and you know anecdotally we've certainly heard about a lot more absences than usual because of illness. But your numbers are up though from 10 percent in both categories. Right so what I'm saying is that we expect that those numbers could increase further. We don't want you to do cost estimates you know for the next five years assuming a 60 percent participation rate. You could see you know after this base year provision two passes and we're back to having faster lines if schools are able to resolve some of these meal quality issues we could see participation increase further. So we'll be keeping a real close eye on what happens you know in the November and December claims to see it increase even from September to October. So we want to see if you know is that a trend or you know. Thank you Mr. Chair. So Rosie I guess I'm still trying to grapple with the numbers here. The plan was to use the federal money to provide breakfast and lunch for all students. If only 30 percent of those students are taking advantage of I think you said breakfast how did that affect in other words we put money aside that said okay if a hundred percent of the students eat breakfast and a hundred percent of the students eat lunch it'll cost this amount of money. Yeah. Since only 30 percent are taking advantage of our offer how did that affect what we're spending. So there was a range that JFO presented to you and the bottom end of the range was no change to participation and no change to the parents or the household returning the free and reduced meal application forms and I'm going to talk about that one in a second because that's another factor that we have data on now and the top end of the range was everybody participating and nobody returning free and reduced meal applications that top end is around thirty nine million dollars you all appropriated twenty seven or twenty eight sorry twenty nine million kind of guessing that we'd fall somewhere in the middle of the range. So there's not tens of millions of dollars on the table. The other piece of data we have at this point is we have the percent of households who returned free and reduced meal applications. So prior to covid about thirty eight percent of Vermont House or of students qualified for free and reduced price meals and that was partially household to qualify via direct certification and then partially household to qualified via applications. We weren't sure there's there's no incentive for households to return applications when meals are free so we weren't sure how that would be impacted. We did do a big campaign to try and get households to do that that was supported by hunger free Vermont and we found that there definitely was a decline in households returning applications but about three thousand families did continue to return applications or three thousand students continued to qualify via application. So that brought our free and reduced percentage statewide down to around thirty four percent and the exact numbers are in the report for you. So there wasn't definitely a decline from pre covid when we were charging for meals but we did still have some some students qualifying the application and then of course all of those students who qualified via direct certification that wasn't impacted at all they continued to qualify that way. So we we can take those numbers and say that around sixty five percent of students don't qualify for free and reduced price meals and we can apply that this year and say that if students ate according to like in in direct proportion to the eligibility so if if we don't have more paid students eating proportionally to free and reduced price students we can apply that to our participation rates as of October and if participation doesn't change we'd be spending something like twenty seven million dollars to to fund the state portion of universal meals and the exact math is in in that report for you. So we're going to keep watching that really closely because obviously participation could increase and there could potentially be you know students not eating exactly in proportion to their categories. We would expect to see more free and reduced eligible students eating than paid students and so hopefully that that will play out and that won't impact the the price and increase the cost but we're going to be watching that number really closely and we'll we'll let you know should it exceed or look like it's on track to exceed that appropriate amount. So are the school districts are you working with the supervisory unions or individuals town school districts is that all? We work with the supervisory union level so there was some way to to reward them or punish them for not doing so yeah we really are limited by any the federal programs their requirement is that the meal application is voluntary so we've really tried to support the districts in collecting those applications and our fill the form campaign gave them language to to send out to household posters social media and hunger free Vermont supported a lot of that work with doing some marketing directly to household as well but we can't require that households submit the free and reduced meal application that's that's not allowed so so we had everybody participate breakfast and lunch that's 39 everybody participating in no household returning applications so those are the two factors top level is 39 so but we have what we know of 60 percent of the people participating in in lunch we have some place just under 40 doing breakfast so even with the 29 that we had because if in my brain 29 is probably about 75 participation across the state would eat that up we're going to have money left over from that number of the 20 we we appropriate 20 29 29 so that's 70 so there should be money left over from that and we're what we're looking at if the numbers hold true even if we were at the 60 level across all of it that's about 23 million I'm not sure I follow where the 23 million well I'm if we're at the 60 level and 60 of