 Hi, this is Pat McDonald, your host for Vote for Vermont, where our tagline is Listening Beyond the Soundbites. Tonight's topic is Farming in Vermont is a Sophisticated Business. Ben Kinsley is here. He's the founder of the Imperium Advisors, specializing in public policy solutions, grassroots advocacy, communications management, and government information management. And he's a co-host and co-producer of Vote for Vermont. Ben, good to see you. Thank you, Pat. And our special guest, you've been on before. I've been on before. I'm back. He's back for a second go around. Anson Tevitz, who's the Secretary of the Agency of Agriculture, Food, and Markets. Thank you very much. Great to be here. What did they add those other things on? I don't know. But the most important was food. Yes, that is. That's a really good one. Food and markets. Don't forget that. That's my favorite thing anyway. I know. Yeah. So anyway, I'm gonna be a little transparent here. Much of this show is focused on an article that I read in Vermont Business Magazine, and I would really encourage you to read it, because it's very interesting. You'll learn all about the title of this thing. It's Anson Tevitz, the Quintessential Vermonter. That is so cool. I had to look it up, but exactly what Quintessential means. But that's good. And it was written by Joyce Marcel. Yes. And I got a little help from the Agency's website here, but most of the questions will focus on what was said and written about Anson in that article. So I would hope you would pick it up and read it. Yeah, I had a great time with Joyce. She spent a few hours at the Agency, and it was a nice conversation. She's been doing those cover stories for more than a decade, I believe. Oh, really? And very in-depth, and she spends a lot of time with you, which is kind of what we're doing here, spending a little bit of time talking about. And then you sweat to see what that... Well, yeah. What the finished product looks like. I'm still here. I still hold the title, so I'm okay. But hasn't read it yet. Susan sent me the article, by the way, my sister. She said, here's something from about Anson. I said, oh, thank you. Yeah. Well, this whole show is kind of about you and what you do and your agency and all that stuff, but we ask all of our guests to talk a little bit about themselves, their background, you know, why they're... What they're working on, that's interesting, that kind of thing. So, what do you... Tell us a little bit about your background. Well, I grew up on a dairy farm in Cabot, which I still live there. I still live on the land with my family. From there, I went to school. I went to... I was a big Red Sox fan, and I listened to the radio, listened to WDEV all hours of the day while milking cows. And that sort of prompted me to think, well, maybe I want to go into radio, or close to the Fenway Park, actually, and went to school at Emerson College, which was a communication school. And from there, I was fortunate enough to graduate from there in 1987, and then came back and my first paying job was at WDEV Radio, working there in reporting news. So I did that for a while. 1994, I went into television, working for WCX, and I worked in Rutland for a year. At that point, I didn't know. Yeah, I worked in Rutland. I guess I didn't make a big enough impact in my storytelling, if I was down in Rutland. I'll have to review my stories down there. You have to, because I didn't know I was from Rutland. Yeah, no, but I loved that experience, because I didn't have a lot of knowledge of Rutland in southern Vermont. I also got down into Bennington, and also over to Brattlebone, Wyndham County, in Windsor County. So you covered a territory, not necessarily a beat, where you had a specific thing. So Rutland was fantastic, strong community like it is today, strong community. And I had a grand time there for about a year. But then when someone left the Montpelier Bureau up here at the State House, I could get back closer to the cows. And so I worked at a Montpelier and lived in... Were you running a farm? Yeah, yeah, I was still milking. I was still, I would come back on weekends and help my parents milk and so forth. That'd get me home real quick. Yeah, Friday nights, I'd get in the van and the only issue was, if I had breaking news in Rutland, I had somehow had to get back there quickly to cover it, because I was also the Bureau, you were shooting your own material. So you were the photographer as well. Oh, wow. So you had the gear, but I always had the gear with me. Right. And I only got caught a couple of times having to, I remember going, there was a bad crime in Stockbridge. I think it was Stockbridge. And it was Christmas Eve or something like that. And it was a serious crime. And during an ice storm. So I was white-knuckling back to get the video that you needed back then. So I only got caught a couple of times. But I did learn how to take pictures and do the whole thing. They call it one-man bands. That's what they used to call them. So then I did that for a while. And then I left about 14 years in the Capitol Bureau in the State House. I used to cover you when you were Motor Vehicle Commissioner. When you corrected that, whatever was going on over there and got that place back in shape. And that was a good job. And Labor, you were also, I probably covered you then, or probably interviewed a million times. All good news, of course. Of course. I was on, let me sit, you guys, sit on W. Oh yeah, you can quote me. You can quote me. Yeah. Did you have, did you have, did you still have your mug? Yes, I do. We have it in our cabinet. Yeah. That was, that was the gift if you agreed to be on the show. Well, this is our mugs, but I gave so many away. And then I went and re-priced them. And so you're not doing that anymore. I tell you, at CAX, they're under lock and key. Oh, sure. Because they disappear. So you had to. So that was a big deal. If you were allowed to even get the key to go in there and get the guest. Oh, I did have one. So you keep it. And they had one for a while that had a gold rim and people were putting in the microwaves. You can't do that. You can't do that. Oh. It makes it look like a stalactites and stalagmites. Oh, I didn't know that. Because all the side just burns. Yeah, that's good stuff. Oh, that's great. You still have. Something to remember, WCAX, right? Yeah. You can quote me. You grew up there. Very cool. I have to tell you this real quick. I know I was supposed to be interviewed by a radio station in Rutland in the Rutland area, and I got caught up in an accident. So I'm trying to make it on time. I stopped at Peg Flory's house and I said, Peg, I'm supposed to be interviewed. I said, can I use your phone? So I sat in her living room and she's feeding me answers. It was a good interview. Yeah, that sounds like something that Peg would do. Yeah, she's