 Good morning, everyone. This is a joint hearing with the House Agriculture and Forestry Committee and the Senate Agriculture Committee. It is just nine o'clock or so on April 22, 2021. Representative Caroline Partridge, and we are going to have testimony from our hardworking working lands enterprise board. And what I think we'll do, since not everybody knows everybody is we will introduce ourselves. We'll kick off with with my committee and Rodney where are you here I've got so many faces in front of me. Go ahead, Rodney Graham, Vice Chair of the House Ag and Forestry. And I represent Orange One District as to William Sound, Washington, Orange. Current First Chair, Chelsea. All right, I don't see Tom Bach yet. Terry, why don't you go ahead. Terry Norris, I represent Towns of Benson Orwell, Shoreham and Whiting. Alrighty, Vicki. Good morning. Representative Vicki Strong from Albany in the Northeast Kingdom, and I represent Albany Barton Craftsbury Greensboro Glover we lock in Sheffield. Thank you, Vicki. John. Good morning, everybody. I'm John O'Brien I represent Royalton and my home. And Heather. I'm Heather Superna and I represent Barnard, Palmford, Quiche and West Hartford. And Henry. Good morning. I'm representative Henry Pearl and I represent Cabot, Peacham and Danville. Thank you and I represent the Towns of Athens, Brooklyn, Grafton part of Northwest Minster all of Rockingham in my hometown of Wyndham. Now, Bobby, I'll turn it over to you to have your folks introduce themselves and make a couple of remarks if you'd like. Yeah, good morning, everybody. It's good to see you and I want to thank you for all the hard work you've been doing and will continue to do. I'm Bobby Starr and I, from Essex Orleans County and I chair the Senate committee. Chris on. Yeah, good morning, everybody. Happy Earth Day. Chris Pearson. Senator from Chittenden County. Oh, Anthony Pallee the Washington County. Good morning, Senator Brian Call more representing Rutland County. Great. And do we see Corey yet? I don't think so. I'll probably join on Corey is from Franklin County and Tom Bach from my committee is from Chester and represents Baltimore and over and maybe something else part of West Springfield. So, Bobby, did you want to say a few words. No, just that, you know, it's more important for us, I think they hear from from these folks. You know, you know, they've been busy. We try to keep the money flowing and in their direction so they can stay busy and keep our ag enterprises funded. And we, you know, we did do some money in the early bill that we just passed. And so, you know, I think we're off to a good start and you know, glad to hear from you and your thoughts and where we might be able to help you more. Thank you, Bobby. And I do want to thank you all and I won't take any more time. I'm going to introduce you as you as you all probably know I'm a little bit informal and so I use first names and if that's offensive just let me know and we'll switch over but answer. Once you go ahead, I understand you are the timekeeper and and you are here, right? Oh, there you're right in the center. Great. And so we've had quite a few people we'd like to hear from and we want to make sure they all get fit in so answer and go right ahead. Well, thank you all. It's great to be with you from a snowy and cold Cabot this morning. The old April surprise always happens every year, but we never get used to it. But thanks for the opportunity to talk about the Working Lands Program. I'm Anson Tebbets with the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets. On behalf of Deputy Allison Eastman and the entire team, including our director of the program, Lynn Ellen Schmoller. It's great to be with you to talk about some important things that are happening with the Working Lands Enterprise Board. And also the partners that we have are which are critical to leveraging support and working on the ground and making sure our farm and forestry sector is taken care of when they get the support they need. As Senator Starr mentioned, we are grateful for your support. Your early support, I would have to say, the governor did propose the $3 million for the Working Lands Enterprise Board and new money this year. And we were so delighted that you folks acted quickly on that. And that will help us plan over the next few weeks and months on getting that money out to the farm and forestry sector. So we appreciate your leadership on that and getting that $3 million that was in the governor's budget out to us earlier. We know there's more work to be done and that will come in another appropriation in the coming days. So we thank you for that. We also want to thank our farmers and producers who are on the ground always looking for new opportunities, their innovators. Through this pandemic we thank them for how they have kept us fed and safe. They are working hard under extreme conditions and they've done that over the last 14 months and we thank them for their leadership as well. We have a great lineup for you and we have a number of partners that are with us that are going to help us discuss some of the gaps and opportunities that are out there with financing. We're going to maybe talk a little bit about the numbers and have a deep dive in how these folks that you see on the screen here are helping the Working Lands Enterprise Board get their work done and using all the opportunities we can to leverage dollars through financing and capital. I'm going to turn it over to Eric DeLuca. Eric DeLuca is the vice chair of the Enterprise Board and he's been with the board. This is his last year. He has been with the board for nine years. So he has incredible knowledge of how the board started and how it's evolved over the time and how it's grown. So I'm going to toss it with your permission, Madam Chair, to Eric DeLuca and Eric. I'll let you take it from here so we can begin this conversation with our partners. Thanks so much, Hanson and Carolyn and Bobby. Can folks hear me okay? Yeah. Great. Thoma poster child for term limits and my last opportunity to do this kind of thing with you with this board and I'm very excited about today this Enterprise financing options committee has done great work really since it was formed in 2013. We were with you folks in November of that year and came up with some blueprints for a range of tools following our research and development that came out of that panel and have piloted two of them and both of the folks that did the those pilots are on this panel today so you can hear from them. We have a great moderator to help us with this conversation today. Jenna say non is the president of the flexible capital fund she was the lead author of the issue brief on access to capital for the new Vermont agriculture on food strategy. She's going to say more and introduce the panelists and I wanted to take a second to thank all of the panelists for making time to be with us today when we had a board meeting earlier this week. One of the board members said, wow, this is a real a list group of folks and it's wonderful that they've all been willing to take the time to engage in this conversation and we really do see today as a conversation. And we're starting from a position of inquiry to try to understand what works and what the challenges that basis now are and how tools whether tools that we've used in the past or new tools that are being piloted here and elsewhere might be useful to the challenges we face today. So with that I want to hand it over to Janice and she'll go ahead and introduce the panelists and we'll we'll get rolling. Great. Thank you so much Eric for the introduction. As Eric had mentioned my name is Janice Stange I'm the president of the flexible capital fund. I'm going to first introduce our panelists just by name. Excuse me position and organization. And then we're going to give each panelists a chance to answer a single question they'll have about a minute and a half to two minutes to do that and then from there we're going to open it up to questions and then we start the conversation going. So if I, as I say your name if folks can just raise their hand so you can identify yourself. First off we have john Ramsey who's the executive director of the Center for an agricultural economy. Jane Fury, who's the loan and outreach officer of the Corporate Fund of New England. Bennett Phelps who's the director of farmer dirt cap at dirt capital partners. Joel Moyer, the portfolio manager of the Fair Food Fund. Michael Symington, president of the High Meadows Fund. Michael Phillip, chairman of regenerative food network will belong a executive director of Vermont Community Loan Fund. Sarah Isham, who's the senior agricultural loan officer at the Vermont Economic Development Authority and the Vermont Ag Credit Corporation. John Smith, who's the vice president of the Vermont Land Trust. And last but not least David Lane, who's the senior vice president of Yankee Farm Credit. Did I get everybody. Hopefully, if not speak up now or forever hold your pieces they say. All right, well we're going to move on and we're going to start by giving each panelists a chance to answer this question. What's the most innovative or