30 x 30
Vermont Conservation Strategy Initiative
(VCSI)

Rural Vermont has a seat on the Agriculture Working Group of the Vermont Conservation Strategy Initiative (VCSI). Legislative Director, Caroline Gordon, represents alongside Rural Vermont Board Member Stephen Leslie who represents the Vermont Healthy Soils Coalition in the discourse around how agriculture fits into the conservation vision and future plan for Vermont. The VCSI aims to find recommendations for land use in Vermont through conservation planning by the end of 2025. On Valentines Day, Rural Vermont got to celebrate a successful push for transparency in this relevant public engagement process: upon request from Rural Vermont, all meeting recordings of the Agriculture Working Group were made available online - in contrast to the meeting recordings of the 3 other working groups and those of the decision making body to the VCSI.

Follow updates on this process in our policy blog here…

Follow our 3/8/24 Action Alert here…

See our 3/12/24 Action Alert Infographic here…

VISION

Act 59: The vision of the State of Vermont is to maintain an ecologically functional landscape that sustains biodiversity, maintains landscape connectivity, supports watershed health, promotes climate resilience, supports working farms and forests, provides opportunities for recreation and appreciation of the natural world, and supports the historic settlement pattern of compact villages surrounded by rural lands and natural areas.

GOAL

It is the goal of the State that 30 percent of Vermont’s total land area shall be conserved by 2030, and 50 percent of the State’s total land area shall be conserved by 2050. The Secretary of Natural Resources shall lead the effort in achieving these goals. The land conserved shall include State, federal, municipal, and private land.

THE VSCI PROCESS

Phase 1: Conserved Land Inventory by July 1, 2024

Including review of existing Conservation Categories


Phase 2: Conservation Plan by December 31, 2025

Including language from HAG Committee: The plan shall include… (4) recommendations to implement the vision and goals of this chapter while also enhancing the State of Vermont’s current investments and commitments to working lands enterprises, rural landowners, and the broad conservation mission implemented by the Secretary [of ANR!] and VHCB, including conservation of agricultural land, working forests, historic properties, recreational lands, and surface waters.

JURISDICTION & LAW 101

ANR - Jurisdiction over Land Use
= Conservation policy
= field of Planning Law which is part of
Environmental Law


VAAFM - Jurisdiction over Agriculture
= regulation of agricultural practice (RAPs)
= field of Agriculture Law

HOW DOES FARMING FIT INTO EXISTING CONSERVATION CATEGORIES?

Act 59 defines: Natural resource management area” means an area having permanent protection from conversion for the majority of the area but that is subject to long-term, sustainable land management.

What does sustainable land management mean?

Act 59: “Sustainable land management” means the stewardship and use of forests and forestlands, grasslands, wetlands, riparian areas, and other lands, including the types of agricultural lands that support biodiversity, in a way, and at a rate, that maintains or restores their biodiversity, productivity, regeneration capacity, vitality, and their potential to fulfill, now and in the future, relevant ecological, economic, and social functions at local, State, and regional levels, and that does not degrade ecosystem function. 

RESOURCES

A living resource document that includes articles, webinars, seminars, and academic papers illuminating the destructive impact/s of the global 30x30 program. This document will be updated as new resources become available.
Special thanks to Abe Collins who created the original document from which this list was generated.

30 x 30 GLOSSARY OF TERMS

Nature-Based Solutions - claimed “solutions” to the climate crisis based on the idea of leveraging the capacities of nature to store and hold carbon. It is another term used for land-based carbon offset programs including forest, soil, agriculture, and ocean offsetting programs. Carbon brokers and managers make money off of the projects, while polluters can claim carbon neutrality or that they have met their net-zero emissions reduction targets.

Off-set - the purchase of carbon credits bought for the purpose of compensating for (or ‘offsetting’) greenhouse gasses. Forestry and agriculture offsets are the most prominent nature-based solutions. Ultimately, carbon offsets allow polluters to keep on polluting.

