 Ag Senate Ag Committee hearing. This morning to start off with we've got COVID-19 ag related issues relating to migrant farm workers and we've got a few folks with us to testify. I think I don't know if you folks have talked at all to how you how you want to lead off and and fill in but I guess I've got Dan Baker down and I don't, is Dan with us yet? I am here. Yeah I had you down first Dan and so if you if you wanted to want to lead off we'll go down the list as it's put together. Sure absolutely I think Linda has my power but I got a little PowerPoint slide here. Yep hang on. All right I just want to say thank you for the committee thank you to the committee for inviting me and I really appreciate this opportunity to speak with you and go to the next slide. So what I'm going to just kind of show you today is pieces from three different broad areas that I do research on every year since between 2010 to this year 2020. I do public opinion polling through the Vermonter poll asking questions about dairy labor and kind of tracking trends on that. I've done dairy farm worker surveys in 2010 and 2016 on on migrant stress in particular and then I've done I do dairy farm farmer surveys 2010 and I did one in 2018. So none of these obviously were focused on coronavirus specifically so I pulled from these and I just want to share some some findings that I think may be of interest and helpful to the committee. Okay thank you. So I just feel it's important to put this up there because a lot of times when people when we when we have a discussion about Latino farm workers or migrant farm workers there's there's some voices that represent that these workers are taking away jobs from from Vermont from Vermont workers and I wanted to show you this slide because consistently over the years we found that the majority of Vermonters do not agree that undocumented farm workers or migrant farm workers are taking jobs away from Vermont workers and that the trend has been increasing people have been moving to feel even more strongly that there there's there is not competition from migrant workers for U.S. jobs. If you add disagree and strongly disagree about 75 percent of respondents do not feel that there's any that these migrant workers are taking away jobs and this is a representative statewide sample. All right I wanted to show you this in this slide so this is from farmer surveys in 2010 in 2018. I know that this is not anything the committee is not aware of but I just wanted to show some data that we have in Vermont as we do have in Darier across the United States chronic labor shortage of domestic U.S. workers that want to work on farms and that short that shortfall is being made up with migrant workers. The shortage of U.S. workers has gotten worse and when we when we surveyed 71 farms in 2018 we did find that of those 71 farms the majority of non-family workers were Latino migrant dairy workers. The little table at the top as I just wanted to show you kind of where that sample comes from you know there is a little over representation of the larger and medium-sized farms they tend to hire more more more employees in general and and so I just wanted to give you an idea this is not every single dairy farm in the state of Vermont we only surveyed farms that employee workers and there is a little bit of a trend towards larger and then I'll just add here that overwhelmingly the migrant dairy workers are milking that's their kind of that is their main job milking moving cows feeding and that'll come back later okay please just kind of an overview kind of what is the experience of dairy farmers with this labor force the migrant labor force it's very good actually a little bit better a little bit better than kind of U.S. workers but I would say really comparable but over overall farmers are happy with the U.S. workers and they're happy with their migrant migrant workers and I think very much appreciate this this workforce please next slide so we did two studies of Latino migrant dairy dairy workers stress and these two tables here are kind of showing the results just that I think we had we surveyed about 40 variables so I just selected the top 10 here I want to just talk about a couple of interesting things and this is pretty much what I'm going to talk about for the rest of the of the time here the first thing I want to want to just note is that in both surveys the rankings were very very similar and the kind of the largest kind of section is really concerns about issues stress related to migration either the either the travel worry about deportation those those stressors that may seem obvious to us here in Vermont but relative to other studies that have used the same scale we're actually quite different there our workers here are much more vulnerable much more exposed or represent express that they feel more vulnerable than other studies the other things two things I want to point out are things is that stress around language is very significant issues of isolation are consistently in the top 10 and then the thing that's highlighted there is the concern about being injured working on a dairy farm that is kind of an unusual aspect of kind of what we're finding up here in Vermont and I want to talk about that a little bit more next slide please are you going to come back to that Dan I am it's actually I'm definitely coming back to that yes and I'm just trying to move I think you've got a lot of people to speak this morning so I don't want to I'm happy to answer any questions at any time but I just want to make sure I'm not taking up too much of the committee's time we have an hour for you know an hour for this issue so okay senator star you know like I said I'm happy at any time to take questions well I I was wondering back you know earlier in your show and your slide presentation you said most of these farmers are working milking yet most of the dairy farmers absolutely that was there and as well most of these farms I would hope have milking parlors or some type of automated system and so when you said their biggest one of the biggest concerns they have are seven or eight somewhere's in there about getting hurt at work yes if if you drill deeper into that to find out what kind of injuries they were actually getting I did thank you very much we did actually inquire about whether it was tie stall or parlor I don't have that data with me right here but the but we also asked to answer your specific question about what types of injuries they were experiencing yeah and overwhelmingly issues related to moving cows and being injured by cows and that is and that is consistent with other studies around the United States in terms of injuries to dairy workers and we that question when we asked it we asked it as an open-ended question so people could say whatever they wanted in turn in their response to what the type of injury was and it was kind of crushing you know being pushed being shoved having back injuries have all related to working with large animals yeah that's uh I think that's very accurate even amongst our own small farmers they they do get hurt sometimes when they move animals that's for sure dairy cows are big yeah and yeah yeah uh Linda I guess we can scroll down a little bit um language is is a is a perennial problem I think it has gotten better between 2010 and 2018 uh the situation has improved it hasn't improved that much in terms of dairy farmers knowing Spanish um and I apologize I looked here the the the uh the the legend on the vertical axis is cut off what we do so we see improvements in us language skills of migrant workers so they are learning more English uh that's in the middle that's the first language skill that's cut off um but we still find in the 2019 workers survey um that 82 percent of the migrant workers we interviewed said that their farm management does not speak Spanish and most farms today depend on professional translators so between 2010 and 2020 we now see many more uh farm service agencies or or nutritionists vets um grain companies that provide translation kind of along with uh their as kind of part of their product package please see senator Pearson yeah is that national data or Vermont data this is Vermont data this is Vermont data and in 2010 we were surprised to see you know hand signals being like a a prominent way of communication in 2018 it continues to be a significant way they communicate what is uh new and I think where a lot of farmers are depending right now and workers is cell phone translation the thing about it is that for more complex or kind of unique or unusual situations uh that you know hand signals and cell phones aren't going to work that well and we're we kind of there are reports from the field totally anecdotal um but that uh it's getting you know at this moment of social isolation it's a bit more difficult to access that professional translator who's not coming to the farm so people are doing um kind of phone translations I did hear just to give you an illustration of that um kind of several examples of what farms right now that are dumping milk and both the farmer and the farm workers were really concerned about the lack of communication because when a farm is typically dumping milk it means somebody's screwed up you know back in the work and that milk's contaminated and workers have been very concerned that it's you know that that that somebody one of them did something wrong and farmers have wanted to explain to workers uh that that's actually not the case that they're dumping milk because they can't um send ship that milk so that's just an illustration of kind of some of the subtleties and the issues with complex and unique situations please Linda I put this up here because obviously with coronavirus and and social distancing housing density is uh extremely important um and so in 2019 uh from the workers survey we had an average of about a little over four per person people per house per four this is uh Latino dairy farm workers uh this is from all of this is Vermont data um that the the the mean the average is 4.2 people per house but you've got some houses that have significantly more and some that have significantly less and uh right now we haven't I'm not aware of any confirmed cases of coronavirus on dairy farms I've heard a couple of issues but if this did move to dairy farms you could have a real problem with um spreading that disease in these uh in these houses and the options are are quite limited please next day on that on that particular issue housing was the question asked about the quality of that housing we did in how do you know are you going to come to a slide on how that how that was answered um I did not include that in this presentation um but I do know the answer uh in in general terms overall amongst all the farm workers we surveyed stress amongst housing as an average was pretty low relative to other issues so they they feel good about or fair about good to well this is I just want I yeah this is a uh I want to be careful here and and be clear the average farm worker has low stress about housing however for farm workers that are stressed about housing we had about a 10 or 11 response that were extremely stressed and so and so we're high yeah so whereas most most farm housing is adequate and causes relatively little stress for those farm workers who are stressed and are are in substandard housing they can be extremely stressed so it's not the majority by any means but it is a a significant number um that have that issue and so I think it's important not to lose that in the average but also not to characterize the majority of farm housing is being in that situation yeah thank you and you said at a start I would be happy when the committee has time to share more data I have quite a bit but I tried to boil it down to what I thought was most important to share today in terms of food access this is another situation where um you know it's uh there's some subtleties here so a couple of things in terms of how farm workers got kind of got groceries prior to coronavirus the majority of farmers provide transportation uh for shopping and groceries to farm workers that's one of their benefits they will either drive the workers to the store themselves or somebody from the farm will take the shopping list and and and buy the food but the other the other kind of main group are a whole there's a whole network of independent mobile food vendors who travel to the farm and the thing about these food vendors is it gives uh they really provide two important um kind of pieces to this puzzle for one of course they allow the workers themselves to be there and look at the goods and and kind of choose what they want to buy but really importantly they sell foods that uh are really are extremely are