unique thing you're doing right now as it relates to financing food system and forest product businesses. You'll have no more than two minutes to answer the question. It's kind of like the business pitch event. And then we're going to move on to a Q&A session with panelists and audiences we talked about so I'm going to actually start by modeling that two minute intro. So, the flexible capital fund is a community development financial institution, and an impact investor that offers an integrated capital approach to financing growing food, forestry and clean technology businesses in Vermont in the region. So we know that businesses need not only financial but social and human capital to grow and be successful. With the flexibility in our own sources of capital, we can be very flexible and how we invest our money. We use a variety of different investment structures, including subordinated debt, revenue based financing convertible debt and equity, depending on the needs of the companies that we're serving. We bring instant access to our networks expertise and mentorship, and we're only one of a few impact investment funds in New England that offers patient equity to small rural companies that match our mission. So we're somewhat unique as an equity investor, and that we invest in companies that are built to last, instead of built to flip. We're partners in both the successes and failures of our portfolio companies and the communities they serve. And finally, as we look ahead, we want to be part of transforming our financial system from what we think is extractive to regenerative, such that our capital supports people on planet for generations to come. And as an investor that focuses on social relational and ecological returns as part of our mission, we recently received the designation as one of the top 25 transformative transformative funds in the US. So, there you have it hopefully that was under two minutes, I'm going to ask each of our panelists now to answer the same question. Tell us are the most innovative or unique thing you're doing right now as it relates to financing food system and forest product businesses and we'll start with the list that we mentioned earlier so if john Ramsey if you're available if you want to start. John, he may be the only one that is not here. Let's move on then to lane fury of cooperative fund of New England. Great. I did not mean to go first but here we are hi everybody thank you Janice. My name is Lane fury I'm based in Barry Vermont and work for the cooperative fund of New England which lens throughout the region to democratically owned and or cooperatively owned and democratically governed businesses that includes consumer owned and for many, many food coops throughout the state, housing cooperatives, producer cooperatives and worker cooperatives, and I'm excited to share right now just about something exciting. We're seeing in the worker cooperative space to support businesses that are planning for succession or retirement of a business owner to become employee owned. Specifically about an example actually across the lake and around acts that I've been working with that just sold word lumber company sold last month to word lumber worker cooperative a cooperative made up of about 40 of their 50 employees and that conversion creates great opportunity for retention of local jobs. And the opportunity to build community wealth and asset for those individuals who are kind of across a great range of pay scale. And that deal was about a $4 million deal, the cooperative fund of New England participated with capital impact partners on a portion of that sale along with a seller note and then there was a really key component that included the state development, the state agency providing a $250,000 grant as a job retention portion of that to support the equity buy in. And that's because with democratically governed businesses the equity piece can be a real challenge, because the sale price for those individual worker owners is set not based on the sale price, the equity buy in is set based on what's an attainable and reasonable demonstration of commitment as well as, you know, making sure that everybody's going to have access to an accessible piece so having that state support was a really key component of making sure that there's an equity, adequate equity for that for that conversion. Great. Thank you, Lane. And that was just about two minutes perfect. So, Beneth Phillips or Phelps, sorry, Beneth, I know how to pronounce your name. Go ahead, Beneth. Good morning. Beneth Phelps, Dirt Capital Partners. Happy to be here today. Dirt Capital Partners invests in farmland in partnership with farmers throughout the Northeast, including in Vermont. We're a technical partner for farmers around land access and transition, and we aim to support sustainable farmers with viable business models to expand through increasing their land base, thereby bringing more land under long term sustainable business management. And the goal of Dirt Capital is to provide secure land access and to transfer ownership of the farm to a farmer over a five to 10 year period. About half the farmers we work with are first generation farmers and about half are multi generation farms. Many of them are wholesale dairies, shipping fluid milk to buyers like Organic Valley, and many of them are diversified businesses selling vegetables, meat, cheese and value added products to consumers throughout the local and regional market channels. An objective of Dirt Capital is land access and affordability. We work to fill gaps in the financing space through affordable, highly flexible and secure lease arrangements. We're not looking to be duplicative of other financing options. We're specifically problem solving around gaps, be it barriers to entry for young farmers or transitioning solutions for exiting farmers. We use coordinated wraparound services and staff expertise to help farmers maintain viability and extend their resource space and smart ways with Dirt Capital's participation and allowing them to grow their operations profitably through that expanded land resource base. An example of a project that we've done recently that's been innovative in Vermont is the Honeyfield Farm Transition, which some are familiar with here in Norwich, Vermont, where we worked with exiting farmers and entering farmers who were transitioning both their business and real estate to new operators after the farmers had been operating the farm there for 30 years. We view leasing with Dirt Capital or under another situation as an important step for farmers often when they're starting out as in the Honeyfield case because they build markets, they build equity and they develop a track record and they understand what property will suit their long term operation best. In the case of the Honeyfield Transaction, we allowed young farmers who had been leasing for five years in an insecure situation to grow their business and sustainably invest for the long term by working with Dirt Capital over a 10 year lease where they'll have an option to purchase when they're ready in the middle of the lease or at the end. And we're able to work with the farmers and Working Lands Enterprise Grant to invest in the farm and get it up to snuff for their next generation of that farm's operation. Great. Thank you, Pena. Joel, Fair Food Fund. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this conversation. As Jenna said, I'm the portfolio manager of Fair Food Networks Impact Investment Fund, the Fair Food Fund. Our mission is to grow community health and wealth through the power of food. We provide patient flexible financing and wrap around business assistance to good food entrepreneurs through our Fair Food Fund. We work in New England as well as Michigan and beginning to do some work in Camden, New Jersey as well. We have the flexibility to provide debt capital as well as equity or equity like capital. We see ourselves as a collaborator with other lenders in the geographies we work. And our goal is to catalyze getting deals done for these mission-aligned enterprises that we like to work with. First and times we provide subordinated debt or near equity with limited security. Additionally, in 2020, we launched our collateral initiative, which is a credit enhancement product that de-risk deals for other lenders by providing a guarantee of up to 25 to 30% of the loan that's being offered by the other lender. This allows entrepreneurs that otherwise might not be able to secure financing access to financing by providing this additional security to a lender. In these cases, there may be a collateral shortfall or a gap in the amount of equity that the entrepreneur is bringing to the business and our collateral initiative and this credit enhancement can close that gap for the entrepreneur allowing the lender to make the deal. Also, in many cases, with our direct lending and investing as well as through our collateral initiative, we are able to provide pre- and post-loan business assistance to these enterprises to help ensure their long-term success in making, having high impact in the communities that they're working. Great, thank you Joel. I see John Ramsey