Carbon Market - The theory that you can turn carbon dioxide into a commodity (in the form of a carbon credit) and put it in a market to disincentivize the release of further carbon into the atmosphere. 

Natural Asset Company - a type of public company defined by the New York Stock Exchange as “a corporation whose primary purpose is to actively manage, maintain, restore (as applicable), and grow the value of natural assets and their production of ecosystem services.”

Corporate Farmland Acquisition Subsidiary - A subsidiary is a company that is owned or controlled by a parent or holding company. Corporations use multi-level subsidiary structures to conceal their investments in farmland.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory - The national greenhouse gas inventory is developed by the Environmental Protection Agency each year to track trends in U.S. emissions and removals.

Net Zero – When corporations purchase carbon offsets equivalent to the carbon they release into the atmosphere. Net zero is not true zero, and allows for corporations to continue ecologically devastating practices while appearing to be ‘green.’

Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) –  the name given to a variety of arrangements through which the beneficiaries of environmental services, from watershed protection and forest conservation to carbon sequestration, reward those whose lands provide these services with subsidies or market payments.

References:

Environmental Protection Agency’s Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks, 2023

Nature-based Solutions Curriculum: A Guide to deepen a shared understanding of the threat of Nature-based solutions versus real solutions for climate justice by Hoodwinked in the Hothouse, November 2023

Senator Cory Booker’s Farmland for Farmers Act

Conservation Categories Workgroup Report to the VCSI Science and Policy Committee DRAFT January 26, 2024

Draft report available HERE.

Rural Vermont Call to Action on 30x30

The Vermont Conservation Strategy Initiative (VCSI) is underway - and it is important that we use our voice to influence it! Act 59 was passed in 2023 with a goal to conserve 30% of Vermont’s total area by 2030 and 50% by 2050.

As Vermont is developing a new conservation plan - its policies and regulations more broadly - must protect and support food sovereignty, and the rights of people and communities articulated in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas:
“Peasants and other people living in rural areas have the right to land, individually and/or collectively (...), including the right to have access to, sustainably use and manage land and the water bodies, coastal seas, fisheries, pastures, and forests therein, to achieve an adequate standard of living, to have a place to live in security, peace and dignity and to develop their cultures.” - Article 17 UNDROP (United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas, 2018)

Join Rural Vermont in urging the Agricultural Working Group before Wednesday 3/13 at 11am (their last meeting during the inventory phase) to:

  • Affirm the consensus of the PES and Soil Health Working Group against new programs based on measuring outcomes in agriculture.

    • The PES and Soil Health Working Group met from 2019-2023 to address questions from the VT legislature related to: ag standards and practices for better environmental outcomes, existing and potential incentives, and proposed changes and programs. Ultimately, the group opposed proposals grounded in measured outcome based models that could lead to the development of carbon and offsets markets in VT agriculture, and favored the CSP+ approach recommended by the Small Farm Cohort, which involves enhancing support for sustainable farming practices through increasing access to, and improving, existing federal programs for Vermont farmers.

  • Protect 30x30 and land conservation efforts from being financed by carbon and / or other “off-set” markets.

  • Recommend policies that ensure conserved land is protected from corporate and consolidated ownership and which facilitate farmland access and ownership for farmers and farmworkers; maintaining community sovereignty over land use over time.

    • In VT, and around the world, we are seeing large “conservation” organizations, corporations, and governments working together towards conserving land and waters with a vision of conservation which: is largely absent of human presence; in which conserved land and agricultural land are seen as forms of wealth management, investment and a class of “natural asset”; which does not protect local communities’ democratic control of land and resources; which displaces indigenous peoples and farmers and fisherfolk; which does not take into account critical human needs such as food sovereignty and resiliency; and which positions and defers to markets and corporate actors as principle arbiters of access, control, equity, and the future of these places (check out our glossary of terms here and list of resources here). In our efforts to protect the integrity of our ecosystems and habitat, and to ensure we have farmland enough to feed the people living here - we must also protect our communities’ democratic control over, and access to, the land as one of our most critical resources.