everybody did breakfast and lunch that so if we had current participation 60 percent of breakfast sorry 60 percent participating in lunch and 38 percent for today well I just will bump the breakfast when I when I did the math to get to 27 million that was based on those October participation rates and based on the free and reduced meal application return rate the free order percentage that we had this fall and so that gets us to about my question is how do you get to the 27 yeah so the other factor that changed this year was the free and reduced reimbursement with a pre-reduced and paid reimbursements from the federal government those increased as of July 1st so last year when all that math was done that was based on a that the difference between the paid reimbursement rate and the free reimbursement rate for lunch was $3.18 and this year because those numbers updated as of July 1st and the federal level that difference was $3.56 so when you take that change as well you apply those new it's a new per meal cost for the state we're calling it the universal meal supplement when you take that and you multiply that you take the overall number of students who are enrolled in school meals programs so it's about 84,000 students multiply that by the 60 participation rate and that for lunch and the 38 participation rate for breakfast and then you multiply that by 65% of those students would qualify for paid meals and then you multiply that by 318 for sorry 356 for the the universal meal instead of the lower instead of the lower one and then you do the same thing for breakfast except use the breakfast participation rate and use the breakfast per meal reimbursement which I want to say is a dollar 57 but I can it's an important I can pull it up that's what gets you about $27 million oh and sometimes times 175 I hear what you're doing I still can't get to the 27 in my head I probably need to see it yeah we can I don't remember I don't think I put it in a footnote in the report but I can certainly do it out because I'm going if the all-in is 40 million yeah I you know I so that all in a 40 million assumed that prior year reimbursement it it assumed the lower reimbursement and and we're benefiting from a higher reimbursement from the beds so no we're not we're it's costing us more money oh it's costing yeah that's why I need to see it the other issue on the school lunch program beyond most schools if you have a librarian you have a librarian a librarian the salary of the librarian goes into the school budget if you have an athletic program and you have pay coaches the coaches pay goes into the school budget but for some reason we have a hot lunch program the salaries of those hot lunch people come out of the cost of the lunch program not it doesn't go to the general fund of the school budget and if we wanted to bring the overall cost down of what children are actually eating you know school districts could because they're going to offer insurance programs and retirement programs and and all these good things to the hot lunch staff um and the kids are going to be paying the bill or or multiple years and if if the school district wants offer these bannies to their staff well maybe they should get some skin in the game and and move those people to the general fund rather than having the children so I can speak to that a little bit um the the school meals programs are an enterprise account and so they're all the income that comes in from the reimbursements or from any paid meals a la carte sales um uh you know sales to teachers whatever um all of that goes into the enterprise account and um it's generally expected that that account breaks even it can't make a profit um but that it would break even it often doesn't in which case it is it has to be made whole by the general fund um so school meal meal programs are trying to you know budget according to the reimbursements that they're they're making and and make it break even so that they don't have to contribute from the general fund um we did a survey this year as part of the financial report this will submit to us to find out um average salary um for the school food service director um what the hourly rate was for the lowest paid um school food service employee and what benefits are offered if any um so we do have that data we do have that um and that's um you know that that could be certainly something that's contributing to the the work for a shortage in these programs um the average the highest paid uh people in this camp no no um so the average um starting hourly wage um like when I say that the median the most common um was $15 an hour um and the average was closer to $16 an hour um but there were a couple of school districts where um that hourly wage was low enough as of June of this past year that they were going to increase it in order to meet the state's minimum um minimum wage requirements this year so um you know when you compare that to you know what folks can make working um in the fast food restaurant um that's that's similar wages or lower um and um it's certainly a challenging job so you know it would be reasonable to expect that that might be um causing some of the difficulties in hiring yeah uh I think the staff would get used better if they were paid through the general fund uh is a non-certified employee uh you know the bus drivers and custodians and all those people uh you know most school districts have to pay them pretty well to to get them to come to work and but anyway just my thinking to get the cost of the meals down where you know it is covering the cost of the meal um would be less money but just something to think about um what else would you all like to know about how university meals is going this year there's like a bunch of stuff in the report yeah I just want to add one thing that uh so the local food's initial incentive grant so it looks like the summary says a total of 775 roughly 775,000 was put into the local economy due to food purchasing is that I mean