you've joined us so I'm going to scoot back to you. We're just asking everyone on the panel to talk about one something unique or innovative that your organization does and keep it to under two minutes. Good morning, sorry I'm late. Our loan program, the Vermont Farm Fund is really focused on a couple of things. One is emergency loans and so in times of a fire or a flood or some kind of disaster that happens on a farm, we'll deploy the Farm Fund loan, emergency loan program and try to turn requests around within a week of receiving a request. Those loans are made at 0% interest and don't require collateral. Emergency loans usually top out at $10,000 and no payment is required in the first year of the loan. So again in times of emergency we really try to make those funds available very quickly to help offset what are often some pretty immediate challenges that farmers face. The other loan category of the Farm Fund is a business builder loan category. Those loans are amortized over three years and we charge a 3% interest rate. We don't require collateral on those loans and again we try to turn those loan requests around fairly quickly within a week or two weeks. And again often these loans are helping with very immediate needs on a farm. Often you know it's a project that comes up quickly. They need access to capital, might be receiving a shipment of animals might be investing in some piece of infrastructure for the spring to get up and going for the season. And we often will make sure that the folks who are enrolled in the Farm Fund loan program are also receiving business service support either directly from the center for an agricultural economy, or as part of the VHB Farm Enforced Liability Program. So we try to make sure that we're bringing a technical service lens to the work as well. We're in the midst of rolling out a third loan program directed more towards beginning farm and food businesses. Some of our loans are made to value added food businesses as well. So folks who are looking to expand production capacity need a larger piece of infrastructure or equipment to scale up production of a value added food product. And again these these loans are made without collateral. So they're often able to work with us very quickly and in the history of the Farm Fund program we haven't had any loans that have been completely in default we have had to rework the loans in total and we currently have in our in our portfolio three where we're allowing payments to be deferred until equipment is sold so that the loan can be paid back. I'm going to I'm going to have you stop there. Sorry, we're over three minutes just want to make sure we just get again a reminder to have folks just talk about something unique or innovative with your programs and we're going to get into the heart of the discussion after this so I'm going to go to gay Simonton next. Good morning. Good to see you. And thanks for inviting high meadows behind meadows fund is a philanthropic fund based at the Vermont Community Foundation we work closely with the Vermont Community Foundation, and having served in the legislature, I find and having worked for the nonprofit sector and private sector, I find myself often thinking about what is the role of philanthropy and different forms of philanthropic capital in this continuum of, you know, capital that goes to building a stronger farm and food sector and forest sector in the high meadows fund does three real strategies that we engage in grant making investing, and what I call meddling, ideally, constructive meddling, often connecting meddling. And the example I would give and I'm relieved that john didn't use this example, because he's a key partner in this. The example I would give is our work to support the food hub collaborative the Vermont food hub collaborative that is long and L3C that is launching this year that represents, you know, several many years worth of collaborative among four key nonprofit food hubs in Vermont. Two of the key hubs are the Center for an agricultural economy up in the Northeast Kingdom and Hardwick, and food connects down in Brattleboro. It began in 2018 as a farm to market, as what we were calling at high meadows a farm to market initiative. And that initiative really grew out of what I learned by participating and then grant round with agency of agriculture staff, by just doing a lot of listening to many, many folks out in the farm and food world, who felt like we could do more if we would connect some of our infrastructure and really think about where are the loading docs where are the trucks, where are the farmers, how do we connect from producer to storage and and cross docking to consumers and really understand every piece of that continuum and get the information back from the market to the producers and and providing help along the way. And what what pulling together. Now the food hub collaborative is at a place of launching. And it requires more capital than the high meadows fund or other philanthropic funds could provide. But I think the key role we played was. And this is what it's hard for the private sector or the legislature to do is we were providing funding, when it was mushy, when it was hard to say this is what's going to happen because you do this. It was a connecting role, it was enabling the staff of these organizations to come together to pay for some serious analysis, not just wishful thinking, which I think for monitors are really capable of doing when it comes to the value of food. So, anyway, that's a flavor of the of the role and that and that particular work we've been involved in. Thank you so much gay. Next up is Michael Phillip. Unmute myself and I'll be ready to go. Thank you everybody for for having us. I'm Michael Phillip I'm with the regenerative food network. We're based in Manchester Dorset down in Bennington County. We've been working for the last year with farm partners and food system partners to build out infrastructure in southern Vermont related to the food system. So I'll give you one example of how we work. We one of our partners is Studio Hill Farm Jesse McDougal and his wife Callie in Shaftesbury Vermont they grow regenerative sure raise regenerative sheep and poultry. Their constraint was meat processing as we know many of you know is a is a constraint not only in Vermont but all over the Northeast. So we took out a long term lease at the Adams farm in Wilmington on a USDA meat processing facility that they had started and had stopped operating in 2018. We invested about 100 $150,000 of equity from our business which is a registered benefit corporation in Delaware to get the facility back up and running. It's been operating since December as a Vermont facility. And as of as of Monday has actually been operating as a full USDA facility so that not only helps Jesse but will support at least you know 510 maybe more farms in southern Vermont with their meat processing. And off the back of that we've we're in the process of leasing a large warehouse facility in Bennington that will be a meat, you know, among other things it'll be a distribution facility but also a meat finishing facility that would support multiple small meat processors like the Adams farm. And you know that seems to be one of the best things that we can be doing for farmers here in southern Vermont. And we will, we're doing similar things in grains and small dairy and in cooperation with other farmers. One other quick example I'll give you is working with food hubs. As we mentioned, we work quite closely with food connects, food connects, you know is a is their primary function is in distribution. They want to, they want to convert over to an electric delivery system. And we give them to get a grant out of the Volkswagen settlement money we have $225,000 coming out of that to get up, get a electric truck for them they have to take a diesel and existing diesel truck out of operation to qualify for that money. And then we're, we will top that up with another $75 to $100,000 to actually buy a new vehicle. So we try and work with partners directly to fill in gaps to support the food system. Thank you very much, Michael will belong. Thank you. Hi, everyone. Thank you, Janice. Thank you. Bobby and Karen. My name is will belong jam the executive director of the Vermont Community Loan Fund and and VCLF is a community development financial institution out of Montpelier. We provide flexible patient debt capital to and business assistance to those businesses and organizations that struggle to access traditional capital sources and we are lending about $67 million annually. And one of our focuses is food farms and forest fund that allows impact focused investors to target funds to working lands enterprises. And one program we launched. I'll just talk about an innovative program that we launched with support from the working lands enterprise board. And it's one of the pilot that was mentioned earlier by Eric. And it was really our sprout deferred payment loan program. And it's a deferred payment low interest revolving loan fund that can meet the capital needs of working lands enterprises, sprout eligible borrowers include farms and other agricultural operations