highly valued by those workers and if if you're if we're not thinking about it it can sound like a small thing but it's not something like tortillas and the high quality tortillas is a major part of pretty much every meal of these farm workers and mostly young guys you can't get the quantity or the quality of those of that type of tortilla here in Vermont when we now see uh those independent food vendors shut down at the moment that really is actually increasing stress significantly amongst workers and I've got stories from workers and from farmers about how they're working to deal with that issue but there is uh anecdotal uh evidence of increased stress not necessarily at least I don't have any measure and maybe uh Julia DuCette may have better information on this I don't have any evidence of increased hunger at the moment but I there is uh some signs point to increased stress if farms go out of business and those workers lose their jobs that could be a very that could change that quite rapidly at this moment what I'm hearing is that mostly uh farms are are cutting back hours okay uh next slide please I had a question oh sorry yep sir um yes I can understand about the independent mobile food vendors but I was not aware oops lost the paycheck sorry I was not aware that the farmer was restricted from taking either a list of grocery items to the store or in fact bringing the workers to the store is that true no I don't think I didn't mean to say that I think that those farmers are experiencing the same struggles that we're that we all are experiencing you know in that less frequent less frequent trips to the store um really and kind of full stop less frequent strips trips to the store the issue is that when you go to the grocery store uh not only is it less frequent a less frequent trip but at the grocery store those foods are they're more than comfort foods they're kind of their foods they're familiar foods their foods that that workers you know want want to uh make for themselves those foods are are much less available here in Vermont you know those food vendors don't aren't buying their foods here in Vermont they're going to Boston and New York to get those sources okay thank you does that answer your question center sort of I still the the thing that's on the slide says both of these sources are currently restricted and again I I wasn't aware that farmers were restricted from taking the workers to a grocery store in shock no I think I think well kind of two pieces if you're in northern Vermont closer to the border that is perennially a more difficult place for migrant farm workers to be traveling and we found statistically significant stress northern Vermont that's before coronavirus all I meant by this right here is that uh at this moment uh like everyone else farmers are making fewer fewer trips to the grocery store and they're trying to make up the lack of foods that are being sold by the vendors and I mean one you know one story is I heard is like a farmer was like oh I'll just buy tortillas at my local grocery store thinking that maybe a few packages of tortillas is going to cover the week you know uh on a larger farm you could be selling I mean literally you know 100 pounds of tortillas or more and and Dan the northern issue you're talking about that's just because border patrol is is nearby you know our question our question looked at overall stress and we did it you did two two tests on it in those two studies about stress within a hundred miles of the border and excuse me not 100 I think 50 miles of the border essentially Franklin uh you know Essex Orleans and below and in both of those studies if you were up in those northern counties you were more stressed your workers were significantly more stressed statistically significantly more stressed we didn't ask in that case specifically if it was border patrol but uh everything points to increased immigration enforcement including the qualitative questions that we got where people are specifically talking since uh 2016 about increased immigration enforcement yes okay I just want to explain this slide um we asked the side this was really Naomi Walcott McCoslyn who is the coordinator of Puentes she suggested this question it's and it was a great question in just in the 2019 survey of workers just what was workers perceptions of how dairy farms were doing and it was a great question I've had 75 percent of workers uh you know close you know said that they thought the dairy farms were doing well and we all know and I the little graph on the right from agency ag you know this I'm not we all know this our dairy farms in Vermont are not doing well overall and well 19 all was a pretty good year Dan so they yeah if that same question was asked this year it would be different yeah although although the trend in losses I hear I know there was a moment there when the milk price had writ was rising a short moment but I think the trend in uh in loss of farms continued last year yeah so yeah I mean your points well taken I guess uh that you could look at that and say at that moment that we asked the question what are they doing was dairy farms doing better yeah I guess that you could look at that I I don't know if the it wasn't what I heard from what I hear from farms even in 2019 doing better but I don't know if they yeah most farms would say they're doing very well or well the just might just that's just a subjective view the thing that I thought the reason I put this in here is that I think that it kind of reinforces that question about communication and understanding that whole farm context a context between farm workers and farmers please but but senator star I would be very interested if I had funding to go back and redo this question either can't do it in 2018 but in 2020 that would be great to see if that's changed yeah because your point is taken at that moment possibly that particular farm was doing better linda last two slides here I just wanted to show you this this was a these these are three questions um directly asking about levels of stress relative to stress experience in home countries in other parts of the U.S. and on the current farm and so on the left there in general stress in vermont for about a third of the workers was about the same as stress at home I mean there was you know there is a fair amount of stress at home which is kind of what leads people to migrate in the middle slide vermont does fairly well you know in terms of vermont being more stressful about the same or less stressful than other areas in the united states for those workers who were in the other other areas united states almost 30 percent said it was less stressful and the one on the right I think is to me the most important because it speaks to agency when we ask farm workers about stress on the the current farm compared to previous farms they worked on it it really appears that the majority the greatest chunk over 40 percent have been able to move to a farm that is less stressful than their previous employment and so it speaks to some ability to to to to migrate and move more freely to more desirable situations now Dan is that moving from one place of employment in vermont to another place in vermont or is it moving from a farm somewhere outside of vermont to a vermont farm the middle one the middle question is about vermont vermont as a state compared to elsewhere and the question on the right is this farm compared to your previous farm so it could be it could have been in vermont or out of vermont yeah and there is a lot of movement in particular here between vermont and new york state yeah okay my last slide is my recommendations here um i think in the short term and i know that you're pressed for funds and resources and everything else right now i think the work that's being done by open door clinic and the uvm of bridges to health is really critical providing uh both uh health information in the in the current moment about the pandemic and uh health related issues as well as uh access to health care right now i think those two organizations open door and extension they're doing the outreach that is going to be able to provide the most rapid information about uh the health and well-being of workers kind of at the current moment looking ahead kind of beyond this current crisis and senator star i'm kind of going back to your earlier comment here i i think the research really strongly points to a need for a spanish language dairy farm safety program york state has it there are numerous studies around around the united states that have looked at ways to do this program our research says it is one of the major stress stressors as well as a cause of injury and we're not really meeting that need at the moment my suggestions if if we're able to start that program would be not to uh not to ask farmers and workers to leave the farm but to actually do on farm safety programs to done over in new york state but farm specific i think it should be built around issues that are concerns of concern both to farm workers and farmers and what could be innovative if we're able to move this direction is to do something like a collaborative or participatory program design so we don't take a cookie cutter but we actually design it for what those issues are here in vermont on these farms i think that would be much more engaging i think there's some excellent models that have been out there uvm extension did a good review last year as sarah climbing uh can probably talk more about it was really interesting my last point is that right now uh coronavirus is a zoonotic disease you know moving from animals to people with all the stress and concern that we have right now about zoonotic diseases perhaps we could interest and engage more farmers and more farm workers in safety programs that actually talk a little bit about that there are many dairy diseases that move either from animals to people or people to animals tuberculosis ringworm uh cryptosporosis uh ecoli and that might be a way to incentivize uh and kind of tie the current moment to some longer term issues i don't think that that should take the place of cow handling but it could be something that ties it together and so thank you very much yeah and if are you still there yeah yeah and i think well if we could get some of these programs that you talked about set up um it wouldn't be a bad idea to kind of push the housing issue for that for the few that are having problems it sounds like they're having severe problems serve you know so yeah that's good dane thank you any other questions ruth linda's got to unmute you or you've got to unmute yourself okay no there you go star sticks can you hear me yes can you hear me now yes i'm so sorry everybody for all these tech issues it's horrible um so dan i wanted to add go back to your uh point about the stress and concern about injury on the farm and i'm wondering if you dug into that a little bit more as to whether or not that stress was also related to their lack of health care and health insurance because if they do get injured if they don't have the open door clinic to go to um then they have few options for getting viable health care so i'm wondering if that might be part of it i i think i think that is part of it i mean the the services that open door can provide in adison county are not are not available all you know throughout the whole state um there are programs i think probably jeweler can talk more in more detail about um kind of costs and uh challenges to paying for health care but i think there's no there's really there's no question that that concern about getting an injury and not and having that uh you're not being able to pay for to having to be extremely expensive is an issue i will say that looking between um the over time what we've seen from uh farm workers is that health access there's some indicators indications that health access has improved uh since 2010 i think that speaks a lot to kind of open door and and bridges the health okay um so i can i also wanted to ask you you and your recommendation section um your immediate recommendation of supporting the open door clinic and bridges to health which i certainly appreciate i actually used to run the open door clinic so i it's near and dear to my heart um julie is doing great work but um i also am wondering if you have any more specific immediate recommendations related to covid and um we you know we're we're trying to take care of all different uh sort of segments of our population right now um and you know talking about how we can support them through this crisis and i'm wondering if there's some more specific things that are might be urgently needed right now that that would have come out of your research because of you've been doing this for a