on the surface that seems like a seems like a good number but I I don't know what you're comparing it to not no not that I have nothing to compare it to so that's why I'm looking is it uh you think this will grow I mean our hope of course is to you know gosh it'd be incredible you know we heard yesterday that's from the local flower that's right so yeah that's a that seems to me like a good number but you know we're within yesterday we talked about how far I'm to play 10 years ago I mean all this stuff was just starting and now it's huge be exciting to see this which I think is our hope this is just starting in 10 years it's going to be huge your mom could be these days where then food goes from farms right to the kids I'm just trying to get a sense of you know your impressions on whether or not there's anything we need to do to kind of get this to grow faster and better and help our farmers you know that predictability yeah so the the way that the local foods incentive is structured is that there are two levels of grant there's the base year grant which is a set of fairly easy requirements for schools to meet they're eligible for that grant one time one year and so this is the second year of the grant so we have a bunch of folks who received that already and moved on to the subsequent year grants and the subsequent year grants are much more difficult to receive and that's really attempting to change behavior and so in the subsequent year grants you have to actually prove that you have purchased at least 15 percent of your food locally to get the the 15 cents per plate incentive but I have to say that's a lot if you're buying 15% locally that's a really good start I mean that's a chunk of food so we saw you know in the first year lots of schools applying for the base year this year all of those schools were then eligible to apply for the subsequent year a smaller number did I want to say it's eight but it is in the report okay actually and these are school food authorities not yeah individual school buildings actually applied and I want to say six of them qualified so there were several that applied that didn't actually qualify we have yet to audit those ones who who said that they you know they reported to us that they met the threshold so it's possible that some of those folks will be kicked out of the program when we do the audit we hope not not to even figure out how to close yeah well we can't I know close is not enough I know okay they're working hard for it yes yeah and we would expect that those in fact we did hear from a couple of those folks who um attempted to qualify this year and didn't that they plan to to keep trying next year but I think there's some products that are not uh eligible to yeah so you will end in the fifties you all made some decisions about what you wanted to qualify and so you specifically excluded milk so milk does not count um towards the local purchasing incentive and that was a decision that came to so 15 percent and is meat and veggies and fruit and bread products and bread products not sugar and yeah well that was very sorry go ahead yeah no I'm just sitting here trying to think um did you have an idea ahead of time Rosie like project you about how many students would take advantage of both breakfast and lunch in other words you knew at one point that we were at whatever percent it was at 50 and then we went to 60 with the lunch and and the reason I ask is at some point the people in the kitchen must have had to know how much food to prepare if there's a hundred percent of the kids coming through we need a whole lot of food and if they didn't then obviously it's not a good idea to run out of food either so how did that work and if they made more than they gave out where did all that extra food wind up so it's always a tricky thing for the the food service programs to figure out you know you never know from day to day and different entrees are more popular than others and so you're always trying to figure it out so the 60 percent is somewhat in line with some limited data that there is available from schools that had previously been offering universal meals prior to COVID so that that's where some of those initial cost estimates why we were kind of comfortable with some of those ideas about you know we'll pick a number in the middle but so that that's that kind of comes from or we could have expected that based on some of that earlier data but the schools really you know the first few days they're kind of shooting high and they have some backup plans in terms of what you know what will they serve if they're running out and you know you've got you try to serve a variety of things you've got some options and some schools do ask for pre-orders so and you know obviously if a student shows up without a meal they would they find something for them but that pre-ordering allows them to kind of guess but yeah it's it's a tough part of the job to figure out what they're going to do um and then they're pretty adept at using leftovers um in the programs so you know if you're serving lasagna one day you may serve those additional servings of lasagna the next day has an additional option on the you know for the entree the kids can choose between the chicken sandwich and the lasagna um on the second day that sort of thing I didn't know if food shelves may out better because we so the the programs are allowed to donate to a non-profit organization 501c3 non-profit if they have excess food um and some some do that they're not I wouldn't say that that's made a huge that there's been a huge change in that this year um because they they've always had to plan and guess um you know if if there's a lot of sickness or a special event happening where you know the sixth grade class is gone that's going to impact your numbers there's always stuff like that going on so um it sounds like the numbers are up the the cost is down or so far we have I think you'll be okay on the cost I think that's the message that I want