food processors and producers foresters forest products and other working lands businesses. And we we targeted it's most useful and has been targeted most frequently to start up our early stage operations with demonstrated or projected growth. So, this program, this product sprout offers deferred, like I said, low interest loans of up to $60,000 at 1% for the first two years, and within a 2% fixed rate thereafter. The loan fund will also coordinate comprehensive business development and financial planning and management technical assistance for borrowers as needed. So the impacts though so far the sprout loan program has had some wonderful impacts in terms of jobs and leverage. So the, just about just under $165,000 over the past several years that we live dollars that were invested into this program has leveraged. Almost a million dollars in vclf capital from our impact investors our investors. That million dollars in capital has been lent to 24 working lands enterprises. And 21 of them have been to agriculture and three to forestry or would products enterprises. These enterprises have retained a 45 jobs and project to create 24 for a total job impact of 69. That equates to about $2,400 $2,400 working lands enterprise fund dollars to job created or retained. I want to give a couple of examples. Oh my map two minutes. Yeah, I'm sorry you're two, two minutes and 30 so I'm trying to keep it short so that we can get into the conversation. That's about that. Thank you very much. Sarah Isham is up next. It's embarrassing. Sorry. I'm Sarah Isham and Vermont Economic Development Authority is governed by state statute and I think familiar to many folks on this call. And our agricultural and forestry lending is done through Vermont agricultural credit corporation. And we are a lender to farm and forestry businesses as well as processors of agricultural products, which would include slaughterhouses which as we know has had a pretty great need. We really strive to meet some and fill some of the financing gaps and many of our loans over the past couple of years have been to beginning farmers which are classified as being in business for up to 10 years. We use the beginning farmer program guarantees to farm service agency in many cases. And we've seen a pretty strong demand for these beginning farmers to expand their businesses with oftentimes with the acquisition of additional land and additional banks typically cannot cannot do the financing to help somebody expand if their prior business doesn't support that acquisition. We are able to and we very often get referrals from banks and credit unions. We're closely with other lenders including farm credit and a farm service agency. We did have a pilot project with working land enterprise board, a grant for an organic transition loan program that worked quite well as a pilot project. We try very hard to be nimble and able to respond to either the legislature or has a need for us to fill or through some other gap. Thank you. Great thank you Sarah very much. Next up is Siobhan from the Vermont land trust. Thank you. Can you guys hear me. Yeah. I'll try to be brief. I think you guys know about the Vermont land trust. I'll just say that I'm going to focus on our farmland access work and the LT is really committed to expanding our work around farm succession and transition to get the next generation of farmers successfully onto the land. At that end we've committed to doubling the pace of our farmland access work over the next 10 years, and we're actively developing new financing tools to provide more flexible transitions of land ownership for our partner farmers. We work primarily with new beginning producers, but we also work with established farmers seeking to expand their operations and also exiting farmers seeking a successor. There's a variety of reasons these farmers, maybe under capitalized relax sufficient access to low cost conventional financing and so we're trying to fill some gaps in the system. One of the tools we've developed is our farmland futures fund which is really focused on lowering the cost of capital for vlt to step into ownership and hold properties for a longer period of time to support new beginning farmers and all these different farmers growing their businesses efficiently to be ready for ownership. So this is trying to be a more patient capital and using land ownership as a mechanism for that. The farmland futures fund service a revolving loan fund for vlt purchases and we enter into, you know, they're, they're variable but we'll say on average five year lease purchase arrangements with farmers to allow them really focused on, I'm just really trying to create the space for folks to be able to make the investments in their business and their operational growth and to take the burden of of the land access land cost off off their plate for a period of time, while they do that building. We raised $12 million last year to support this fund and we're continuing to seek additional contributions and investments so that we can expand the opportunity to to serve more, more farmers through this strategy. Another important piece of this that we've learned over our time doing this work is the need for a capital fund this is another component we're really focused on is raising money for a capital fund. And as you probably know many farms require significant investments to support a viable farm operation, and one of the barriers to success for, for folks often can be infrastructure challenges that we often for my land trust will often undertake as part of our ownership, and we seek to resource that more fully and make a commitment to improving the quality of those farms during the in advance of transition. That's another kind of component of that and we of course work in partnership with our farm viability network to create those wraparound support services to secure create a more secure business planning opportunity for folks in this in the in the process and and lastly I'd say, kind of connected to this is also our far our ecosystem service work and we're really focused on trying to bring more contribution to farmers for their water quality soil health and carbon sequestration work as another kind of component of these, this overall support we want to bring to the farm sector. Thank you. Thank you so much. And last but certainly not least, bring it home David Lane. All right, thanks, Janice. Thanks to the committees and and we live for inviting me. So Yankee farm credit is part of the national farm credit system, there's 63 independent associations for banks and the funding court. But we are a cooperative. We have 1400 members. In Vermont, and we have four counties in New York we do have two counties, two counties in New York and four counties in New Hampshire as well. We're more than a lender. We actually provide financial services, such as tax payroll. Records, we do consulting, we have our own appraisal department. And so what I think part of the innovation that we've realized in the last couple years is that business development successful businesses need all of those services. We also offer crop insurances so risk management, dairy revenue protection, and that if we can combine all of those things that the businesses need in one, one place that we are finding, you know, some high success rates. The other innovation that I'll mention is our farm star program. We have a partnership with farm credit east and other association and co bank our funding bank. In total it's a commitment of 700 seven and a half million dollars. Last year, we made four investments, which was a low year for us. These are up to $75,000. They're totally based on character. And the really the borrower's ability to plan. We also provide a mentorship with that with those investments. They're five years in length. They're very flexible. They're revolving in nature. One actually last year was to honeyfield farm that Beneth mentioned. Another was to a saffron grower calabash gardens. So it's, it's an opportunity for people without the collateral to to take on this investment. Thank you, Dave for wrapping us up. So I just want to make one comment. If you, having heard from all of our panelists, we have a wide range of investment options for farm and forest businesses we have a wide range of for profit nonprofit philanthropic organizations, we've talked about collaboration, I've talked about working together, bring different types of investment instruments to the table, and all of which have a hard time thinking of one unique thing because they bring many unique things. So really appreciate the opportunity to hear more about each of the organizations, and what their, what their core offerings are to Vermont farm and forest businesses. I think we're going to move right into the next piece where we're going to open it up for questions but as the moderator I have the prerogative to actually start with a few questions to get us going. And I guess one of the things you know we can't ignore what has happened over the last year you're you're in a couple months now with COVID-19. It's really in many ways changed how a lot of these businesses that we're funding have done business