while yeah i mean i haven't you know my the the last survey that i did was lat was in 2019 you know so it ended last last uh september um so i don't i have not surveyed since then i've spoken to folks with my information is anecdotal uh i think i have i have a concern in the short term right now about the availability of translation my sense is that uh outside of outside of workers that have been contacted by bridges to health or open door many workers of are getting their information kind of from the media as opposed to from health professionals so i am concerned about the availability of translation is what i would say of having good accurate health information and uh i i think i i think i'd just leave it at that as well as excuse me as well as uh what the what the quarantine options would be if workers get ill to protect the rest of the household yeah great thank you ryan thank you mr chair so i'm getting an email from someone that's watching on zoom on youtube asking whether you can give links to the uvm program and open door for health care so i think that i think that both uh bridges to health is going to be uh is going to be represented by sarah climbing later and open door clinic but absolutely both of those have good websites thank you okay before we uh move on to will linda is there some way you can contact our next witnesses uh erica and ryan and tell them we're running a little late so they could hold up on joining unless they wanted to yes i can do that thank you uh so uh will uh could you give us your perspective of our migrant workers and what we made how they're bearing i guess and what we could do to to make it better for me thank you senator star for the record we'll land back with uh migrant justice for those who don't know migrant justice is an organization based in the state of vermont founded and led by immigrant farm workers principally workers in the state's dairy industry and for the past 10 years has been organizing around human rights issues ranging from labor and housing conditions to policing and immigration policy i'm gonna kick it over to a farm worker leader jose ignacio who's going to who's going to testify in spanish i'll be interpreting for him and then i'll conclude with some remarks as well and hola nacho lale cuando quieres okay hola todos este mi nombre es jose ignacio y este quiero compartirles un poco de los retos que estamos viviendo en los ranchos de de leche lecheros aquí my name is jose ignacio and i'd like to share with you some of the challenges that we're facing as farm workers on dairy farms in the state of vermont okay unos de los principales reto es vivienda porque estamos compartiendo cuartos con nuestros compañeros desde el cuarto compartimos como dos o tres personas vivimos en casas con muy poco espacio y tenemos que compartir este nuestro espacio con con todos los demás compañeros entonces también el área de trabajo estamos trabajando todos los días sin sin descanso ahora no para nosotros no hay no hay cuarentena no hay nada este tenemos no tenemos mascarillas para protegernos del covi 19 ahora los patrones están pidiendo que los guantes de se ocupe para dos ordeñas dos turnos de ordeña porque a las personas que le están surtiendo el material a ellos o no tienen ahorita entonces es lo que nos explican ellos so one of the principal challenges that we face is with housing we have to share rooms with co-workers oftentimes there are two to three co-workers sharing a room and we live in housing that's overcrowded that has little space and and we have to share that space with too many people related to work we're continuing to go to work every day there is no stay at home order for us and we work at risk we don't have face masks to protect us from covi 19 and the employers are now telling us that we have to use the same pair of gloves for two milk shifts because they're being told by their suppliers that they can't source anymore okay entonces ah pues si seguimos trabajando ah con ahora con las las necesidades que tenemos aquí en los ranchos como desde las compras que que tenemos que hacer ahora ya subió todo en las tiendas o sea cuesta un poco más caro ah hay personas que que están cerrando sus ranchos aquí en el escondido de adizo ya han cerrado dos rancho uno en el área de shoran y ahorita aquí en en blistor en people este cerraron otro entonces los patrones que tienen prácticamente dos ranchos están dejando uno solo y están cerrando uno igual por esta crisis ah no hay no hay para ellos es muy complicado este seguir manteniendo la industria porque los ranchos pequeños tienen no no pueden a completar o no producen lo suficiente de leche para una pipa entonces tienen que unirse con dos ranchos para que vengan a recoger la leche una sola pipa entonces creo que uno es de esos de los problemas que que hay para que están cerrando los ranchos y so we we continue working every day to sustain the industry one of our urgent needs right now is is about food we're seeing that are the cost of food for us has been going up and that's causing difficulties and then also farms are closing in addison county one farm closed in shoram and now another one just closed in bridport and so employers are letting go workers because of the crisis and we understand it's very difficult for farms to keep going in the current economic situation and in particular for small farms because small farms don't produce enough milk to fill up a milk truck and so they have to band together with and other farms in their area for the truck to to make the to come and pick up the milk or we also have the need to go to the doctor and then we don't have a insurance or something that practically covers the total of our treatment or medicine that we notice if we are affected by covid 19 then we have too much spending now there are also many people who are saying goodbye to the ranchos and they no longer have how to buy their food also in fact because here is a couple with me living and since a month that they don't have so there's also needs around healthcare we don't have health insurance and so there's nothing to cover the costs of medicine or treatment if we have to go to the doctor if we're affected by covid 19 there will just simply be too many healthcare costs for us that we won't be able to to pay and it's even worse for people who have lost their jobs during the crisis for those people there's not even enough money to buy food we have a couple that's been staying with us in our house for the past month that's been without work we were included in the support of 1200 we can't apply for the unemployment work either so we ask them to support us that they come back to see where very few people look what is the immigrant community that we are here and we are essential to continue this industrial so we are being called essential workers right now yet we're being excluded from supports and protections we aren't receiving the 1200 relief checks that others are getting we don't have access to unemployment insurance if we lose our jobs so we would ask the committee to please think of us because we're a community that's been forgotten or made invisible by many people but we are here and we are essential to sustaining the state's dairy industry Vermont should be supporting its immigrant community right now and not creating barriers for us to access help and support yeah thank you Jose Ignacio and I'll add a little bit to that I think you heard Jose speaking very eloquently about his experience and that of his community and really that important duality of being called essential but being treated as disposable and being excluded from all of the supports that the federal government is creating right now and that's why we see a real urgent and dire need for Vermont to step up where the federal government has failed and to allocate resources to protecting immigrant workers we've been speaking with agencies and other committees your colleagues in the health and welfare committee about questions of housing how to create how alternative housing for people who need to self-isolate as well as health care how to expand the state's emergency Medicaid program to cover COVID and related treatment for immigrants who are excluded from Medicaid generally as well as insurance on the private market but for your committee we'd really like to focus on this question of economic relief as you heard Nacho say Jose Ignacio say immigrant workers are not receiving the federal relief checks that were included in the CARES Act and we would recommend that Vermont create a Vermont coronavirus relief fund to administer direct payments to immigrant workers who have been excluded from the federal stimulus as you all know immigrant workers regardless of status pay into state local and federal taxes but unless they have a valid social security number they have not qualified for federal stimulus checks and are also excluded from unemployment insurance and several states have corrected for this New Jersey passed a law in mid-march creating a fund and more recently California's governor just allocated money through executive order and we feel very strongly that Vermont should do the same immigrant workers have been deemed essential during this time of crisis as Jose Ignacio said they're sustaining the dairy industry during a pandemic and Vermont must take action to ensure that dairy workers are not left behind yeah do you do you have copies of either those laws or regs or whatever they put together that you could send on to maybe Linda where we could pick them up easily to look at yes absolutely I can do that at the end of this session yep thank you well uh Anthony yeah I just saw this here are farm workers considered essential or not I feel like I'm hearing two different things yeah yeah they are I know farms are considered essential so farm workers are considered essential okay but they don't receive any of the benefits that essential workers are receiving well what what we talked about in earlier this morning was essential workers that work with people that could where they could catch the the disease you know yeah I remember that yeah and and uh if if the farm workers stay on the farm you know they're limited to who they might be able to catch this from so we when we discussed this the other day I think Chris was there maybe Ruth I I don't recall who was there but some senators were a little reluctant to put people in that were essential workers but yeah they were not close to people that maybe had the disease or in contact with people that had the disease and if if they opened that up uh to everybody that's an essential worker it would just be so expensive that we wouldn't be able to afford to do any so I I don't know Chris or any of you others that have been working on that you'd want to relate to that I'm happy to just chime in and I I want to say I think we I hope we will come up with some kind of assistance for farm workers but in the um emergency grants for frontline workers um essential workers there's a test which is public facing you know public intersection so it's it's folks caring uh for nursing home patients who are cleaning supermarkets or stocking shelves where the public has high traffic and that's the distinction in addition to the the issues that surface around undocumented workers um that's certainly where the current grant program deviates from what we need to be talking about for farm workers I think uh any out there Roots can you hear me can you guys hear me okay yes well excellent um first of all thank you will and Jose for your testimony and I had two comments um one um I'm wondering it's clear from Dan's research and from um conversations I've had with farmers that there's a huge variation on farms and that some farms obviously don't do as well at taking care of and housing farm workers and others do a pretty good job and that um and I'm wondering if you know you have examples of um practices sort of best practices that you could share with us maybe sending um since we may not have time right now of of uh you know in your work with farm workers of these are the best practices that um are being followed and that there are farms that are doing it because I just want to say that you know there are farmers who are doing a great job and and probably most of them at taking care of their workers but there are obviously farms that aren't and so um just wanting to see if you had sort of developed some best practices um and then I also was trying to get at this question of what um migrant farm workers um qualify for in terms of the federal and the state assistance and it obviously depends on their documentation status but for those that are documented and have um proper paperwork or whatever you want to call it um I I'm not I'm trying to get answers as