there. Oh, help. Don't worry. Oh, that's wonderful. It was cool. Yeah. So one thing you didn't mention that's more recent past or actually current, I guess, current news. You have quite the prolific Twitter feed, which I definitely highly recommend anyone watching to follow that. There's a lot of really, really interesting stuff on there. You know what's it's been keeping it busy now is ticks. Oh, yeah. This is the summer of. So I've been every I've gone for four walks and every time I've come back from a walk recently, I have had a farm visit today and I'm at the office and I'm at the computer and I'm like some things. I feel something crawling on me and it's relevant to what we do because we have an entomology department at the agency. So there we go out and do a tick surveillance. So we're out in the springtime looking for ticks. And then we test them in case they are carrying the Lyme disease and we're working with the health department. But lately I've been photographing them and getting video of them crawling on me and posting them on Twitter and then putting a link to people of what you're supposed to do. You know, it's supposed to, you know, take frequent showers if you go out. The other thing is to put your clothes on high in the in the dryer for like 15 minutes and make sure that you know, you just all like. But I think the main thing is making sure every time you go for and don't walk in the tall grass. If you can help it, I think I've been in the tall grass too much lately. Yeah, you know, and you have your animals. Although, yeah, animals and I have a white dog. So it's easy to spot a tick on a white dog. I use to say, I put white sheets on my bed all the time. Now I've got all these fancy flower matching stuff. No way. No, I put white just when the dog gets on the bed. I want to see if he's bringing anybody with him. And that's when we go out for surveillance and doing we do drag a white sheet across the fields and it does pick up the ticks. So you can see them and then we put them in. So today's adventure was I went downstairs a couple of floors in the agency and they put it in a thing and they're going to tell me what it is that the the expert wasn't there. Was it in your? No, I was just crying. It hadn't it hadn't been on very long and it hadn't attached itself to me. But this particular year seems like we do have a lot of ticks. They're everywhere. Do we have those kind that don't that make you not like meat? I don't know. I hope not. I hope that would that would be horrible. Over the edge. Wow. Can you imagine? Wow. It makes you nauseous when you when this is true. I know that they don't tell us when when you when they get by to you. You don't want to eat meat. Wow. That's that would be that would be I had lamb sausage today. I was wonderful. So I used to I used to live in Fishkill, New York for a couple of years. I lived there and they had literally the highest tick concentration in North America in Fishkill, New York at that time. I don't know if it's still true or not. But and we would be just outside in the yard and come in with like three or four ticks on us every single day, every day. So just kind of something that we got used to. I think we're going to have to get, you know, just someone said I was a tick magnet. Is that a compliment? Something else that tick magnet. That's called tick magnet. What a great thing for your recipe. All right, so back to the show. So in this article, you they said farming in Vermont is a sophisticated business. And that's a quote from the article. And I just wanted you to explain how things have changed these days for our farmers. Things we ask a lot of our farmers now. We ask them to, you know, take dairy, for example, we ask them to produce a quality safe product. We ask them to comply with water quality regulations and food safety regulations. We have a public that wants to know more about what they're doing and how they produce it and how they're taking care of their animals. Technology, of course, is a huge part of what they do. We have some farms that have transitioned to using robots to milk the animals, which is very sophisticated. And that could be a small farm. I was at one in Washington recently and they have about a hundred cows, but they have two robots. And it's a game changer for them because it changes their quality of life. No longer do they have to be in the barn at a regular schedule. You know, you're going to milk the cows at least twice a day, usually 12 hours apart. So they don't necessarily have to be in the barn at 430 or five o'clock in the morning. They could be doing something else. They could be doing something else on the farm. They could be getting their kids ready to go to school or child care. Same thing in the afternoon. This family can now attend a sporting event if they wanted to or go to another meeting, quality time. And of course, labor is difficult to get. It's difficult to find people who want to do that type of work. So this robotic system is helping, you know, smaller, medium-sized farms. They are on bigger farms as well. You may have four or five robots. Well, you were telling me when you were on the show, I was on that, and we've got, there's fewer, I've got notes here, fewer than 2,000 farms left in New England and about half of them here in Vermont. But you said, which I found fascinating and I've quoted you, that even though we have so much less farms, we actually have the same production, if not more, because of technology. Technology and quality and feed and care and so forth. And that is, you know, the cows may leave a certain farm, but they may even go to another farm. But production has remained stable and it has not changed. And that's, you know, that's part of the issue as far as we've, the reason farmers are not getting as much for their product now is because we have too much milk across the country. Well, I read that too. Does somebody not regulate that? Well, it's a federal system, which I think maybe five people in the world understand. Yeah, it's pretty complicated. It's a pretty complicated system based on, and in just a perspective, dairy farmers are paid for their product after they deliver it and they don't know what they're going to get paid probably at least a month later. Wow. And, you know, not many industries would do that. But that's the way the system is developed. And I think it's so complicated. No one's figured out a way to correct it or change it. But it is a complete global national system. So we can't go it alone in Vermont. We have to be part of the federal system. You know, our pluses are we have tremendous markets that we can deliver our milk to. We produce, you know, the majority, like 70 percent of the milk from New England is produced in Vermont. So we've got Boston and then we've got New York. We've got Washington, Philadelphia, big markets, big population. Yes, I