we've seen many pivot, we've seen some go out of business so I want to ask the question how have you, how is COVID-19 changed how you're deploying capital or change your perspective on what the capital needs are here in Vermont for these types of businesses and I'm guessing we're probably not going to get all 12 people to answer but you know if you have a burning answer to that question I'd love to perhaps raise your hand and we'll we'll call on each of you to just talk about what's been the impact of COVID-19 and your and your perspective. Thanks Janice I would say that there are a lot of impacts of COVID-19, but one of them for me that is really clear is and it's kind of reinforced by this group of people is that until we have black brown and indigenous people at in conversations like this in addition to Lynn Ellen, we are missing we have a big gap. We need to have BIPOC for monitors participating in active ways fully engaged and with agency to talk about the gap in in services and capital available to if we want to have a diverse a more diverse a more diverse farm and for a sector. So that to me and I, I've been thinking and working about on this for a while and I know all of us have programs in mind and our work and are working to be more open, but we need BIPOC led initiatives and organizations at tables like this is is one big take away from last year for me. Okay, other thoughts from the panel. One of the things that we saw come out was. We saw a gap in small businesses so proprietors, even and including those from diverse communities. Struggle with how to access the resources that were being made available in response to COVID, whether it was state or federal resources. Some had access to some sophisticated networks, whether they be chambers of commerce, but many did not. We're not participating or did not have access to some of those networks. And struggled with how to engage in state and federal with state and federal resources how to apply how to understand and really needed assistance to make effective use of them, or in too many cases, just abandoned pursuing those kinds of resources. I think it behooves us when we start providing that kind of resource quickly, and wanting to with an incentive of trying to move money through the system quickly that we lose people and we need to be aware of that that we lose people who cannot, or are unable, or uncertain of how to access those resources. Any other thoughts from the panel. Like, oh, John, I see your hand up. Thank you for raising your hand. Go ahead. I would echo what will just said from our own experience, providing technical assistance to farm and food businesses but I would also say that access to capital for infrastructure on farm storage and aggregation and delivery functions is a great need and an ongoing need as as many farms, transition away from dairy into other forms of our culture that require longer term storage facilities and distribution facilities to get their products to market. How our own infrastructure was stretched incredibly thin when coupled with all of the hunger relief efforts that were going on as well so I see a correlation there between food access and market access for for farms and the need for capital infrastructure for for those things. Thank you john. I'm actually going to throw in my observation over the last year and a half. We work with a lot of companies that are early in growth stage businesses in the food system and higher up in the value chain so primarily in manufacturing, excuse me and distribution. But what I have seen is a lot of our companies have had access to low cost no cost debt through the federal programs. PPP loans EIDL loans, but many of those businesses just can't can't even support that on their balance sheet so no matter how low cost the debt was, it really didn't make sense for them to take on more debt on their balance sheet but what they really needed was equity investment and equity like capital whether it's grants or true equity, and they were having challenges. There are three of our portfolio companies were in the middle of an equity capital raise when COVID hit, and every all of those dollars dried up. Some of them were able to pivot their business model and just hold steady, but even now as they're trying to go back to the equity capital raise that they need to to grow their business. They're having challenges finding investors who are willing to have the wherewithal to put money into these food and forest businesses so that's an observation that I've, I've seen any last observations on this question. If not, let's let's move on I'm I guess. You know, and this is a little more specific to farm transition and land financing but we, you know we're an aging state and that includes an aging entrepreneurial population. And farm transition and land financing are particularly challenging issues for Vermont. So I'd like to hear from those who work in the area of farm transition and land financing to maybe speak to this. This challenge. Yeah, Janice, I missed a little bit of the beginning of that. Can you say more, like, can you narrow it down a little bit? Well, you know, you've talked about what products you offer, but what are some of the biggest challenges to farm transition and land financing that that you're seeing and especially, again, put it in the light of COVID because we're, we're in a while. I mean, the impacts of COVID will will have ramifications for food and forest businesses for a long time. The biggest thing that we're seeing related to COVID is just a quickening in the real estate market, which I think, you know, a core thing to understand about farm transitions and farm succession planning is that when it starts to grow, it's a very slow process. And there's sort of a probably ideal length of time that's works for everyone in terms of the new generation getting up to speed and be being financially ready to take over and the exiting generation, you know, exiting on their own time. And right now we're seeing a lot of properties come on the market that are moving really quickly. And I think that's been a challenge for farmers and for entering farmers to maybe compete with non farmer buyers or others who are acting in the marketplace. And I think it's meant that farmers and our conservation partners that we work with frequently are coming to us with things that they see kind of flying in and out of the market that folks have been holding on to for a long time and are now listing. And so that just speaks to the importance of conservation, I think, and of working together on these pieces to make sure that conservation is available for farmers who have viable business models to work on and that that's really been a covert impact that we've seen is that that quickening up the real estate market. In terms of other challenges that we see across the all of the financing options here are critical to have on the table for these kind of transfer transactions to work but I think the chance of success of the transaction and everyone's happiness with it really comes down to the quality of the decision making throughout the preparing for it, the execution and the support around the actual actions and execution and around what happens after as that that new enterprise or new operator is trying to succeed under new conditions. And often when an operator is taking over a business there's going to be an increase usually in the financing needed for that business or in the debt load that the business needs to support in order to continue because often a successful business that's able to transfer is going to have paid down some of their debt in their later stages and then when they transfer a newer enterprise might have more of a mortgage or lease than they would later in business. And so to me when I see people succeed they've really done their homework in preparing for the transfer on both sides and they have a good support team around them and that goes to the services that Dave talked about and that others mentioned with Farm Viability, Yankee Farm Credit Consulting, at Dirt Capital we provide a lot of wraparound services on our transactions and try to focus on that execution that walking farmers through the execution of those succession deals that we do all the time and try to become I think specialized at because we envision that farmers might do that time of transaction once in their lifetime but we do it repeatedly and so we try to help with the pitfalls because of that repeat execution and so I think to the degree that we can share success stories and narrate around what makes these transactions successful and around how farmers should prepare and have realistic expectations on both sides. It's useful information for farmers on the ground to know that there's a lot of decision making and support that goes into making a transaction successful. It's having this capital available and flexible but it's also how to use it when to use it and those pieces of information as well. Thank you, Beneth. Any other other organizations that focus on land acquisition and trans farm transition want to chime in. I'll just agree with Beneth that those are all really important points that she