to whether or not they do qualify and have received those $1,200 checks from the feds and if they are being laid off because farms are going out um whether or not they would qualify for unemployment um and so I'm wondering if you have examples or know of people who have gotten either state or federal benefits thank you very much senator hardy for the questions I'll try to answer both of them um uh obviously the the question about um labor and housing conditions in the industry is is a large one and there there won't be time to get into it in detail um but yes the conditions certainly vary across the industry in terms of best practices uh migrant justice in 2018 launched a program called milk with dignity this is active on about 65 farms across the state accounting for about 20% of the state's total dairy production as well as some farms in um New York state uh and this is made possible because of an agreement between uh dairy workers and migrant justice uh and ben and jerry's uh for ben and jerry's to commit to sourcing from farms that comply with a farm worker created code of conduct covering labor and housing conditions and so that code of conduct which is is now in in place on many farms across the state would be the the the sum of best practices for housing conditions and that can be found um on our website um and and certainly we can speak more about that um in terms of um qualifications for workers uh uh for federal and state benefits um uh uh all dairy workers uh should be able to qualify for paid sick leave through the family's first uh coronavirus relief act um or ffcra um however we've seen that in practice that that has not been been happening um and we know that um it is oftentimes very difficult for workers to to exercise uh their their rights uh on farms and particularly in a time of crisis and when new regulations are being rolled out um uh there was a question earlier about if our workers being affected currently they're you'll hear uh and julia's testimony more about this but there is one worker who has been a hospitalized uh presumed uh positive for uh covid 19 um and uh uh so there that has happened in the state and julie will speak more about that um in terms of other uh benefits uh the question is really about documentation status uh while we would never make a an assumption about an individual workers immigration status um the general trend in the industry is that overwhelmingly uh workers do not have a pathway uh to work with a visa uh or obtain a green card uh so the the vast majority of immigrant workers in the industry uh are undocumented uh which means that um if they lose their jobs they cannot apply for unemployment as uh insurance or pandemic unemployment assistance which has been this expanded version uh and they also are not receiving the stimulus checks with the checks that applies as well to mixed status families even if one of the filers is a u.s citizen uh or a legal permanent resident if they're filing with a spouse who uh does not have a social security number that entire family will be excluded from receiving a stimulus check um and so that's why we really think it's it's extremely important for the state of vermont to take action to correct for this um failing from the the federal government and to create a fund uh using money um uh that it's receiving um that it's received from the cares act um to to establish a fund to pay out to excluded workers yeah um thank you will um i think we ought to move on to julia and get her in where 10 minutes uh late but uh that you know this is a very important subject area that uh i know the committee is very interested in so we'll move on to julia and jose ignacio is going to log off and you said thank you very much for the thank you well and we we appreciate this and want to remind you that without healthy workers without healthy farm workers there is no food thank you well i don't know whether you're logging off or not but i just want to repeat what the chair said you're going to be with okay because we want to make sure that we get access to what's going on in the other states yeah i'm able to stay on okay so julia good morning um thank you all for inviting me to speak today i'm julia du set i'm the outreach nurse case manager for the open door clinic as senator hardy mentioned um we are a free health clinic that serves uninsured adults besides eight of our part-time paid staff we have all of our medical providers our mental health providers our nutritionists dietitians physical therapists chiropractors are all volunteer um about 50 percent of the patients that we see in the clinic are Latino immigrant farm workers who work in our county's dairy and poultry farms so i thought i would begin today with a story um that illustrates a lot of the points that i want to touch on and it's a story about one of the farm workers from addison county um while it's a true story i have changed some of identifying details just to protect the identity of the patient so ezekiel called us one afternoon to report that he was having trouble walking from his trailer to the barn without gasping for air he said he felt like his heart was beating strongly in his chest and he hadn't felt like eating not even his favorite foods like black beans he didn't have a cough or chest pain and didn't think that he had a fever but felt like he'd been getting progressively worse over the past week at 48 years old ali ezekiel was a healthy fit man um he hadn't smoked since he left mexico four years ago he didn't have any underlying conditions like hypertension diabetes respiratory or cardiac issues as he spoke to us over the phone he stopped frequently to catch his breath while his demeanor and voice were calm it was obvious that he was deeply troubled by his symptoms so we sent him over to porter's emergency room um and aside here is it's um important to stress the importance of language access um as without access to um interpretation services you wouldn't be able to properly triage a patient or collect accurate health history um also here transportation is an issue as ezekiel doesn't drive or have a car so that brings up the point of people having to rely on others primarily here his boss was able to take him so ezekiel was admitted into the er and soon after crashed for anyone who has any medical history um his oxygen saturation which you expect to be around 99 or 100 percent fell to 79 percent his breathing became extremely labored and he had a fever he was sedated and intubated and uvm medical center was contacted he was transported via ambulance directly to uvm's uvm medical center's COVID-19 intensive care unit i note here that ambulance transports in life threatening or other situations are incredibly expensive and are not covered under any patient financial assistance programs and as an aside is three weeks earlier the farm owner um and his family have been vacationing in florida and they had progressed one by one come down with some symptoms um they thought it was a cold didn't think much of it until one of the family members um became moderately ill and due to the sensitivity of her work with vulnerable individuals she went and got tested and tested positive um while ezekiel was in the hospital his son contacted us from california he had heard from some of his relatives that his father was in the hospital but since he spoke only spanish he wasn't able to speak to anyone directly on the floor and get any information about his father's conditions so we called up to the hospital um to provide his number to medical staff in case management so that they could pull in their interpretation um line to get him updated later that same day i spoke to the farmer who had been in contact with the hospital and he was concerned about the six other workers on his farm as will had mentioned um and dan as well often workers live together in very tight spaces this one worker lived with six others in a double wide trailer and while they each had their own individual rooms um they were in close contact with ezekiel prior to his hospitalization because they shared all other living spaces he was wondering how to best protect his workers so we provided information about sanitation infection control and steps to take to protect the workers and his family um the next day i stopped by on the farm to drop off what we're calling covid kits which are um bags we're putting together and dropping off at the 57 farms in adison county that contain thermometers thermometer covers um ibe profan hand sanitizer surface sanitizer hand soap and a variety of cloth masks for workers um we also included um a lot of information in english and in spanish english for the farm owners spanish for the farm workers that included um information on covid 19 ways to protect yourself ways to protect others and when you should be in different types of quarantining situations um after five days of ventilation and sedation ezekiel was weaned off the sedatives and allowed to wake up he was finally given his cell phone and allowed to communicate directly with his family after 11 days of hospitalization he was discharged and told to take it easy for a week before returning to work because he doesn't have paid time off he'll have lost three weeks of pay before he's able to make it back to work the farmer said i'd love to pay the guy i value his work both he had to pay other people to work while he was out and he couldn't do it he said with the way that dairy is right now he's struggling financially as it is and couldn't afford to pay the extra salary as it turns out um his covid 19 the patient ezekiel's covid 19 test came back negative and so did a second one and even though all evidence and all clinical tests pointed to a coronavirus infection and the doctors treated it as such and it was listed in his medical record as a probable case because he hadn't been formally diagnosed the vermont department of health was unable to become involved in the case and do the contact tracing education and outreach that they would normally do in this situation they call reached out to us to provide that information to the farmer we spoke with the workers we were we asked them to take their temperature twice a day and report any abnormal temperature to us the standard of care to exposure for covid 19 infection is to have all of those exposed to the infected person to quarantine for two weeks we believe that this is not feasible on a dairy farm and that if workers were told to stay home and not work they'd most likely leave the farm to find places that they could work thus potentially spreading the infection far and wide we also believe that bringing in an outside work for force would unnecessarily expose both the farm to other germs as well as the outside worker to potential infection so with input from our medical director and speaking with the vermont department of health staff we agreed that the best approach would be to quarantine the farm as you would an individual meaning that workers could go back to work they could work in the dairy they could work in the outdoors and wear masks when they had contact with anyone else on the farm it's probably better to be working in a well ventilated barn or the outdoors than to have all six or seven workers cooped up in a small not well ventilated double wild wide trailer so thankfully as ikio recovered he's back home resting no one else on the farm has yet to develop symptoms and it has officially been two weeks two days ago so knock on wood that that's the very end of the story but I think that that story really illustrates a lot of holes in care and a lot of places where there's room for improvement I I know my colleagues have touched on many of those the ones that I would like to focus on one ties into what will was saying about the emergency Medicaid which is that so emergency Medicaid is a program that can be applied to anybody who is eligible for Medicaid except for their immigration status so if a worker makes 138 percent of the federal poverty level or less they're eligible if they're in a life-threatening situation to get on this program that will pay for all of their medical bills until they're stable but many of the workers make decent money in that if they were American and they had children their income would be they would consider the household so it would be the wage earner and it would be their children immigrant farm workers are considered a household size of one even if they have three four kids in Mexico even if they're providing child support and specialist support anyone who's living outside of the United States is not considered into the formulation that determines whether they're eligible for Medicaid or not that also ties into financial assistance through the hospitals and so one of the places