buy roof brothers right in Cape Porpoise, Maine. You're wonderful. So that, yeah. So so that's, you know, that's part of the system. But yeah, we are and about 15 or 16 percent of all the dairy that's produced in the United States is exported to other countries. So when we have one or two swing, it can really impact what a farmer has paid. Price of milk is inching up a little bit now. We got a little bit of encouraging news after four years of depressed prices. It's starting to go back up a little bit. And part of that is because too many of them have gone out across the country. This particular case for Mott's in the same situation as New York is in. And Wisconsin is, you know, a big dairy state. And Wisconsin is going through terrible times with their farms. They have a lot of small farms that are not going to, not going to survive. That's really sad. I know in Ireland, I think we had seven or nine. And now we've got maybe two or three. And one of them's not cows. It's just, it's vegetables and flowers and stuff like that. Which is great, but it really reduced the number. Right. So we're going to talk a little bit more about tariffs later. But what are the major international markets for for milk in the United States? We send a lot of some of our whey product, whey powder to China. We also, Mexico is one of our biggest. They love our dairy, Mexico, Canada in some aspects. So all those sort of three countries that we're hearing a lot about were in the middle. I mean, for example, Agamark slash Cabot had and has markets in China where they sell some of their milk powder. Another thing that's happened is I've heard about the swine flu. There's a swine flu going on and a lot of the animals in in China are being are being slaughtered. But they were being fed some of our whey powder. So they're not asking for as much as that as there's a few animals. They don't need as much feed. So that's been an impact. So there's a lot of things that are not really working in everyone's favor right now. It doesn't take much, does it? But like you said, one thing. Yeah. You know, some of the other countries that have big exports, like for example, New Zealand is a big dairy state and they they export about 96 percent of their product to countries, you know, like China and so forth. But things like weather events, big weather events can really change. You know, they have a drought in New Zealand or it's really wet and they don't have the production to meet their markets. And the U.S. can step in and try to help that. So it's it's it's they're not kidding when we're in a global economy. You know, we kind of think war in Vermont, we can write it out on our own. It's some some can, but not everybody, but we're tied to a good or bad. We're kind of tied to a remarkable people. The farmers are they're just always my impression is helping each other and supporting each other and they're all in this together. And when I've been around farmers and meetings and stuff, they just they go. I mean, they they, you know, they they're up against a lot. And we've had a very wet spring and early summer, which has challenged them. But, you know, when they, you know, the farmers are the ones that are in their rural areas and we know Vermont. We need more support and help in our rural areas. And if a farm goes out in a rural area, it impacts not only, you know, the land and what's happening there. They're on the fire departments, they're on the rescue squads, they're on the select boards, they're on the school boards. And when that happens, it has a lasting impact across the landscape outside of that just immediate family. But they're strong and they adapt. And, you know, but this is the time I think anyone can small gestures really go a long way to help help farmers. We'll give a shout out to the farmers, because they're just they're amazing. I think they're it's a hard job for sure. It is fine. Can't get me up at two hundred. We'll get you some robots. Come on, you can't use that one anymore. We'll get you some robots. That I could do. Thank you, goodness. So, Anson, your budget at the agency is about twenty six million, give or take. And you have about one hundred and twenty six people working in the department or the agency, excuse me, and six departments, administration, food safety and consumer protection, agriculture development, public health and agriculture resources management, Vermont Agricultural Environmental Laboratory and agriculture water quality. Lots of things going on. Aren't you tired? I'm tired of just reading that list. No, let's say it's and that's one of the reasons I enjoy the job. It has a lot of variety in it. You know, we talked about ticks that one day we're talking about ticks. The next time we're talking about water quality. The next time we're talking about animal health, right? We're talking about, you know, food safety. We have weights and measures. You know, we do gas pumps. We do curbs and weight curbs. Yeah, we do scanners. So if you go into a store and and so it's a good it's it's amazing what goes through there on a daily basis, but it has tremendous variety. Yeah, but you only have one hundred and twenty six people. Yeah, that's really lean mean. Yeah, no, we're we're pretty we're pretty lean. And I and I and we have a culture there that we can do things lean in mean. I think maybe it's because a lot of us have ag backgrounds and we're kind of used to. So there's a lot of cross going on this. Yeah, and you know, and I think and we have a tremendous staff that's a lot of common sense. Try to one thing we're trying to focus on is is customer service, which, you know, is, you know, your background is huge. When they pick up the phone or send an email, it has to be done. You answer the phone, you get the information. You respond in a timely manner. You don't let it sit. And that's where we've been trying to focus on over the last couple of years. And I think, you know, everyone's name is up on the website with their phone number and actually what they do and that those sort of odd names we give state employees sometimes, you know, if it's the B if it's the B person, you should know it's the B person. It's not the, you know, some ag specialist. I appreciated your website. It was very detailed, but very, you know, easy to get around. And it was great to see the name with the face. And yeah, and cell phone numbers up there. And we're, you know, we work for the taxpayers. That's good. Good for you. But 126 is calling it close. Yeah. Yeah. So out of out of all the things that your agency does, what, you know, what would you say impacts Vermonters on a day to day basis the most? Like, what's the what's the biggest touch point for a lot of? Well, I think probably, you know, on the economic impact, dairy courses is number one. It's about a two billion dollar year industry. So if that infrastructure