  • Protect all farmland in VT from development in perpetuity, with flexibility for development of housing and essential infrastructure, and enable and support the conversion of land (including conserved land) into agriculture, and into the hands and control of the people working the land. 

    • According to Hunger Free VT, two out of every five people in VT are food insecure. We rely upon importation for the vast majority of our food across the northeast, and New England Feeding New England reports that we need to bring back into production 400,000 acres of land in underutilized production and an additional 590,000 of additional acres of new crop land to even meet 30% of our regional food needs by 2030. The American Farmland Trust (AFT) estimates that VT could lose another 41,000 acres by 2040 if current trends continue - or more if trends worsen. AFT also pointed to the imminent turnover of 40% of farmland within the next couple of decades as farm owners / operators age and move on from farming. Agricultural support programs have been underfunded 50% from what the administration requested in 2023. We need more independent farms, more farmers, more farmworkers, more farmland, more agroecological education and training to even meet 30% of our regional needs; and these considerations must be fundamental to the VCSI. The inventory report should outline land currently in agriculture, land in agriculture currently conserved, what land is potentially best positioned to be converted into farmland moving forward, and how much we will need to assure food security and sovereignty over time. Policies beyond conservation easements must be considered in the upcoming two year conservation planning phase. 

  • Invite the meaningful inclusion of VT’s indigenous community in the 30 x 30 process.

    • The enabling statute finds that “the land and waters, forests and farms, and ecosystems and natural communities in Vermont are the traditional and unceded home of the Abenaki people”, meaning that any effort to increase land conservation must include land access opportunities for Indigenous People and to all who come from historically marginalized and disadvantaged communities.  President Biden’s executive order of 2021 on 30x30 explicitly honors Tribal Sovereignty and supports the priorities of Tribal Nations. Currently, neither of the State recognized Abenaki tribes are represented in any of the work groups that are part of the Vermont Conservation Strategy Initiative. We believe that the Indigenous people of Vermont have important knowledge to share about land care strategies and that their ideas for land use and conservation should be decisive for the Vermont Conservation Plan that’s projected for the end of 2025.

  • Recognize that the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets is the authority regulating VT agriculture.

    • Act 59 calls for enhanced support for the working lands through land conservation. It is positive that the state wants to better support the working lands and diversified farming in alignment with soil health principles. The 30x30 initiative and conservation easements specifically are not an appropriate place for regulating agricultural practices. Improving the Required Agricultural Practices Rule is the appropriate path to addressing these concerns equitably amongst producers. The definition of sustainable land management as defined in Act 59 opens the door for linking measured outcomes of biodiversity with off-set trading schemes as a financing strategy because it can be interpreted as only including those parcels of agricultural land that enhance biodiversity at a measurable rate. Alternatively, ”sustainable land management” can be interpreted to include all agricultural lands with good reason. Grasslands are specifically named - that’s ¾ of all conserved agricultural lands - and the UVM State of Soil Health in Vermont initiative provides evidence that soil health across all types of farming in Vermont is presently preserving those soils’ ability to support and restore biodiversity in the future. Even in those cases where current agricultural practices have the potential to negatively impact biodiversity, they are free from development and practices can be improved. All agricultural lands are important and all farms manage highly threatened natural resources that are crucial to Vermont’s future food security and climate resilience.

TAKE ACTION!

Step 1: Visit https://www.ruralvermont.org/30x30 for more information about 30x30,  a list of references, and a glossary of terms.

Step 2: Email all members of the Ag Working Group of the VCSI before Wednesday 3/13 at 11am (their last meeting during the inventory phase) and express your support for any or all of our recommendations to be included in the inventory report on behalf of the agricultural community in Vermont. Email addresses for Ag Working Group members can be found below, along with a sample message that can be personalized.

Step 3: Join the (30x30) VT Conservation Strategy Initiative Focus Group for "smallholder farmers" taking place on Tuesday March 12 from 2 - 3:30 PM by Zoom. You need to register to get the zoom link. Registration is HERE!  The session will be recorded by the hosts. There is a stipend being offered for attendees that you can sign up for upon registration.