or recommendations would be to take into consideration child support that these workers are paying I do want to do a shout out to some of the programs that I know are available that I'm not sure if you are aware of we have a local group called the Addison allies which is made up of community members in Addison County and they have come up with a COVID emergency fund which can be extended to any worker for any COVID related expense so if they lost their job due to COVID-19 you know farms shutting down and and letting people go they're eligible to apply for assistance if they need help because they've been in a hospital they can apply for assistance and I know that NOFA has an amazing program where they're also able to pay for lost wages and send guest workers on to the farm so thank you for taking the time to listen I hope I kept it under my 10 minutes and I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have yeah are there are there questions from the committee well sir yeah and and you know we're gonna we're gonna keep plugging away on this and try to get some of that money moved in a little different direction than it's going so we still have Sarah do you need to could do you need to testify today or could you wait until next week I could wait until next week although I would say that most of what I was going to speak about has already been covered and I would just draw your attention to maybe one or two other items which could be done in five minutes you could do five minutes I could yeah well I'm sorry to crowd you but that's why don't we go ahead then with you if you can keep it tight we'll listen I will do that thank you so much I did have just four slides and if Linda could cue them up I'm just going to quickly you can move to the second one Linda thank you my name is Sarah Kleinman I'm the director of 4-H family and farm worker education programs with UVM extension that means that I provide administrative and in some cases programmatic direction to a portfolio of programs that support youth and families including the farm worker population and you can see on the screen that there are three particular programs two of which migrant education and high school equivalency program focus on educational attainment and career growth growth and then the third is bridges to health which we've already talked a little bit about in terms of providing health access to immigrant farm workers um Linda if you can move to the next one please this slide just gives you an overview of the farm workers and the farms and the locations where we provide our services in all of those three programs and then if you can move to the last slide I would appreciate it um so this identifies the challenges as we see it through the clientele that we work with in terms of the challenges both systemic and structural as well as individual challenges and again most of them have already been identified those that are in red are the ones that are more specific to our current reality given COVID-19 and I wanted to talk a little bit more about food access as well as lack of PPE the PPE and access to supplies and childcare we know as we talked about earlier that our farm workers are considered essential workers in support of agricultural efforts and so as such they should have access to childcare for essential workers but and of course our schools are closed and so there's an increased challenge right now that children are at home and since we've already identified transportations of barrier so adding to the stress that we were talking about with this population uh childcare is also an issue right now many of the farms do not have even masks we're doing our best to try to figure out how to source funds or source supplies so that we can get them we're grateful that Addison has been able to work with uh colleagues and partners to figure that out but we will do our best and continue to do our best to try to find funding and and supplies and perhaps that's an area where the state can step in and then we would be able to help distribute those items also food access and in particular the school meal program many of the programs are the the audience that we work with uh is because of their children and so we've been really grateful that the school meal program has been able to do to offer deliveries in many parts of the state not all but we're aware that that particular program that's been funding this will end on June 30th as it switches over to summer meal sites of course we don't know exactly what that will look like given our current reality but we know oftentimes that the summer meal sites are more about their location based and so you have to be able to gain access to those sites whether they're at summer camps or community centers and once again transportation is an issue uh scheduling with parents and folks is an issue and so we're very concerned already that food access for the farm workers which is challenged right now will become even more challenged as we head into the summer we know uh from a call the other day that there are two particular federal programs the USDA child nutrition eligibility waiver and the USDA non-congregant feeding waiver that potentially could be expanded and extended which might then further enable the school meal program as it is just right now to move into the summer but at the moment we believe that that's ending on June 30th so I think other than what you see right here that was my very quick overview of some of the additional challenges that challenges that we haven't yet talked about as it relates to the migrant and immigrant farm worker population well and and we do lender can get the copies of those the proposals that you folks have presented to us out to us so we'd have those to work with and off from and maybe develop more questions for you folks that have presented these issues to us are there questions from the committee to any of the participants so far what's up well if there is none I I'd like to thank you know the three of you for for the fine job and and Dan uh as well um and we're gonna keep working to try to improve the home and health and the welfare of our migrant workers and may have to call you back for another meeting uh and try to give you a little lead time uh and if you have further uh issues that you want to present to us uh you know you can mail those to lender layman and linda can give you that contact information uh chris uh you had a question or yeah quick question for will and and maybe others and and sorry if you covered this already and you know time is tight so maybe just email it to us but logistically if we were in a position to offer aid to to undocumented workers how how does that happen in new jersey california is is money go to the farms then gets dispersed uh you know there's an integrity concern that is hard for me to understand uh to make sure that the money gets to those workers and I wonder if maybe just offline you can send us the strategy that's been employed elsewhere yep yeah thank you senator and I can provide more information um uh by by email but very briefly it's it's all sort of works in progress right now funds are still being set up the two general strategies that jurisdictions are employing are either um through direct disbursement uh via an application at the state department of labor that's in the new jersey case um or distributed disbursement through nonprofit agencies uh who would then process applications from individuals which is what california will be doing um we think there are our potential pros and cons for both models but regardless what what's very important is that um there not be burdensome um uh documentation requirements to show um financial need and things like that um that that would uh discourage people from applying uh the idea would be that um the federal government created a stimulus program to to get cash into people's hands many people have been excluded from that and so the state can enact a similar program um that would be very low barrier and without burdensome requirements well if you could uh get that to chris uh you know send it to chris or to linda we'll all get that so thank you ruth you had a question well it's a nice one we can't hear a word you're saying no can you hear me now there you go this is terrible i i mostly just wanted to say thank you to all of the witnesses and especially to um sarah and julia who got cut off at the end um sarah i know how frustrating it is to sit through a whole call and then not get to say everything you want to say so thank you for being here and for all the yeah open door clinic and uvm are doing and um and you know we can have you back if you have more to say so just wanted to give you a shout out so thank you yeah and again thanks all thank all of you for your time and what you put into this it's uh very important so um we'll move on to our congressional delegation really uh i think i see ryan yeah um and uh so ryan's with us uh is tom or are you we're on the senate has moved away from using zoom um yeah so uh did you folks did you have you set up a process of who speaks first and how that goes uh and i would expect maybe tom would lead off yeah we've got a bit of a script uh which we'll divert from i'm sure early enough but i'll lead off and then ryan we'll have some stuff and then erica if that works for you yeah that that's fine okay we want to we want to welcome all three of you to our our short hearing here and and thank you all for the hard work uh you've been doing and and i guess it isn't going to light up going into the future so uh thanks a lot for all that and and uh welcome to our hearing so thank you tom and you start off but uh thank you uh chairman star and thanks to the committee for all the work you're doing under difficult circumstances uh for the record this is tom berry i do agricultural and environmental work for senator lehi in vermont and i'll review very quickly legislation that has passed in response to the pandemic as it directly relates to agriculture ryan can provide some more details on implementation and there are other small business programs that erica has more expertise certainly than i do on and she'll touch on those the cares act passed congress at the end of last month i'm sure you all have heard about the different programs in that that bill and we've talked to you about it before um what the cares act contained specifically for agriculture was um a single pot of nine point five billion with the b dollars for agricultural producers the language for that is very simple and straightforward it says that the um funds are to prevent prepare for and respond to the coronavirus by providing support for agricultural producers impacted by the coronavirus including producers of specialty crops producers that supply local food systems including farmers markets restaurants schools and livestock producers including dairy producers so it addresses uh pretty directly the type of agriculture we're most familiar with in vermont the cares act also included 14 billion with the b dollars for the commodity credit corporation which is where the secretary has previously drawn funds for the trade adjustment payments that we were familiar with over the last year plus the act also provides a total of 24 billion dollars for domestic food programs which represents 50 of the agricultural agricultural funding in the bill that allocates 15.8 billion to improve access to supplemental nutrition programs in the event costs or participation exceed budget estimates and of that total 300 million is allocated for snap improvements in underserved areas so that's in a nutshell the agricultural specific content of the cares act as i said there are also other programs that can be utilized by by farmers that will have more to say about shortly and with that i'll i'll hand it off to uh ryan who can update you on where we are as far as the rollout of these agricultural provisions so ryan you're going to talk about like what our share or how we would uh participate to get the 9.5 billion uh are some of that for producers of milk yeah exactly i'll talk about what we know right now in terms of the rollout for direct payments from usda to farmers um and i'm ryan mclaren i do agricultural outreach for congressman peter welcher and vermont um and yeah basically just follow tom and erica around but so last friday the secretary of agriculture announced the some more details about the 19 billion dollar coronavirus food assistance program to support farmers and ranchers during the covet 19 pandemic and tom mentioned some of the highlights 16 billion and direct payments for farmers um funded using 9.5 billion from um the emergency program that senator lehi helped secure in the cares act and 6.5 billion in the commodity credit