starts to go go away, that impacts, you know, the feed dealers, the stores, the truck drivers. And also I've got to keep in mind, we always have to keep in mind, we are feeding people. And that's what we do very, very well in America. We are very good at producing a quality product. And sometimes we ask our farmers to deliver it at a very, you know, cheap price. And but I think that certainly dairy is number one. And and I think, you know, we we have assurances with food safety. So, you know, meat inspection is very important. We on the dairy side, we have sanitation as well to make sure the farms are following sanitation practices. You know, of course, water quality is a big new lift for us over the last few years with investments in water quality. You know, people are really in tune with all of that. That's impacting them, you know, and anything that anything that involves commerce or food, we kind of have a finger in it somewhere along the way. And we are, we are, for the most part, a regulatory agency to make sure things, you know, about 80 percent of what we do is primarily making sure that we follow the regulations for consumer safety and assurance. You made a comment in the article that because of the regulations, farmers are much more involved now than they were before. And that may be while regulation may or may not be a good thing. It's good that it's making them be involved and understanding what you're doing, what they're doing, what everybody's doing. And everyone is, I mean, it's probably in the fifties and sixties when there was the new sanitation stuff came in. It was a new learning curve for everybody. But now it's a matter of fact, they know what to be done. And I think as we get into the water quality stuff, I mean, we're farmers, you know, for them, they have to have nutrient management plans where they're going to spread manure, they're highly regulated of times of year. They can spread it. There's bands, there's, you know, you can't spread on snow. All that kind of, you know, none of it can make its way to a waterway. They are inspected. All the large farms now are inspected annually. And a large farm, I define as someone that has more than 700 animals. And we have about we have about 35. We have about 35 operations. That are more than 700. The more than 700s are there inspected annually. A lot of paperwork and then we have medium operations and smaller operations. But out of the 700 of them, all of them are seeing agency of agriculture employees on a regular basis. That's great. That's great. Well, and we talk about water quality. I have never met a farmer that doesn't want to keep, you know, lakes and rivers clean. I think it's a lot of times is giving them the tools and resources to do that because a lot of this stuff, the preventative stuff, you know, takes time, resources and money to implement. And sometimes there are regulatory challenges like, you know, OK, I have a manure pit that's full. I have to spread or it's going to overflow. And then I'm going to get slapped with $20,000 in fees. And so do I do I spread, even if it's not an ideal time to spread because I'm going to run into another issue? You know, and we're always we're always trying to, you know, mitigate issues so we don't have those, you know, and really serious environmental problems. And, you know, everyone knows it was a very challenging year. You know, the public lived it. They knew that we could have maybe put the snow tires on at the end of November, but they should have been on them. They should have been on November 1, because it's snowed November 1 in Vermont and he did not leave until the middle of April. And we had snow in May this year and we had a lot of rain events. And there's a lot of rules and regulations around that. And then with these heavier water events, not only is there manure in these pits, but water is going in too. Right. So that's another factor when we get these rains that we're getting an inch or two at a time. That's going into these holding pits, which is a good thing. We want it all in there, but at some point it gets to the top where we have to decide we need to land, apply it at some point. I was going to ask this a little later, but now that we're talking about water. Years ago, the feds paid farmers to use phosphate. That's correct. And most of the water, Lake Champlain on the on the bottom, is phosphate. And so it was really a federal requirement that got us into where we are. And the farmers just did what they were and it's one of those, you know, we didn't know what the probably didn't have to know at the time what we were what was happening. But they were that is that is that is fact. And that's one of our challenges with our water quality issue. We have a lot of legacy issues and it's going to take a lot of time. And it does not take a very something people know that. And I think that helps to understand the dilemma that the farmers are in because, you know, they made us do it. And we're, you know, the practices we're doing now are we believe are, you know, having a positive impact. But over time, it's just going to take longer and longer and longer in time to get that out. But a small amount that's in the bottom, we get a good heat wave, you know, and the old science gets to going in and we've got an algae bloom. So right, we have we have algae blooms going on right now in St. Albin's Bay and and in Mallets Bay. And it's a lot of that is just legacy phosphorus load, like that phosphorus that went in there years ago and it's been sitting at the bottom and then you get really hot days like we had last weekend. And boom, and we've had a lot of rain. And of course, you have a really rainy spring and early summer. It just, you know, a lot of stuff is making its way towards those things. So it's so there you go. Lots of fun. So most of us have heard the expression value added agriculture products. Could you explain a little bit what those products are and why they've become so lucrative in the marketplace? Well, value added, for example, let's let's take cheese. So cheese, cheese. So we have we have, you know, some folks in would take dairy, they want to sell, they just want to sell their milk directly to a company. So they want to sell it directly to say to Cabot and then Cabot will turn that into a value added product. So they're making so we we define value added. They're going to the plan is do something with it. The plan is to get more money out of that, as opposed to just selling it as a direct commodity. So Vermont has been successful in the artisanal cheese operation. So there are farms that milk cows, but also make cheese and market cheese and distribute cheese. And they think that's a better model for them. They just they think it's a better situation in their in their family and their operation as opposed to just selling milk directly to someone and getting