you to take is is you you didn't under appropriate I wouldn't expect like I don't start planning to spend the the difference between the 29 and 27 million we want to see how participation is going to go we want to get some more data for the next few months and see how it's going certainly if things turn around and participation shoots up then we may be in a position where we would need additional funds so um we just want to keep a close eye on it I will I do want to give you some information about going forward some things that could impact the cost for universal meals if you choose to extend it lower or raise it it's good news depending on which way whether we want to hear so Vermont has been approved to participate in the Medicaid direct certification pilot starting in July of this year and that pilot is a USDA pilot that will allow us to directly certify students for both free meals and reduced price meals depending on whether their households if their families participate in Medicaid and fall into those income thresholds in Medicaid so we've been working with the Department of Vermont Health Access to apply for that pilot and figure out how we're going to get that data and send it to schools the we haven't started doing actual matches yet so this is very preliminary but based on the number of students ages five to 18 that they have in those ranges in those households under 130 percent under 185 percent we think we may be able to basically replace all of those students who used to apply via applications and so that we may end up with a back at a statewide free and reduced percentage around 38 percent and all those students would be directly certified for free meal or for free or reduced price meals and the ones who are directly certified for reduced price sorry for free meals those would count for CEP so those would increase we talked about the direct certification percentage multiplied by 1.6 and that that's what gets you to the percent of meals that you can qualify so yeah you're asking if you're going to do what already exists is there for example because diva does eligibility so before for example um Dr. Dinosaur which goes up to 300 percent of poverty um do they have the ability to go to in an easy way if you could make it work for the lower percentage could they make it work for a higher percentage they have the ability to pull out um a hundred like to pull out who is under 130 and who is under 185 and that's what's allowing us to do this pilot if we didn't have that data so if they're already doing that eligibility though for say like Dr. Dinosaur um which is 300 percent you think they could do that I don't I can't speak to deep for diva so it sounds reasonable to me but I can't speak for what their capability is but that that could generate more more money from the feds and less money from us if they yeah so that's that's the exciting thing is that um you know previously we've had about 18 000 students in the state who were directly certified for free meals using those other sources um I put the numbers in the report but I want to say that it was 24 000 I we should go back and look at the report for sure but it's a significant um a significantly higher number of students who would be directly certified for free meals specifically um and then we take that and multiply it by 1.6 um and all of those meals get reimbursed at the free reimbursement rate by the feds meaning that the state would not need to to pay the universal meal supplement for those meals in addition USDA has just given notice that um they're going to be issuing a proposed rule in July of this year um that would presumably go into effect in school year 24 25 that would um lower the threshold for participating in CEP from 40 percent of your students being directly certified to some lower number and we don't know what that number will be until we see the proposed rule um but that is something that USDA actually has authority to do um and that will make um potentially more of our schools eligible for CEP um and we might be able to draw down more federal funds that way so did you say uh 16 percent to 24 percent no let me let me get back in our report and give you actual numbers I don't have them off the top of my head I know it's 18 000 Vermont students who were previously directly certified well she's doing it I'm just trying to think of you know the young farmer that was here from East Columbia he's got this great website can buy all sorts of things you know I don't know if you're the school it'd be great to just get on and buy or pick it up you know there's certain things that he could supply looks like like that so how do you help them all kind of make that connection because I think just watching what happened with farm per plate I think that could happen in our schools easily um I can I can speak to that in a second um so it's it we we estimate with Diva's preliminary numbers that about 28 000 students would be directly certified for free meals once we have 28 yeah so it's a pop going from 18 000 to 28 000 would really that's huge that's huge yeah that's 50 percent that's more than 50 percent and again we haven't started doing the actual matches yet but you know but this is very preliminary data showing that this is is really promising so what's the allowable amount for the feds to bear what do they pay the 450 or so they would pay the the full free reimbursement rate we pull those numbers up for you wow seems like the full reimbursement rate is more than the full pay student pays I'm not sure but it seems like I remember that from my school board days if you have a free student yeah totally free yeah you get more money from that particular lunch than you do from Johnny that has to pay you're not supposed to um so there are again there are those federal rules that require that um those free and reduced meals don't subsidize oops sorry I'm trying to do two things at once here but didn't you say at the beginning of this that the students that are paying