credit commodity corporation funding um it also included three billion dollars in purchases of agricultural products across the board but i think the big highlight for vermont is 2.9 billion for dairy um and the usda is going to work with local food and regional distributors to um deliver food to food banks and bulk purchases as well as um you know community and faith-based organizations but i think the highlight on um direct funding to dairy producers um is that usda expects to divvy up that money in two chunks um they'll receive a single payment um and the calculation is based on two separate categories so it'll be price losses that occurred in the first quarter of this year so january 1st to april 15th and producers will be compensated for 85 percent of the price loss during that time and then the second part of the payment um will be expected losses from april 15th through the next two quarters of the year um and will cover 30 percent of those losses um there'll also be a payment limit of 125 000 per commodity so um you know if you're just a dairy producer that would be 125 000 uh limit um and an overall limit of 250 000 per individual or entity so if you if you grew if you were say producing dairy and growing soybeans you'd be capped at 250 000 um and there the the commodity has to sort of demonstrate a loss so you must they must demonstrate a five percent price decrease between january um and april and so we're awaiting more deep that's about it's the broad brush we know right now and we're awaiting rulemaking to know more details um we expect the program will be put on the ground through uh the farm service agency uh fsa and what we're hearing is that they hope to begin sign up for the program in may early may and to try and get payments out to producers by the end of may or early june so that's their expected timeline i mean you know to editorialize a bit there are some issues we see with the with the programs as um laid out so far um you know 2.9 billion dollars in food purchases for dairy represents roughly maybe um three percent of the market and we see we've seen an oversupply of over 10 probably so it's it's a obviously um purchasing more dairy products is a good thing but it's not um that it necessarily adequate to address the scope of the the need right now um and then in terms of the payout structure for direct payments to farmers i mean most of the losses we're seeing in projections um are in the second half of this year so prices between january and mid april were higher than were they're expected to be in june we're seeing like a 12 per hundred weight price so you know i think in our mind we'll we'll need to we'll be pushing for more to be done as we move into the summer when the need becomes even greater so um i'll leave it there you know we like i said we don't know we only have sort of broad scope framework of how this is going to roll out from usda and there'll be much more detail in their rulemaking which we hope to see quite soon um but you know there are estimates floating around for the the amount that um a 200 farm a 200 cow dairy farm might see but they're really just estimates at this point because we don't have much more of those details that that 30 for the second and third quarters um you know it's pretty light for the hit that most of our farmers are are going to be taking wait but we can have um erica on and then come back for questions so erica is can you hear me yeah there we go yeah okay great sorry i uh this took me a second to press star six um hello everyone this is erica cambell from senator sander's office and apologize i cannot be on video but as tom said we are um senate is uh kind of banned from using zoom so we can use other platforms but but not zoom um but regardless happy to talk with secret you today and thanks for the opportunity to quickly want to go over the small business provisions um um uh because um farmers can um access uh these programs uh and the first being the paycheck protection program the ppp that you've probably heard about um the senate has actually passed a bill on tuesday to re-up the funding in the ppp and am i on speaker i'm just double checking okay yes i am yeah here you are um good good um up the funding in the the for the ppp program um it ran out of funding very quickly after the carers act passed and the program rolled out um vermont lenders did a great job in getting he was a little over one billion dollars out the door to about seven thousand businesses which is great some farmers were able to access um that that money we had vita or vac um provide loans binky farm credit came on as an sba approved lender and they were able to um get some loans out the door by the time the program ran out of money just as a reminder that paycheck protection program is a loan that you go through a lender so it could be an net let's be an sba approved lender but we have quite a few of them in vermont that reimburses for payroll and other expenses over an eight-week period you have to retain or rehire a percentage of workers so unfortunately the the challenge of the program is the guidance from treasury and sba has been very unclear and consistent it's it's been a very challenging program for a lot of different types of businesses not to mention they allowed uh they said they were going to allow self-employed to apply self-employed sole proprietors etc they pretty much opened that program right before they ran out of money and also there were so many um applications already in the queue that lenders weren't even really looking at them so we we hope um that this we assume that this program will pass today in the house right and they have a little bit of insight on that but we we fully as expected to pass today and to be signed up promptly by the president and perhaps even by next monday that this this should be who knows maybe even friday you know friday but probably by monday the program will be back in action and um farmers are are allowed to apply for that as they were all along um one note we didn't get a lot of the fixes we wanted there's some challenges to this program but there was a set a set aside for credit unions um like micro lenders cdfi's basically to make it more accessible make ensure more equitable access to the program because you know you may have read some news articles there was uh some you know larger larger companies and so the more well off companies accessing the program and a lot of the smaller maybe startups or other other types of companies women-owned minority-owned companies were just not able to really get their foot in the door and if you didn't have a relationship with an existing lender very challenging to get to access the program that we were really happy to see you know so many good lenders and vermont stepping up and doing a good job so the other program i just want to mention is the the eidl program economic injury disaster loan program that is a program you direct directly apply through sba and you get a grant of up to ten thousand dollars one thousand per employee up to ten um if you uh you have to show uh some economic injury but whether you take the loan or not you're supposed to be getting that grant farmers were not able to apply to that before this new legislation pushed for very hard by the democrats i suspect senator lehi had um a role in that uh really um really pushed to allow farmers to be access this program so that's that's great news that said the problems with this program are numerous most people that we've heard from have not even received not only have received notice whether they've whether they have access with whether they've been approved for the loan but they haven't seen any of that grant money which was promised within three days of applying that was from the care that so as you can imagine there um there's a lot of frustrated people out there really with both programs i think that's going to cover the administration cost right now they're trying to and watch left from the administrators from passing that money out then they'll send it out to us you know how those outfits in texas operate right i get i get my share first and then what's left i'll send to the rest of you oh well yeah i'm just kidding we don't know how exactly what's going on behind the scenes which is a little which is another frustrating piece um you know sba in vermont has been phenomenal um the office here has just been amazing but they you know the national office is um not very communicative and the challenge has been inconsistencies are great so anyway we hope we we want to make these programs are available um this they could be a good option for certain types of farms and we you know we have farm viability providers and sba provide sbdc providers able to help farms navigate these programs so um also you you know you're you're aware that um the vermont dol opened the pandemic unemployment assistance portal last night self employed farmers are eligible to apply for pua if they've had some loss of income so you know we don't want to tack over burden this this system um but they are entitled and eligible for it so you know if these other programs don't work well um you know this could be an option for some for some farms um the minimum pua is going to be 790 per week um and payment how much a week so it will be 790 per week the minimum pua pandemic unemployment assistance payment so that's the six hundred dollars from that came from the cares act that was the the bump up right per week and then the minimum they set for pua is 190 a week 190 or 191 depending on what what was before april first or not and um so that portal is open and farmers can apply and again you know we don't if they want to tax the system but if farmers are struggling and they're they've had loss and they get the prime their primary income from that from the farm that that has that loss maybe a direct maybe a farmer who sold to a bunch of restaurants or something and they have no income all the sudden they can apply for this so i think that is something that we you know we we can you know get the word out like this this is an opportunity have you talked with the agency of ag uh anson or any of that crew in regards to this particular issue you know i haven't so i'm happy to reach out um today and just say or you know are they are they planning on letting farms know diane has quite a a lot so it has quite a lift serve and you know how would that how the word will get out to the self-employed farmers um and you know self-employed could be a small cheese maker business as well you know this this is an opportunity this is an opportunity and um if people are hurting right now this this can be a good option uh senator star do you want to hear anything i could give a very brief nutrition update i cover nutrition issues as well for senator sanders um i i didn't know if that was of interest today well i yeah nutrition is very important i think to us and making sure that uh you know the the children and families get get enough uh food and and you know we we spent quite a lot of time on this during the last well this session but we've been home for a good share of it um but we've spent a lot of time working um on this uh ruth has kind of headed that up from our committee and and i'm sure um the committee would like to hear uh some about we just want to i don't know what your time schedule is but we uh i've got a few more questions on dairy but why don't you uh give us your take on the nutrition programs and then we'll go back and ask questions okay i can fly through this pretty quickly yeah for for nutrition the state agencies uh dcf cdh and the agency of education have done really a phenomenal job at adapting to the changes um you know from this crisis you know getting applying for just about every waiver possible to make flexibility and how they deliver these programs and also just ensure that increased needs so we've been in the deli all the delegation offices have been working very closely with the state on all whether it's snap or uh tfapa all the different programs the school meals programs just making sure that these programs can serve as many people as possible so i just wanted you mainly to know that um for the money for the emergency food that the food bank gets there's with it was there was money in both bills so there's two rounds of money coming unfortunately this is will not be enough to meet the need you may have heard like yesterday the food bank and the national guard distributed those mre's um meals ready to eat in uh they're they're planning on doing that in a few locations um over the next couple of weeks and yesterday 28 000 meals were distributed in less than three hours since one before they ran out so it's like really stressing just how remarkable that's a