a paycheck for that. Every place I've ever camped, Cabot is always there. Yeah, Cabot is known and Cabot is a very big company. They are a major player in the cheese world. And they're again, like they're based on quality this year. They won best new product at the fancy food show, especially food show in New York City, best new product. And it was for their five year old. They developed a five year old cheese there, 100 years this year. And they wanted to have a special product from it. So five years ago, they tucked away some cheese and made it. And this stuff is fantastic. And in these, yeah, it's pretty good. And the judges determine this is the best product for you. So there's value added. We're seeing it in Maple, too. Yep. So we may have someone that's at one point was selling just maple, but they wanted to maybe I want a hot sauce and put some maple on it. So they're putting more value to that. So those are the type of things that and we have about, I think about 100 people now that were working in the dairy field alone that are working in the value added aspect of well. Things like, you know, like barrel aged maple syrup now, I think like run amok maple, those those types of things are becoming pretty popular now. And they are they are. And those and those are the type of products that the consumers are really responding to. I think with maple, the word maple, and it can't be bad. Maple and we're doing and they're combining maple and cheese. One of the one of the ones I was had a tasting once and they just took cheddar toothpicks and dumped it in the run amok. Easy cocktail party there. No fuss. Yeah, really? And it really, really. So maple and cheese. So those types of heavy topper on the side. Yeah. So there's there's a there's a I think there's a sausage that someone's putting with maple with no heavy topper in it. There's a sausage that Mackenzie just came out with with switchback in it. OK. Sure. Interesting. So yeah. But it's all it's all based on it's all based on quality and innovation. And and not it's not done without a lot of hard work, though. No, for sure. And I think everybody really respects the the seal of quality when you've got it on a product. They expect the expectations are high. Yeah, they are. They are very going to be the best. Absolutely. And we're just going to keep trying to build on that. That's great. And how how is the relabeling of maple syrup going? We did you kill that? No, we were OK on. We're OK on. And you're talking about the sugar added the thing. Oh, no, I knew that that died. But they were going to change the the the way we label maple syrup. So they're getting rid of the grading. They're rid of the grade. Yeah, you see that was done prior to when I arrived. So it's out there. It's out there. And it's it's sort of industry. The industry wanted it as a standard for other comparable to other states of what they were doing and but you're probably you're you're on the fancy and you know all that you reached to the fancy in the grade A and so forth. And then they they stopped the sugar. That is just what his mother nature at her finest. We prevailed on that. And that was that was the FDA wanting to put another label saying it was added sugar on. But it's so it's so added from what? It's all mother nature thing. But that one after three thousand comments, which I think probably two thousand nine hundred ninety nine from Vermont. Yeah, good job. Because we are the we are the largest producer of maple in the United States. About two million gallons. This last year, which is an interesting year, a lot of people thought it never really felt like sugaring because it was kind of a, you know, you know, what day it was and didn't feel it. It didn't warm up enough. It wasn't enough sun. But we produced seven percent more really great this year than last year. And we did it in a shorter period of time. It was like thirty five days opposed to fifty two fifty three days before the year before. So mother nature, you just never know. There were clearly there were a lot of times where people are just boiling twenty four hours. You can see when you write around, you can see how many people are doing that, whether it's personal, because you see all the pipes going, the pipes going through the trees. And you see that everywhere. People are really into it. Yeah, I'd say it's been another it's been another crop. You know, it used to be it was another crop, say for the dairy industry. And they put some taps in it and be another crop they could do in between seasons. But now it's there are some people that's exclusively what they're doing is they're doing they're doing exclusively maple. Technology has helped a little bit with that to increase production. Reverse osmosis, different taps. Tremendous amount of research is always always being done on on maple. The other thing I would say in the value add industry and kind of touched on, there's a lot of these almost like craft producers in the value add sector that are mostly making things like cheeses and, you know, maybe certain types of meat products or whatever. I'm thinking someone like Jasper Hill, who's gotten a lot of notoriety even nationally as a as a craft cheese producer or going toe to toe with producers in Europe, even elsewhere around the world that, you know, hasn't been seen previously. And we and those and they're relatively young companies. I mean, Jasper Hill is probably 15 years old in the scheme. So it's it's and they have supported their region and, you know, they're based out of Greensboro and Orleans County. But the impact they've had on the other aspects of agriculture in that region are extraordinary. And I think one thing that, you know, could that that model be used in other parts of the state? We have other cheese makers. We have a cheese maker and in Reading that. They pay a farmer, dairy farmer premium if they'll deliver a certain product of the way they want it. So so if they feed their animals a certain way and they deliver this as a certain quality, I'm going to give you a premium for it and it makes the cheese that they need to make. Yeah. Could we do more of that? Right near here in Websterville, Vermont Creamery is undergoing a tremendous expansion. Word Creamery. Yeah. As in maple. Yeah. We didn't mention that. They are, they are putting, you know, $15 million into that plant. They decided to stay in Vermont. Great. They're owned by Land O'Lakes. They're goat dairy, goat cheese and cow dairy as well. But they're making a bigger line for butter. Yeah. Stick butter that they're rolling out this summer. Right. They're looking for more farmers to milk goats. Cool. And you mentioned Jasper Hill. Jasper Hill is also now has some goats and they're putting on goat cheese. So there's a trend there with another option for farmers if they want to do something. And Vermont Creamery will tell you that