are not always paying the full price um when we're talking about reduced price students well when you started your conversation today that the students that pay full full vote they I thought you said oh the federal government does subsidize those meals yeah yeah you're right so let me give you the reimbursement rates for this year built right into what you said so the free meal this year the reimbursement rate is four dollars and forty one cents um and the paid reimbursement rate this year is higher than I told you it's eighty five cents so then it's the difference between those two that gets you what the universal meal supplement is that the state is four forty one versus thirty one four forty one versus eighty five cents so the difference between those two this year is three dollars and fifty six cents and that's what the feds are paying no that's what the state is paying so um yeah so it's very important to collect that federal money as much as you can get yes yeah I mean we're still paying the bill the taxpayers I guess and maybe they'll add it to those trillions that they're going to raise it that way so nobody's paying we're just paying the interest so senator campan you were mentioning you know getting more local purchasing um and one of you know that was obviously the goal of the local foods incentive um and foods purchases from that that farmer would count towards this um but um one of the big hurdles for schools is that because these are federally funded programs they have to follow federal procurement requirements so it's not just a matter you know I know about this farmer I'm going to buy from them you actually have to check prices in multiple places um and so that additional paperwork can sometimes be prohibitive and we've done a lot of training to try and help schools with that um there are organizations out there that try to help schools with that and try to make it easier um and a lot you know the the various pharmaceutical organizations have really that's where they're focused um is not just making those connections but making sure that it is easy to procure that food oh it makes sense for uh this I don't know should there be a sort of a designated person just to help with that kind of stuff I mean it might sound silly but gosh it's just uh I get it people are so pressured and and I just think it's such a win-win when you get kids you know eating local you look at I'm guessing I'm guessing health rates are better diets you know weights down can't you know all these things are reduced I don't know that that's sort of a preventive thing that you know the state had somebody that just worked on this I don't know um I had so in as part of the bill that created the local foods incentive you gave child nutrition programs an additional position okay that person is responsible for running the local foods incentive grant program yeah provide some technical assistance it doesn't do the procurement for them for sure like that would be but they've got somebody on the other side but but they're there and then the agency of agriculture does also have somebody who works on farm to school programs um as well so there is some support at the state level um maybe not as much as you're envisioning um and there are you know they're creative ideas about could the state procure the product or that sort of thing but if that can get that's that's difficult because trying to do that on a statewide level you're potentially missing out on the little little folks but I sort of had in mind that we started talking about is farmers taking their veggies to the food hubs and then the school lunch program would get have it delivered through the food hubs to the to the different schools on a regular basis and I should think that that being able to buy it that way would be a lot different than buying it directly the hot lunch business person buying it from farmer a or farmer b or c they would call the food hub or the food hub would call them how many uh you know carrots or how much lettuce or whatever do you need you know somebody would take it whoever takes care of the ordering would make own call to the food hub and that's that's something that does happen um in some areas so food connects in southern Vermont they operate um basically a a vending program where the schools can go in and purchase from them um and then they aggregate from a number of farms and Green Mountain Farmers Farm yeah Green Mountain Farmers School is doing a similar thing as well um in northern Vermont um but again those are considered to be one vendor um and so they have to competitively procure and make sure that it's not well they have to check prices in multiple places and and that sort of thing um so um it's it's can be done for sure um it's a little it's it's some amount of additional work and so when you're talking about programs where that director this year instead of doing that procurement work is subbing in the kitchen or on the line that work can't happen when they're doing that um and so that's one of the challenges but certainly um those folks who um did get that second year local foods incentive grant this year um those folks are doing that they're they're going out of their way to make sure that they can purchase local foods in order to get that incentive so in an overall basis how how do you feel the program went uh you know has it been working poorly well uh what could what might be some other things i mean you told us some things that we need to pay attention to and maybe address how's it gone in your mind overall universal meals or local foods incentive universal meals um so the feedback from the schools and from households has been overwhelmingly positive you know folks are really happy to have this option um and in talking to my colleagues in other states but so they're they're a handful of other states that have done this um along with vermont and are also providing universal meals this year and then um the remaining states uh have gone back to