remarkable testament like to just the dire and extreme need families are facing right now um and you know tom may know more about this but um because he covers fema but these meals will be paid for in part by hema so there's money coming in from the cares act via usda but there's also some fema money we're tapping into and just trying to be as creative as possible to um ensure remoders don't think and do uh further and further into food insecurity on a positive note the school meals are just doing amazing um the stories we're hearing of schools are just they're they've used every waiver possible the school the schools and their and their food service staff have stepped up in so many creative ways i think there's the in a senator hearty district there's a meals on the bus where the meals are going around i mean just it's just incredible um there's also a um uh they're going to be rolling out a pandemic pandemic ebt so an ebt like three squares card would be provided to school kids over the summer so there's just some really incredible things i just wanted to quickly um note and then we are also working on um like sort of an online snap or figuring out how to get use those for people who are using those three squares benefits currently they're not they have to go into a store they they have no option like other people do to have delivery order online even do curbside pick up no option and so you know the dcf is really stepped up working with the delegation to find ways where we can make sure that there's sort of a wireless system so at least you can take the that pos swipe card system out to the car or something where um and we are also they're also applying to become online to have online snap in vermont so i won't say any more about that but it is really important as we can you know think about the equity access to being able to have safe ways to be able to get food and then ryan mentioned this the final thing i'm going to say ryan mentioned this the three billion for the food purchases i think usda said about 100 million would be spent on dairy products you know so whether per month per month and i don't know how long that goes or what's the total going to be um but i spoke with john sales yesterday from the food bank and he was saying that the money is likely to be going to these large distributors and are like one large distributor in our region will get them funding i think there has to be a bid um and then they will they will sort of put together these harvest boxes um and distribute those through the food bank so you know it's clear it's unclear like who has the capacity i think john is working with the other states to kind of ID some possible companies to bid and you know we'd love to see you know regional products being purchased but again with there's a lot um unknown about that program so we can keep you posted on that as it moves forward well sounds like you you folks have been really busy uh analyzing all these programs and of course they change probably constantly um are there questions from the committee i got russ and brian anthony maybe um i'm sorry russ are you ready to go go ahead brian i'm oh wait brian you want to go or uh although since i unmuted myself okay thank you sorry um i have three questions i'm just gonna throw out and then um erica or ryan or tom can answer but um um first of all erica thanks for the update on the nutrition meals program um that's near and dear to my heart and you're absolutely right our schools are doing a fantastic job um and i'm just wondering you you may have we just got some testimony about concerns about um that program ending on june 30th and i'm wondering if you you mentioned the ebt card but i'm just wondering if the current program whereby schools are delivering food by with bosses or however they're delivering it if there is work going on about being able to extend it as it is now because that would be super helpful i think to families um so that's my first question my second question um ryan you were talking about that two point nine billion dollars that's a heck of a lot of money um and i'm just wondering if that is going um to um other farmers beyond dairy or is that specific to dairy um so if if there are product purchases would that cover produce um and other food product meat and other products um and if it also extends to uh producers beyond direct farmers but maybe cheese producers i know our cheese producers particularly those that rely on a restaurant market or having a really really tough time so i'm wondering what what might be available to them it's good to hear that the pua program is available to farmers i'm not sure a lot of people know that but i'm just curious about beyond the direct producers um what's available and then my final question i know ryan you were on part of the call i'm not sure if tom or erica was but we just got a lot of testimony about um migrant farm workers and their inability to access a lot of this um assistance so i'm wondering if there's anything in this bill or anything in the works that might provide some federal relief directly to migrant farm workers and how we could help make that happen if it's not happening now so those are my three questions thanks you're almost got a whole truck log there ruse you know having um uh been silent for a while i'll jump in on your second question uh and clarify a little bit the rollout of these dollars for other commodities um in addition to dairy uh and to clarify the numbers of the 16 billion that's being rolled out uh 9.5 plus commodity credit corporation dollars there will be 2.9 billion which will support the program we described for direct payments to dairy farmers based on um you know their their losses uh that's not the product purchases and similarly uh there will be direct payments to row crop producers and of 3.9 billion nationally and 2.1 billion for specialty crop producers both of which we have you know substantial numbers of in vermont as well as payments for cattle and for other crops and so we have more information on how the dairy program will roll out but we can also provide information on the payments to the the fruit and veggie growers but they're also queued up for some direct payments based on their losses so in addition to that we have the 3 billion in purchasing the agricultural products including dairy and so uh that's a separate track for these dollars and eric can talk some about how those dollars may hit the ground in bringing those products to the uh nutrition markets and you know the the uh nutritionally insecure so i think that addresses to some extent your your second question related to the specifics on supporting commodities and crops other than dairy i will say you um you did ask about specialty cheese makers and you know to the extent that they're milking cows they'll be available for the dairy payments um although you know the real value for them is in their uh their cheese product not uh in the commodity price of that milk so beyond that i think those producers are going to have to look at the sba programs uh in order to find support for their um the the gaps they're finding in their businesses so com um how long how long before we'll have an idea of what what and uh in the size of these payments uh to our dairy farmer uh you know i've seen a lot of speculation already and there's enough information out there to begin to say um you know the loss for this quarter will be so much and we're going to run the numbers but frankly the stuff i've seen so far from you know uh good economists has been a little bit all over the map um we to really boil this down i think we need to see what the rule of making looks like um and so usda tells us their hard work on that and they're going to be good to go by may so i think we have a few more weeks of speculating what this is going to look like exactly there have been some some estimates circulated and uh some of you may have seen those i'm happy to share a few that you know with um uh the uh committee that we've seen that are widely being widely circulated but um we begin to have ourselves to say you know any one of them is particularly accurate until we see the rule making place yeah why why i ask the question um is because you know we're looking at putting we're looking at putting a program together for ourselves here in vermont uh and it's going to be basically the way i envision it working it would complement what the feds are doing to try to get our farms up uh you know in a lot better position because that 30 payment uh for those uh second and third quarters uh 30 on the losses really makes me wonder with the low milk prices how we're going to fare so the sooner we can get some idea of where you folks are going to be then we would be able to um you know figure out where we need to be yeah we agree without a hundred percent and we'll push along information uh senator lehi spoke with senator perdu last week before this rolled out and uh i know the whole delegation has been very concerned that it took us three weeks after the passage of the bill to get to the point where um we had this much information and we're looking at you know potentially another month of rulemaking before we know a whole lot more so while the sda has already you know spent spent down all her money and cleaned out the cupboard uh the usda has simply put out some preliminary information how they intend to spend these dollars and and we got another you know several weeks of of rulemaking before we have much additional transparency so that's that's a difficult situation to be on and i'm sure all of our bosses will continue to push as hard as they can for this process to move quickly um i'm going to mention one other aspect of this when you mention those um later quarters of this year and how concerning those are and another place where we need some clarity from the usda is for those farmers who have enrolled in the dairy margin coverage program and i know it's a minority of remote farmers but still there's some that did enroll will those dmc payments count against uh the other payments that they may uh receive based on losses or will they be held harmless and the secretary perdu has made it very clear that uh he does not intend to open dairy margin coverage program you know it's an insurance program and and we you know we create a moral hazard by reopening an insurance program after the crisis is hit in a center way he disagrees with that reasoning but the folks out of that coin is at least don't penalize those producers who did sign up for that program by then deducting dmc payments from what they might receive and that's a very open question right now and when we're going to track closely well the other the other argument to use there uh tom is the reason our farmers didn't sign up is because of the projections that they were putting out out of usda so you know uh if usda is putting out projections how the milk price is going to be you know 19 20 dollars uh you know so they're a little to blame for our guys not getting in there and signing up yeah absolutely i'd be quiet now maybe let somebody address questions one and three well i just want to add to um tom's point that you know i think like i was on a conference call with the hordes dairymen sometime earlier this week and they so like their estimation was like a dollar 60 a hundred weight but to tom's point that's not i that that's not a number that is like worth making policy around i guess but it's it's an estimation um and will be obviously be in contact with you all as the rulemaking happens but um to your question senator hardy that is it relies getting those payments relies on production so for like small cheese makers they would have to be producing milk to receive those payments and then i think our hope is as erica said on the um product purchasing side that the that hundred million dollars a month which i think we've heard is roughly of the three billion one billion is hoping to go to dairy um and a hundred million dollar a month increments um we're hoping that the our cheese producers large and small will benefit from those purchases of getting product off the market um but that will go end up going through what we've heard is that that will be going through regional distribution chains and then out to food banks so just interrupt you for just a second ryan the dairy include um i've heard from a couple cheese producers that are actually goat milk cheese um does that is our goats included in dairy dairy that's a really good question um i i don't know that there it's been differentiated i've never i haven't seen anything that differentiated between the the types of dairy but um i don't know precisely the answer to that so i don't one of my colleagues might but we can find out that'd be great