the model is you need about 300 goats for it to be the crunch of the numbers. But they're recruiting and trying to get more people to, because they need, as they expand, they're going to need more goat's milk to meet their demand for cheese. Is there help from the state for expansion and even starting up? We have a program called the Working Lands. And Working Lands does offer business planning but also grants for infrastructure. Oh, good. So if you needed that certain cooler or that certain machine or something that gets you, that adds to your bottom line where you can add more employees or you can keep more animals on the land, it's well-received and it's very, very popular. That's good. So it's Working Lands. That's good. Because you look at the equipment that they've got on their fields and you're like, it's a whole lot of work. No, it's very, very, the equipment and it's very, very expensive, those capital investments. Well, I think we would be remiss not to mention Vermont's most famous value-add product, Ben and Jerry's, which gets sources all of their milk from the St. Albans Cooperative, right? Which is in the process of merging or being bought by Dairy Farmers of America. Yeah, DFA, Dairy Farmers of America, which is based out of Kansas. And they do have a presence already in Vermont. There are some members already that are members of DFA, but St. Albans is at the point they're in a transition and they're asking their membership should we merge with DFA and become part of their organization. So it's a big decision for them. Yeah. As the world moves, there's been consolidation in a number of industries and agriculture is no different than... Well, if they're allowed to keep their name, like you said, the land of lakes, they've got so much marketing and communication abilities that could really promote. And that's, right now, farmers, maybe 10 or 15 years ago, they could chop around and decide where they were going to market their milk. So if they wanted to be members of Cabot and maybe they didn't want to be members of Cabot anymore, they could go to St. Albans. And St. Albans, if they wanted to go to DFA, some of those options are not there anymore because there's so much milk out there. So these co-ops and groups are not taking on new members. So there's a bit of risk. There's a bit of risk. You want to hold your market. You want to be able to sell your milk to somewhere. And St. Albans, from what they tell me, didn't believe they had enough money to go back to their farmers because they're a co-op to ask for more mommies to make those investments that they needed to make to become more viable. So it's a big decision that the St. Albans members have to make. They have to push the pencil and decide, but one of the driving reasons is to preserve their market. We should do a show on that. Yeah, but I love all this stuff. I wanted to skip ahead a little bit, not to confuse, but you had a first-of-a-kind summit, Dairy Summit. And I think before we run out of time, I wanted to talk about that and all the lessons you learned from that. Why was it one-of-a-kind, unique? It sounded great. We were at the point where we talked about earlier in the show, we talked about the federal system and how difficult that is to change. But we finally decided, well, what can we do ourselves? What can we do as a state? What can we do as a group to change the conversation? What things can do we have control of? So all right, we need to get everybody in the room and we need to have an action plan. So what we did was we had a two-day summit and I think the most important part of it, it was led by farmers and we were able to get I think about 110 dairy farmers to go. We were able to give them scholarships, they were able to go and attend, be there and they told us what they think we should be doing. And part of it is they needed help in engagement with lawmakers because lawmakers are making policy, but they wanted to invite, one of the action items was they wanted to invite more policymakers, lawmakers onto their farms and see this is what a farm is because we all have a reception of what a farm is and we don't, I mean, they're all different, they're all different family dynamics, but they wanted to show them, so that was one thing. They wanted to explore, could we explore different partnerships? We talked about a little bit about the model where if they contract directly with a milk handler, pay a premium for delivering that. Could we have more of those arrangements around the state? Vermont Creamy was there, they talked about recruiting some members of farmers if they wanted to go into a goat dairy. Could that be an option for them? The state would have to probably and work on the, it's a different machine to milk a goat than a cow, those type of things. There's talk about payment for ecosystems, farmers. Could we give farmers incentives to do environmental practices that are above and beyond? There's the normal regulatory aspect. Could there be a payment for that? So those type of discussions, and I think one of the biggest things I think it helped the mental health a lot. It was kind of a depressing time, but I think getting a couple hundred people in the room saying what can we do and spend some quality time, we heard. They find out they've got the same problems, it probably helps. It helps, and sharing information. And then we just didn't wanna have a summit at the end of the day that said we held a meeting and so we've gotta come out and we gotta do some things. They wanted a dairy advisory council. They wanted dairy farmers to advise the agency of what we're doing. So we're gonna do that. We're gonna get some bus tours in September. We're gonna show people this is what's happening on farms. They wanted more public engagement. They wanted help telling their story, because the consumer now is asking farmers a lot of questions. They wanna know how their animals are cared for. They wanna know how their land is cared for. They wanna know how the product is made. They wanna know the animal's name. I mean, they really do. I'm not sure I wanna know the animal's name. They got you on the line there. You should not be named. So they wanna know all this stuff, but they need support and they need help with that. So those are just some of the outcomes. There's many more. I was wondering if it was truth in labeling because of is it real milk or not? And I just, I think some of the, I think they've got a real case there. Some of those things that they're pointing off as milk is they're not milk. And that comes from the nut-based beverages that they're calling themselves milk. We've made comments, the FDA is reviewing all that about what can they put on their label. It's just wrong. You know, it's, so there's, they're capitalized, the farmers, they're capitalizing on the milk and the strong brand of milk. But a lot