made and that it is time consuming work and that sometimes I mean that's why sometimes BLT is able to jump in maybe insecure property but a lot of planning and work needs to go into finding the farm buyer and working with someone to set up their business for success and sometimes we find that we need to disappoint people because they might be interested in the property but it's actually maybe not the right fit for them or the right choice and we really help them kick the tires and think through the pros and cons of certain opportunities that come their way. So I just say it's complex and time consuming and important work and it's great to have a range of partners in this space. Thank you, Siobhan. Dave, Lane. Yeah, I'm also going to agree with Beneth and, you know, it really is about the planning. And you really can't think of just the land itself, you know, so a business, especially an ag or a forestry business is made up of the land, labor, equipment and and other inputs. And it's the capital that gets all of those. But you have to look at how that capital is going to come back into the business through profits. What what your debt coverage is you know how much can you afford to pay back if you're borrowing the capital. So yeah, it really is about the planning. Bringing together a strong team and making sure that that you look at all of those things that you need not not just the land alone but all of the other things that that are uses of capital capital is just the the medium it's the glue that holds it all together but the other pieces are what make up the business. Great. Thank you, Dave. It looks like we have a question from the audience. Really, many of us on the panel have talked about infrastructure being a critical component of the needs these businesses. So what are the needs when addressing infrastructure with farm and food businesses, maybe those who spoke about infrastructure financing can elaborate on that so if you want to answer please just raise your hand so I can see who's who's wants to answer. No, Sarah. Yes, the infrastructure is so vitally important and it's something that we actually talk with the Vermont land trust about as well. Sometimes it's the housing that is a really critical need and occasionally there's a farm that doesn't have adequate housing for the farmer and that is something that we, we can really look at and in some cases we can either upgrade, or we can replace housing that's not adequate. And then we look very closely at what the infrastructure is and whether financing might be needed in order to do some improvements. Again, right now that is particularly challenging because of the high cost of construction materials. So, you know, it really takes a lot of business planning and thinking through what are the investments that are going to help the business be more profitable and sustainable and yet that are affordable. Thank you Sarah. Yeah, I just wanted to add that sometimes it's the like invisible infrastructure that can be the most important. So, water supplies, septic systems, just many of those kind of key pieces that can be very expensive and outdated and or not properly designed when you're getting into a new farm operation so that's where I'll just say Vermont land trust has replaced many a septic and that many a well and those are really important components among other kind of housing related infrastructure needs. Thank you. I want to dig a little bit deeper into some of the, the innovative work that is being done around cooperative so Lane. Can you talk a little bit about what you're seeing in the world of cooperatives and maybe go into a little more depth and what you've mentioned in your introduction. And why, why are cooperatives so important to the food system. I have a broad question thanks for the question that because cooperatives can, it's just a structure of business ownership, but it can be applied in so many different ways so I can start with the food cooperative system. The many consumer cooperatives it's counting this morning I think about 14 across the state. The neighboring food cooperative association provides a lot of support for the coops throughout the region so they have a lot more information about the specifics of it but those food coops are really key anchors for a lot of local farmers local food products and provide a huge, huge outlet retail outlet for a lot of those partners so that's, I think one of the key pieces in the in the Vermont food system and then as I was mentioning I think there's a growing number of food businesses that are either starting up establishing as we're growing cooperatives or, or converting to or grown cooperatives, and I would just kind of echo that all of the things that I heard about farm transition from Beneth and Chavon where are and Dave are completely transferable to all of those food system businesses so we have a number of food retailers for food producers who either have done that or are looking at that opportunity for transition and that requires the same kind of sort of wrap around services of technical assistance ongoing business planning and patients can take a long time and also the challenges that Beneth mentioned specifically around taking on new debt even for a successful business that you know adding a different kind of debt service and a need for ongoing working capital is there for any of those businesses that are transitioning as well. But I think the real opportunity is in retaining local jobs for those conversions and supporting local food systems because cooperatives are established, you know, by the members to fulfill a communal need or service. And so that means that that there isn't going to be a shutdown or an acquisition that's going to that's going to imperil those jobs or those the access to those services. I don't know if I got all the way I don't know if there's more specifics to the question. That's it great thank you so much and now I guess let's go ahead and open it up to the audience feel free to use the chat, or if you can raise your hand there's a little button under reactions on the bottom of your screen that will allow you to. So I can see you so let's start with representative Carolyn Partridge. Thanks so much Janice. And I love the fact that gay brought up the BIPOC community. And our committee actually yesterday was taking testimony regarding housing for our migrant workers. One of the questions that came up and we are having testimony this afternoon from gusty league and Liz Gleason and Allison Eastman was the fact that sometimes the housing that is provided is substandard. We know that our farmers do their best. They're also struggling in particular the dairy farmers because I think those are the folks that are mostly using undocumented workers. And there are lots of issues around this, but the question I would have for you is, and I know that someone from the land trust is here. Are there ways if farmers would like if somehow we could work out a way to make better housing available to these undocumented workers. And I would say if for instance, land is conserved as their way to amend that the conservation agreement or the sale of development rights agreement in order to accommodate additional housing. This may not be the group to do that, but it, but it might, you know, and if there are folks who would have some thoughts about lending to a farmer to make that possible. That would be interesting to me as we move forward with this conversation. I'll just say that I'd be happy to talk with you about easement housing opportunities I don't know I don't want to take up space on this panel maybe for that conversation but I just would welcome representative partridge if you'd like to reach out to me directly or I can follow up with you. Sounds good. Other questions. Yeah, I have a question. Oh, sorry. Sorry, Senator I didn't see you so go ahead. Yeah. In regards just a quick comment. I'm glad Carolyn's having VHC be in and in the ag agency today. We've, we've already talked with Gus seal it about they've got a, we have a huge amount of money for housing. And Gus at VHC be as working on a plan right now to help with farm labor housing and improving housing on farms because they've, they've had a lot of problems with housing. And my other question is, I'm wondering if, if you lending folks have put together any type of study to figure out how much food can we grow in Vermont and what type of food can we grow in Vermont and utilize here. And then how much can we export to our Southern New England states and what type of products that we can export to Southern New England, and, and our farmers can make a living at producing their food because I someone testified earlier that the income on some of the farms is very low, even though they're working their butts off. There's at the end of the day there's no money. And that doesn't work for very long. So, I guess I've got a lot of questions in the air and and was wondering, and is there anything we as legislators can do to help change that. Anyone want to take that on gay, gay Simonton, you're on mute. There you go. It's getting my finding the arrow that is a hard part. I know I'm on mute. I just can't get