charging for meals and they're reporting some extreme challenges in getting households to return applications or to pay bills um so you know it's it's great that we're not in that situation this year and having those difficulties um it was more challenging than i expected to do the provision to base year audits um that took us a longer time than expected and one concern i have next year is that if we have all these great new Medicaid direct cert numbers we're going to want all our schools to start new base years of provision to um or uh new cp cycles in order to take advantage of those numbers and so that's going to be an increased need of staff on my team next fall to do that and then in summer of 2024 um to do the new cp base years um and doing that will allow us to draw down more federal funding but it's it's a lot of additional work on my team um and this year we have had to push off a bunch of our federally required administrative reviews to next year in order to get all that work done so we got a waiver from USDA to allow us to do that but at some point we can't you know it's been a long time since yeah um so i am concerned about that and just trying to balance all that work but if we if we go to that from 18 to 20 what 20 20 8 thousand i mean that's a tremendous amount of money i would think so there should be well there'd be more work involved so of course you need a little more labor involved to manage it so um so so that's one concern i've got for next year um there i think the the biggest complaints i heard were from independent schools um and the way that you handled independent schools in act 151 is that you provided funding for um if they were state approved independent school and i should say independent schools are allowed to participate in the national school lunch program as long as they're either state approved or state recognized and or not for profit so we do have about 20 independent schools that do participate in the programs generally some of those um we're you know serving high need students prior to covid um and have you know long been doing cep um but then some of those are like you know the academies and those sorts of schools um so the way that you set up funding for independent schools was that if the school was state approved and they offered universal meals to all of their students the state pays the universal meal supplement for the publicly funded students attending that school so that required some changes to our claiming system in order to be able to make that all work um so we spent about $18,000 not just for the independent school side of things but to make the universal meal supplement work in our online claiming system um and so those independent schools when they report their claim each month to us they report um the number of public pay publicly funded students um uh the number of meals eaten by those students and then the number of non-publicly funded students um they get the federal funds for the non-publicly funded students but then they only get the state universal meal supplement for the publicly funded students um those schools um we heard some some complaints from uh independent schools that did not have a lot of publicly funded students um just feeling that it was not fair and we also heard some concerns from schools that were not state approved that are state recognized um feeling concerned that they weren't eligible for those funds I also had a kind of a logistical question which is um when we're doing CEP or um uh the subsequent years of provision two we're not actually claiming meals based on the the actual student who ate it's all percentage and so um we couldn't figure out you know is this this particular student publicly funded or not and should they get um reimbursement for that so what we came up with and I'd love some legislative direction about whether this is an appropriate um whether this is how you'd like us to handle this going forward is we have those schools um who were in that situation report the number of publicly funded students compared to their total enrollment and we use that to calculate a percentage and then we applied that percentage to their paid student percentage um and that's how we figured out how much to fund them um it seems like a good solution but it wasn't you know exactly what you asked us to do in terms of funding exactly those meals because there's just no way to figure out exactly who is eating those meals sounds like a pretty fair way of doing it in a quick way I mean I think the education committee will probably yeah dig into it a little bit so yeah those were some some general thoughts about um how you might consider that going forward and then just to keep in mind um for your cost estimates going forward that USD updates those meal reimbursement rates every July um and one of the reasons that um that the that we're uh state funding is costing so much this year is because we didn't expect the reimbursement rate to be as high um and the difference between those two reimbursement rates to be as high um we based the estimates on last year's reimbursement rates so that's just something to kind of keep in mind when you're appropriating knowing that that number that per meal reimbursement is likely to grow every year um and just to keep that in mind the way you structured it it allows for the funding to be paid out um but uh you just wouldn't want to to make an estimate based on um assuming that that will never grow well um other questions for rosy thank you thanks for everything yeah yeah great work it was very very important to solve I guess we've got some work ahead it would be helpful if I got some of these numbers sure yeah I'm happy to write this up for you yeah and and obviously you know that's that's that's my math and you definitely want to bring jfo in and ask them to check it um but I'm happy to provide that to you yeah every day yeah so if there are no um no further questions uh thank you very much and we'll adjourn our meeting