of this stuff does not even need to be in the cooler. It can be, and they put it right next to the milk. So it's one of those, and the farm community just wants some truth in labeling. For sure, I wanna know what you're buying. They want more like ground up nuts in water, you know. Oh yes, right, yes. That's literally what it is, right? What is it, pulp? Wood pulp in cheese. Do you know that? No. You know the cheese containers that you buy and it's got wood pulp. There's a name they use, but it means wood pulp. So when you buy that already chopped up cheese for the table. Yeah, cheese. Wood pulp. Just, we don't buy that anymore. But that's, you know, and the other one is one of the other things that they wanted us to encourage more whole milk in schools. Yes, I think that's a great idea. Well, they tried for a while up at the state house. I hope they're still doing that. You're trying to, and that's another one that's a USDA issue. There's a lot of nutritional guidelines with that. But, you know, we all know that if you're young and it's something that doesn't taste great and it's not served properly, you're probably not gonna go back to it. So we have to make sure that milk is. That's why you put chocolate in it. Chocolate is good too. Chocolate is a wonderful repunishing drink after a sporting event. And I've seen more soccer clubs doing that. I see more as an alternative to a sugary, you know, a drink like that. But a chocolate is good for you. So a little chocolate. It's got a little protein in the antioxidants. Yeah. Good, good. A chocolate with this much whipped cream. Which is also dairy too. That's good too. And we had a speaker that came and he said, you know, the dairy folks have got to give people what they want. And he said, you know what? If we want eggnog on the 4th of July and the public wants eggnog, give them eggnog on the 4th of July. Don't just give it to them at Christmas time. And so those ideas like that and keep focused on what the consumer wants and how they want it and they'll be okay. And his prediction was, after this sort of nut phase goes through, there'll be, it will swing back to dairy at some point and the industry needs to be ready to like give them something that they want. I like eggnog in summer. Well, something that just occurred to me, you know, because you think about, you know, like the coffee industry right now, like it's all like specialty lattes. And a latte is two thirds milk. You look at how much espresso goes into a latte. It's basically milk with a little bit of coffee. And for this you say three, four dollars. Right, but it's like everyone focuses on the coffee and where the coffee came from. Why does no one paying attention to where the milk that's going into that? When it's mostly milk, where is that coming from? And that's one of those that I'm sure the milk industry is in front of all those coffee producers saying, because you can imagine the impact at one of these major coffee shops and if they're not putting milk in it or using some alternative with the impact it would have across the board because those stores are everywhere as you go now. They're popping up everywhere. Could you tell us what the Fantastic Farmer program is? Yeah. I thought that sounded pretty interesting. From time to time, we wanted to go out and just visit with farmers to see what they're doing and show, again, we're in an age where farmers need to tell their story and what they're doing. So this is not too far from what we're doing here. We're sitting around the table talking about them. We may go into the barn. We may show them, show the animals. We've done everything from, we have an operation where they have cows that are raised for beef. And then right next door, they have the shop where they sell the beef so there's stories like that. They may be custom operators where they sell the hay and they're diversified. So there's stories about Vermonters and how they run their operations and a lot of them are very good at what they do and they're willing to share their story with us. At the farmers market here in Monterre, I'm sure in almost all farmers market they've got people from farms selling their meat and I always buy from them because I just think it's better. Yeah, closer to the end product. Yeah, and you probably will not go back to some of the other stuff you may see in other, some of the bigger stores after having the freshness of it. You know where it comes from and it's... Even eggs, I buy locally and they taste different. Sure, it's just amazing to me. They just taste richer, I don't know what it is. You can definitely taste the difference between local grass-fed beef versus something that you purchase at a large retail chain. There's a definite difference. You can taste it. And so one thing that you were asked in the article we've kind of been focusing on today is what you think the biggest change in agriculture is and you had an interesting response. You said we don't slow down enough. What did you mean by that? Well, I think it's not agriculture alone. We're quick to judge and we want solutions very quickly and it's not blame, it's just where we are. I mean... What's the world we live in, isn't it? We haven't checked our phones in 40 minutes and this is probably going to get anxiety. It's on my head. We haven't checked our social media site and I think it's kind of like in a microwave situation where we've got something happen, here it is, it needs to be solved immediately and someone's to blame and sometimes things just happen and there are mistakes and we try to protect them but correct them. But I just think it's sometimes, our expectations are really high and I don't say that as an excuse. I just think that's the way the world is now. We're just really fast paced and everything has to be solved immediately without thought. What is it? Instant gratification. Well, and everything has to fit into a 30 second sound bite. And I think that's one of the issues when you look at the struggles that Facebook has had with media and how you filter media to get accurate information out there and it's because everyone's listening for that instant gratification, that 30 second sound bite. The sound bite. Exactly. And the problem is that reality is very rarely that simple. You can very rarely get the reality of a situation into a 30 second sound bite. And in agriculture, a lot of people think one size will fit all so if you identify, this will work for this one. Well, we've got 14 counties and every county in Vermont is different. Every land base is different. You've got a family dynamic that's probably different. The finances are different. So it's a challenge where we all should go organic. Well, not everyone can go organic. Not everyone can be, we're all gonna have goat farmers. Well, we can't all be goat farmers, but if we give people enough choices and options and