my arrow over there. I would say that there's that you have a lot of resources available. I would check with the folks at farm to plate, because that but also the market research that was done as part of the food hub collaborative was looking at some of those questions Senator star the, the size of the where are the potential markets where enough, where enough of the food dollar can get back to the producer. And, and what is, what are the characteristics of that food that will add value in the consumer's mind. You know, to what they're willing to pay. And what of our perception of the, the mystique or a value of vermontness really does matter to the consumer what does it need to convey and what needs to be true about the food and or, you know, to get back. So I think there is Ellen Kayla again of the sustainable jobs on is very active in the New England or Janice can correct me if I'm getting the food systems work which is kind of looking at a New England wide. And what can be produced in New England, what can be, and where are the markets, because we are a producer state, not as much a consumer state if we want a viable farm economy. We need folks in Boston and Hartford and Pittsfield mass, you know, paying attention and purchasing Vermont food. There's been a lot of research and I think Ellen could give you a lot of resources beyond the research research that was done for the food hub collaborative. Yes, I would just, I would just echo that center star that the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund and the work they're doing with New England feeding New England which is a relatively new project could be a value in helping you provide some data as well as the farm to the initiative in their body of work. I'm going to move on to Senator Pearson. Thank you. I've enjoyed the conversation a lot of you have talked about filling gaps when it comes to funding and different loan structures etc that that filled those gaps, but I'm curious. And it was came up a little bit in the chat. Who, have you thought about and who should we turn to to help us think about gaps in the system so the way I hear it. If, if businesses come forward or farms come forward. In many cases to to help them out but but there are gaps I would say in our local systems where no one is looking to start a business but we badly need it for instance, we've talked about food aggregators. I think a really straightforward one to me. And of course we have this opportunity with federal money right now and potentially some infrastructure coming in another, another slug of federal money around infrastructure that we might be able to direct that way, which I think is very exciting but I'm wondering if you have ideas, or, or if you have suggestions of who we could talk to. Since your food system thinkers many of you to help us in the next couple of years as we we have these opportunities and we want to make them count. Going to open that up to the panel. Thoughts. John, go ahead. Senator we've the food hub collaborative have outlined infrastructure needs for Northeast Kingdom, Central Vermont, Rutland County, Champlain Valley, Upper Valley, and we're actively working with several organizations in those areas to identify what those infrastructure gaps are and we're trying to find what that total infrastructure cost might might be so happy to share more. Please do thank you. Others on the panel. Joel, go ahead. I just add that, that I believe that, you know, both organizations involved with John's work are nonprofits right and so Senator I think, you know thinking about how to subsidize the infrastructure and the gaps with the federal funding is is important because traditional venture capital is traditional banks aren't interested because of the risks that they perceive these food businesses have. And that's why, you know, these lenders are do the things we do because they're the traditional finance lenders investors etc. don't typically participate in these type of deals because of the perceived risk so that thinking about how government can support subsidy and and accelerate through, you know, grants and or equity type money, maybe low cost debt but as Jen has said before you know there's there's a lot of debt options already so how can we really accelerate with different types of financing with government subsidy. I just add to what Joel said and what's been said before that capital can only get you so far. And we have a lot of capital structured in on the debt side so agree that if there was a mechanism to get more equity or equity like capital to these businesses but also what needs to come with that as business advisory capacity and the entrepreneurs themselves who have the skill sets to execute. So we think of capital in this isolated bucket but it really is part of a bigger picture of a wraparound package for an entrepreneur to be successful. So, I'll leave it at that representative, John or Brian. Thank you Janice. I guess I have a process question which is. I think the base budget at the agency of ag for working lands is somewhere around half a million a little above that. And then a pandemic comes along and unexpectedly, we might have 10 times that in the budget. In one time funding and so I just wondered how does that money. What are the plans to get that money out into the our ag and our food food market community. And I just wondered if a lot of it works its way through some of as Bobby said the the lending folks here today. Eric. You want to take a stab at that. That sounds like a working lands enterprise initiative question and the folks from the agency of agriculture food and markets may want to weigh in from their, their perspective. And potentially any of the other agencies that play a leadership role collaboratively in the program because it is a collaboration between three state agencies and that's one of its unique strengths. So, you know, is one of the key steps towards the response to that question and that's why the working lands enterprise board and his enterprise financing options committee wanted to make up a clear effort to engage you folks at this stage of the conversation and have questions come up and have these various subject matter experts weigh in on what they're seeing in terms of what works and what's needed. From here, the board will be meeting in a in a more in depth strategy session than just a regular board meeting, in order to look at exactly that question looking at the funds that are appropriated across the different programs. We may be used historical uses of funds, both with our various grant channels and then across our portfolio with additional programs like will belong a mentioned the Sprout program to to address these issues. And so we look forward to engaging with you in an ongoing manner and this conversation today is an example of the transparency and and due diligence that that the board and the initiative is committed to. From the agency bag want to make a comment and send did you want to. Sure. Thank you. Thank you, Janice. Yes. It you know it is an independent board and we manage it at the agency and we have partners with the commerce agency and also Forest Parks and Recreation and they're at the table with us as well. So we've had conversations already about the strategy to use this, you know, what's in a lifetime money that we received recently and the ongoing support that we've had over the years. And we talk about infrastructure a lot of it. Keep in mind that what's on the table also that's being proposed by the administration will help agriculture in many ways. We mentioned water and sewer. There's a component in the in the governor's proposal that invests in water and sewer and that could help dairy processors that could help meet processors that could help farmers as the Land Trust has indicated. All the stuff sometimes is not that sexy but it's the foundation. It makes it makes businesses more affordable and sometimes it's very pricey. So this opportunity to spend dollars on infrastructure whether it be broadband water sewer climate change pocket is there that there's an opportunity for farmers there and you mentioned housing earlier. We've been meeting with the housing commissioner Josh Hanford over the summer about addressing the housing issue on farms. So I think that is moving forward. There's tremendous amount of money as you mentioned that is being dedicated to housing and we've had discussions to make sure that there's an opportunity to look at farm housing within that component. So all these things are really positive and we're trying to be strategic. We're trying to be, you know, really focused on we don't want to lose this opportunity. So we need to engage as many people as possible and the folks on this panel are key key people in that. So just some thoughts overall on them on the projects. Michael. Go ahead. Yeah, I just as someone who comes from the, you know, equity side the private capital side of the equation. What I think limits, you know, some of the private capital coming in is that they need to see, you know, an overall approach to, you know, what the food system, you know, what is the vision for the food system in Vermont and, and the