SAMPLE MESSAGE - COPY, EDIT, & PASTE INTO THE BODY OF YOUR EMAIL!

I want the Agricultural Working Group of the VCSI to adopt a statement against financing the conservation of land in VT, and / or coordinating the VCSI process, with carbon credits and / or through offset markets. Instead, I want to see the meaningful inclusion of indigenous and agrarian peoples, and the development of policies that protect community sovereignty over land, that grow our agricultural land base, and that protect farmland for farmers by facilitating affordable farmland and housing for farmers and farmworkers.

In doing so, the Ag Working Group saves significant public dollars by avoiding any duplicacy to the processes of the Payment for Ecosystem Services & Soil Health Working Group by aligning with the consensus reached during that process for the State of Vermont to not further invest in financializing and "measuring outcomes of agricultural practices," “payment for ecosystem services,” “natural capital,” the “financialization of nature” and the “privatization of the commons.” 

Around the globe, developments in conservation planning paired with PES/ carbon market financing schemes represent an alignment of the interests of corporate investors with development agencies, conservation organizations, research institutions, national economies, and consumers, around the potential to profit from the creation of new asset classes in ecosystem function. These are not solutions to climate change nor the biodiversity crisis. These solutions do not offer equitable solutions to indigenous communities, farmers and farm workers and neither do they maintain community sovereignty over land, land use, and critical natural resources. 

For the purposes of protecting agricultural land and the autonomy and independence of our communities and farmers, the Ag Working Group can recommend reforms to the tools available in land use planning to approach a vision and goal of advancing support for the working lands and biodiversity through land conservation so that all agricultural land can count in acres towards the 30x30 & 50x50 goals in a way that aligns with the needs of our region related to human rights, food security and democratic control of our essential resources.

Stacy Cibula, facilitation VHCB  s.cibula@vhcb.org

Ryan Patch, co-facilitation VAAFM Ryan.Patch@vermont.gov

Eric Clifford, Champlain Valley Farmers Coalition info@champlainvalleyfarmercoalition.com

Mike Snow, CT River Watershed Farmers Alliance crwfa.info@gmail.com

Scott Magnan, Franklin Grand Isle Farmers Watershed Alliance FarmersWatershedAllianceNW@gmail.com

Dave Blodgett, Natural Resources Conservation Service david.blodgett@usda.gov

Jen Miller, Nofa-VT jen@nofavt.org

Caroline Gordon, Rural Vermont caroline@ruralvermont.org

Rosalind Renfrew, ANR (Fish & Wildlife) rosalind.renfrew@vermont.gov 

Marli Rupi, ANR (DEC) marli.rupe@vermont.gov

Darlene Reynolds, VT Dairy Producer Alliance vdpa16@gmail.com 

Jackie Folsom, VT Farm Bureau vtfb@gmavt.net

Stephen Leslie, Cedar Mountain Farm representing Vermont Healthy Soils Coalition hartlandyoga@yahoo.com

Tyler Miller, Vermont Land Trust tyler@vlt.org

Jennifer Byrne, White River Conservation District whiterivernrcd@gmail.com 

Holly McClintock, VHCB staff h.mcclintock@vhcb.org 

Isaac Bissell, VHCB staff I.Bissell@vhcb.org 

Trey Martin, VHCB staff  t.martin@vhcb.org

Final Agriculture Working Group of the Vermont Conservation Strategy Initiative (VCSI) Report April 18, 2024

Final report available HERE.

VCSI DRAFT INVENTORY REPORT & FEEDBACK SURVEY June 2024

June 2024 draft inventory report available HERE.

In response to the draft inventory report, response is being solicited in a feedback survey by 7/19/24. The feedback survey is HERE.

Here's a link to the Working Group Reports and other annexes to the draft inventory report (over 500 pages total)

Here's the link to the recording of the 6/27 VCSI Inventory Report presentation