solid information, maybe that will lead them to a determination of what's best for them. Where do they go for advice? Can they call you or is there somebody on your staff that really? Yeah, it's a pretty good system for business planning. We have a program that we don't run, but it's run through the Farm Viability Program, which we participate in through the Housing Conservation Board. And they write business plans. So they'll sit down at the table with you and say, this is what I wanna do, is this gonna work? Where are my markets gonna be? What do I need to meet my goals? So that's, I think that's the most important thing and then just, if you're handing the farm over to the operation to the next generation, there needs to be planning with that and that's a big need that we have right now is trying to get the next generation of farmers. Speaking of which, that in the article was one of the issues that you highlighted as a real problem, which is like in construction, what's the average age of construction? Like 50 something, 58 or something, are young people stepping up or not? Well, it's, every institution is having this challenge, but I see, and I have no hard data, but it's my anecdotal stuff, I do see a generation that's never worked on farms or land wanting to give it a try. And there's a lot of young people out there and it may not be strictly in dairy farming. It may be they wanna be in grass-fed beef or they may want to grow vegetables, but I do see a movement where people are wanting to get closer to land and animals and the challenge we have is to make sure that they have the mentor or someone that they can get to or be able to afford maybe the land that's available for them to do their operation because we all know land is very expensive in Vermont. Anywhere it's very expensive, but I do see an indication and again, hard data, but I do see sort of this new wave of people that maybe they wanna take a stab at. And what we gotta do is we gotta encourage that, support that, and- Do they have things like internships and stuff? We do, there's an apprenticeship that's run for farmers. It's not run by us, but other groups. So that's probably a good way to get started. So before you dive full into wanting to own a farm, it's like, hey, I'll work it for a year and see if this is for you or not. Yeah, because that's a lot of work to invest a lot of money in. One of the other things is we're kind of talking about industries that you're involved in, specialty foods, and one of the fastest growing industries in the U.S. right now is actually craft distilleries. We have a couple of those here in Vermont, and they're often being started and run by millennials. Tends to be younger group, younger than the beer industry. And we've got stone-cutter spirits. We've got Bar Hill, who we were talking about before the show, both of which run by fairly young entrepreneurs that are trying to get started up and make something. So it's a pretty cool industry that seems to be getting a foothold here. And that can tie back to the land as well, because can we grow the grains for those drinks? And that's happening with Bar Hill, who's trying to grow that. We have an enormous amount of wonderful bread makers in Vermont. Oh, for sure. Could we source more of our grains, our rice, and all that stuff through that? And wasn't there something we talked about up north where they were growing pods to use for insulation? Milkweed. Milkweed. Milkweed, yeah. Are they still doing that? There's some research going on whether to use that. I mean, how cool is that? Could you put in pillows and insulation and so forth? So there's some activity going on. Who wakes up in the morning and says, I think I'm going to take my milkweed and make it. I can grow a milkweed. I can grow a milkweed. I can tell you. It seems like a monster. It's a hearty start of the day, isn't it? Well, I went to Sebego, a restaurant up in Maine. And the woman gave us a straw made out of corn. I said, who the heck wakes up in the morning and says, I've got corn. You've got to make a straw. And you talk about the specialty foods. It's just amazing what usually starts in someone's kitchen. So they get it in the kitchen, then they get it to an incubator space where they maybe rent some space and they've got the utensils and the cooking. And then before you know it, they've got their own space and they're going to market. But that's how they start. Yeah, and it was perfect. It was solid. It didn't degrade in whatever we were drinking. But anyway. Like paper? Well, paper gets all, it just loses its shape. It was great. It didn't taste corn. It just was a straw. Isn't that cool? It's a lot of that stuff, the entrepreneurs and tremendous energy and not without hard work. But I know the folks who, we only got a few minutes left, but I know the folks who started a Pollocker kitchen. And I met them way back when they were doing, you know, like the fairs and stuff just locally. And now they've got an industrial kitchen. They've got, and they're doing like specialty jams and jellies that like some of them are beer infused or wine infused. They're pretty cool, pretty cool operation. And they've grown tremendously. I want it because we only have a minute and 15 seconds. You have to talk about my favorite show for the birds. For the birds. 25 years this year. Yeah, I've been doing, it's on WDEV and WLVV. And I've been, you know, Saturday mornings and weekends been talking about birds. We spent about 10, 15 minutes. Chipped Armstead from the Nature Center in Montpelier is the co-host with me. But you used to be with Brian Pfeiffer. Brian Pfeiffer was the fanatic birder, real thing. I'm the 4-H birder. I can hold my own. But just going up on the farm knowing the various birds. But it's been, it's the only job I have never changed. I've done it 25 years. Well, if it works, you know. 25 years. But you said it started by, sort of by accident. It started by accident. Someone called the radio station. I don't know what this bird is. Could you tell me what it is? 20 calls later, we figured out it was a red pole, you know. But it piqued my interest. Like, well, that's really popular. Well, obviously people are interested in 25 years. Birding is really fun because it has, you know, Vermonters love nature. And you can sit in your kitchen and be a birder. Or you can hike the trail and be a birder. Or you can travel the world and be a birder. That's great. And you can spend a lot of money on birdseat. But you've got to take them in for the bear. Yeah, it's been an absolute joy. And it's just some fun thing I do. I'm glad you're still doing it. It's been a joy to have you on. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Thank you for thinking of agriculture. Absolutely. Thank you all for tuning in. We'll see you next week. And in the meantime, keep listening beyond the sound bites.