given it's based on a hundred weight i would say probably not yeah probably not but as far as the the purchase of products we can certainly push and you raise a good point to make sure that specialty producers are not left out of those purchases um you know there there's no reason we can't put uh cheese that costs a little more out of the gate uh on the shelf you know at a food bank um and uh the idea is to stabilize the whole industry so that's something to certainly watch for in the rulemaking and push under if i may under the ppp program um what kind of arrangements have been made um you know you take a lot of farmers that could apply for that there they pretty much live right out of their farm checkbook and don't live off you know a given salary uh is there arrangements going to be made in in that so that there's some way to measure the income factor for them because usually it's zero yeah that's that's a great point well that that's been a big issue with pretty much all of these programs and you know we were contacted by farms as well as a lot of several farm viability service providers mark canella from uvm extension and others who were raising the alarm that you know farmers have no net income often and their their depreciation um line item on their taxes often will um create that so you know we that we've been pushing sba to give us guidance on that and um i don't feel like we have super clear guidance but you know i think there's some flexibility that lenders have so for example yankee farm credit is you know keenly aware of that issue and are trying to work to make sure that um you know for the uh for businesses um that are using that um that amount to to calculate alone that that's taken into consideration um so yes that's a great question and it's not fully resolved but it's definitely uh the the issue has been raised uh and the concern level has been raised yeah uh there are other questions uh for the one more comment not not to filibuster one more quick comment on this question and then i'll wait for another question but uh we just all got off a call with the vermont agency of agriculture related to how they're going to roll out the dairy innovation center for f y 20 and there's uh something on the order of six million dollars that they have to spend and it's a regional program not just for vermont but it's being led out of the vermont agency of agriculture and a large part of that conversation was around the specialty cheese industry in vermont and how to support those producers in in this time so those dollars would not be direct payments to cheese makers just because they're there but they uh half of the money does have to go out in direct grants to producers for one thing or another and a lot of it can go into marketing so this would be a really good time to be talking to the agency of agriculture about how they intend to roll the f y 20 out and they're they're uh they just receive the paperwork to begin specifying those programs to the usda so um you know they they have some resources specific to vermont ag and markets right now and i know they're looking at especially cheese industry as as uh price they want to spend some of us yeah they they were supposed to be on today but they didn't feel uh comfortable because they i guess haven't gotten enough information to you know put something together yet to to help us they're supposed to be on hopefully next week with to lay out a program for us uh any other uh ryan i just wanted to address um the question about uh our migrant farm workers and uh just say that we the delegation had a call with um most of many of the folks you had on the call to discuss some of those issues um and there is a house bill um called the coronavirus immigrant families protection act peter's a co-sponsor of of it it does a number of things on the federal side that would make it make it so there's no distinguishing but there's no differentiation based on um status immigration status um for some of these programs and just it's in recognition that you know we're all staying healthy when we're all staying healthy so um including migrant workers so i can send that to you you know it's not something that was included in the the latest sort of re-up of our our coronavirus response package but it's something we're talking about on the house side um as we move into further coronavirus response yeah that that sounds good and it sounds like um a late night addition to a bill that's already gone past any other uh questions well i had a lot that i'll pass that mr cheff anthony i have another meeting coming up in 40 minutes oh how long four at one o'clock yeah uh anthony did you have a question who has a question no i had i had asked another question about school lunch and um erica sent some information i just wanted to uh mention it to you all so we get it on the record that um the um the school lunch program is slated to end june 30th so in its current form there was a request for a waiver i guess from congress to usda is that correct and the usda extended it um so or from from the state of rebond okay in any case erica maybe you can explain it because it's it's concerning to me that this program can't uh i would like it to be able to go through the the summer and what do we need to do to make sure that that happens because this is good for our kids and frankly it's good for our farmers too because it's a it's a steady um uh outlet for them to sell their product yeah i mean i don't know all the nitty gritty and and it's really the agency of education that has been tracking this closely as well as hunger free vermont um but so usda has the authority they already have the authority to extend the school meal waivers through september but they've only they've only chosen to extend them in through june 30th so it's we need that extension to be able to ensure school meals will continue throughout the summer so they can in some places through those those existing other summer meal programs that is actually it's a different it's run out it's a different program it's not always schools that that implement those programs right it could be after seating you know it could be a it's a variety of organizations that do those programs in the summer so they they could still happen but it wouldn't be guaranteed right so this would extend the the year um and provide a waiver so so schools could do that throughout the whole summer so we're waiting on we're waiting on that from USDA yeah thank thank you uh michael or grady are you on the call i am uh did do you have any questions michael to uh to ask the delegation in regards to um you know this ag funding stuff that you've been looking into um i just would like to clarify that for the direct payment to farmers it's going to be capped at a hundred and twenty five thousand dollars and what we have yeah so if um so it would and then two hundred and fifty thousand dollars per person or entity or farm so if you're if you're like i said if you're doing dairy and soybeans each commodity would be capped at 125 000 we've got a lot of farmers that are into the corn business would that would that count the way i would read this um depending on how they keep their books that's a good question tom do you know uh yeah the way i would read it we haven't seen the rules yet but if they're selling that corn uh into the market then that's a separate commodity and that would open up a new 125 000 opportunity for them in addition to the 125 they have for dairy if they're if they're using the corn as feed for their dairy cattle i think that would be a tougher case to make we haven't seen the rules but you know if they're selling corn uh into into the commodity market um i say from what i've seen yes they would have an opportunity to um get direct payments for the corn in addition to the direct payments for the dairy uh up to 125 cap on each i just want to note that with the projected losses in may and june most farms are going to hit that 125 000 cap within a couple of weeks yeah we have one farm that um we figured out the other day is going to be like is it 70 some thousand a day michael or a week it was it was uh 70 000 a week that they were losing um that is one of the larger if not largest farms in the state but the projected losses in may is going to be about a five dollar per hundred weight loss so that farms losses are going to go up even more and it'll it'll really hit the smaller and medium farms as well so um 125 000 i'm sure will be appreciated but it may be used up rather quickly yeah that's where it's just it's just i i've got i've got i've got two two estimates up on my screen and i'll be happy to share both one of them has um a uh 2000 cow farm hitting that cap uh the other one has a 375 cow farm hitting that cap and so um you know i'll look in both over in detail but uh it's it's really hard to um to to estimate accurately hopefully some of the economists will be able to narrow it down for us better than that those are the two i have in front of me so um it's it's hard to reconcile that big difference it's interesting to hear though that what you're hearing in the field from the farmers uh i'm i'm sure uh you folks uh have heard and seen the letter from dfa that they sent all their guys about cutting uh production by 15 percent uh on may one um and of course the the dumping procedures that are happening right now um because they they claim we had a meeting uh last thursday that the manufacturers are you know uh they're running basically at capacity like cabbage cheeses um even taken some of the administration uh into the plant to to help boost their production uh of cheese and and yet the price of milk is uh is tanking did was that you tom what's that i i thought i heard somebody trying to cut into the conversation and i mean no well is there any are there any other comments uh was there anything else michael that that we needed to pick up on and uh so uh committee members anything else that you want to ask if not um i guess a couple of you got um so thank i want to thank the congressional congressional delegation on behalf of the committee really um you know i want to thank you for your time today but thank you also for all the hard work you've been doing and um you know we'll um we'll try to stay in touch and because we're going to try to develop a program for our Vermont folks amongst us so um with that uh thanks a lot for uh participating i know what the committee like to um hear from michael on on where we were or where we are with that program have you got something short michael that you could uh you could present uh up to today well all i have is uh the state assistance program that the legislature enacted in 2007 it would be very similar and it's very similar to what i understand the direct payment from from USDA would be it would cover that loss between the projected price and the estimated price over the next three to five months um there is that question of whether or not you subtract out the dairy margin coverage payment um in 2007 you did subtract out the milk payment which was the predecessor to to the dairy margin coverage and then it's then it's a question of appropriation how much what the cap would be and how long i can send you the 2007 language it's pretty uh we would just need to adjust the formula i believe and then answer some of those questions i just noted and i think if you want to do a program it's um it's pretty kind of set up the language from 2007 to to address this particular issue in what the what i was thinking uh yeah go ahead and and we'll get that out to all the committee members uh michael um and what i was thinking is you know we would take the projected price that that costs to produce milk or like the 1950 100 weight take um the the base price of what farmers are getting paid through the federal order then add on the monies that the feds are going to the congressional delegation the feds are going to put in and then work with that number between what the farmers are actually receiving from the programs and what they should be receiving and figure out a a place in between there are up as high as we dare to ask for um to to for a state program and uh so you know it would be good if if our committee could think about this um as we we don't have a whole lot of time to think about ag with colleges closing and and uh everything else but uh think about you know where we might be able to go with this and and uh we'll try to get together uh next week maybe earlier in the week uh if if something positive has happened so is there any further questions or no everybody's good to go well we'll see some of you this afternoon on our next meeting and thanks a lot um uh for your time i think we've had a a good meeting thank you michael and thank you linda