region and New England. And sometimes if it's, if it's a Vermont only solution, sometimes it's hard to bring money in from outside, you know, to just look at Vermont only solutions. And, and, you know, I think, you know, as as Ellen has been working and Vermont farm to play, I think everybody understands that getting this food outside of Vermont is critical. So, taking a broader approach, you know, to really say how does the food system of Vermont fit in with the food system of New England, and what is our overall strategy, I think will attract private capital into the region. And one of the, one of the important things about this call and, you know, one of the work we've been doing recently with Lynn Ellen and, and meeting with Anson and his team has shown is that if we can bring in private capital and match it with grants and debt so it's this whole group together, that's really that's what the private capital wanted wants to see that their private money is going to be leveraged with grants and with, you know, with low interest loans from both the private sector and the public sector, so that there's more money overall going into the system. And I think if we take that overall approach there is money available there's lots of money going into the food system you know that if you talk about COVID related things there's probably more money coming into the food system now than any time in the last 10 or 20 years. It's just, it's just not always coming here because sometimes people don't understand what we're trying to do. So I think we have to do a better job communicating that. Thank you, Michael I would absolutely agree with that just one other point that I'll make is not only can we leverage private dollars if we take a collaborative approach to the grants and the and all the other federal money coming in but we can also leverage money coming out of Vermont into Vermont I'll give you an example. We have a company of food system business down in southern Vermont mama says that what did was raising equity and we invested a small component of that equity raise because we only could do a certain we brought in investors from New Hampshire and from Maine to potentially participate to participate in that equity round because they saw the value of that company and what it was going to offer for all of New England so to get a New Hampshire investor in a Vermont business when it was difficult to get equity capital in Vermont at all was was a good thing and I think we have opportunity to do more of that across New England to bring in patient equity investors who are interested in the New England wide food and forest system Dave and then gay. Thank you Janice. So, to Senator Pearson's question. If there are missing gaps in the infrastructure. My first thought is that there probably are entrepreneurial or business opportunities there. If there's a need that's not being met. And, you know, I think you mentioned it Janice you know this human capital piece so what what do you need to start a business, other than capital is really the human capital you need the entrepreneur. And so investing in allowing entrepreneurs to develop their plan to bring together, which takes time right, but investing in entrepreneurs early to develop the plan to bring together their potential management team to make sure that their business model will be successful, or hopefully successful. And if we can have all that together. That's when, you know, good ideas, good management, a team that can execute will attract capital, be a private or or loan capital. So, think about investing early in the human side. Thank you Dave, I know we're coming up on 1030 Lynn Ellen is 1030 our stop time at this point. It sounds like yes okay gay I know you had a question but I'm Eric had mentioned he wanted to just have some closing remarks. So I think we'll have to leave it at that and appreciate all the panelists and thank you to the legislature for having us here today. And I enjoy nothing more than yielding the floor to gay so gay if you want to be super brief I want to give you a chance to get your voice in. Thank you feel free to cut me off as you need folks go ahead gay if you want to say something very brief. Well I would just say. One thing I would just I really want to stress is how important. You just heard people are the support along the way, the farm and forest viability program is key. Yes, we need infrastructure but we need the planning the support way in advance of a farm transition and for years afterwards, entrepreneur, you know, anyway that that is a key element that isn't sexy, we know it works, and it's just critical. And the other thing I spoke with john legacy the other day in hard work who milks jerseys sells to graft and and his his comment to me, this is more about our mental infrastructure is people get stuck on what a farm is, and we need to put it in farms as being, it isn't necessarily one farmer with one farm business, selling to another farm business in a turnkey operation. The buyer could be many farmers working as a cooperative, or community trust like this, though the work that's going on at the commons. We need to, you know, expand what we think of as a farm, and have a variety of tools in terms of the legal structures that can support that. His comment was, I'm asked all the time well do this doesn't look like my grandmother's farm, and his comment was would you want to go to your grandmother's school, would you want to go to your grandmother's hospital. We have this, you know, this this tight bucket around what we think of as a farm farms are changing and the face of farming is changing and we need to welcome that it's exciting. Sorry. I'm going to be incredibly brief. First, I just want to thank all of the legislators who've made time to be with us today, and also the board and the committee and the panelists for sharing their, their time and wisdom and just want to, you know, it was great to hear the panelists follow up on the question that came in and it just highlights how this program is unique in terms of both being a partnership across multiple state agencies and a public private partnership and a partnership across the agriculture, food, bars and wood product sectors. The four things I'm going to say incredibly briefly are just reflections on things that I've heard in the conversation that I wanted to highlight. In terms of engaging black indigenous and people of color entrepreneurs and businesses that finding and centering highlighting and partnering actively with networks that come from and support and have the trust of those communities I think is a way to ensure that when these things happen they happen in the way that reflects the needs of the BIPOC entrepreneurs and businesses and entities. The Farm Start program that Dave Lane mentioned was cited in the research and development that led to the Sprout program that Will noted came out of the work that this board did and now has been piloted across two or three tranches of funding. So I think you can see those synergies across time and my hope is that today can be a springboard to other future success stories just like Sprout was informed by and made an effort not to duplicate Farm Start. These leads to own in the farm transferring landscape for financing is really important because we did a panel on this with the farm to play financing cross cutting team and what we learned was that that on ramp for the incoming entrepreneur the incoming farmer is a key success factor and so both with Vermont Land Trust and dirt capital partners and others trying to create that holding environment so that the that the incoming farmer is set up for success. I think is a key point I wanted to highlight and lastly, the idea of access and the role of bringing the farm, the food access access to be able to eat piece of it with the farm viability and business success part of it is really key and I just wanted to mention briefly that everyone needs program because just to realize that that's a program that was piloted by a private business skinny pancake and then was able to work with partners across the state and legislature and federal funding to make it available to a wide community of folks to the people who were impacted by COVID to eat restaurants that were impacted by COVID could work and be paid and create food and then food could be grown in state and then and made all the way through to accessible to eaters. So with that I just want to thank everybody again and I'm happy to hand it off to Bobby and Carolyn to close this out. Thank you again for your time. Eric, thank you very much we really appreciate all of your time. I think this has been really helpful. And I just have one housekeeping question and Linda do we have does the house stay on this call and move into our break and then further work or do we leave. You stay. Okay, we leave. Yeah, okay zoom etiquette here we go. Yeah, and thanks a lot panelists for being with us very interesting got some good points and you know if you have any other comments you'd like to send to us. Feel certainly free to do that and hopefully working together will will accomplish something. Thanks again. Yeah, thank you all.