Legislative Update: Farm Relief Bills

In early June, the legislature began to consider Governor Scott’s proposed Restart Vermont Economic Recovery Package that included $50million in direct payments to dairy farmers and dairy processors. The proposal did not include funds for other farms and food processors and Rural Vermont criticized the proposal for not allowing all farms and food processors to apply and show their COVID-19 related losses and expenses. The Senate Committee on Agriculture was already working on its own farm relief bill which tried to look at long-term incentives for resilience in our food system as well as immediate relief. They passed a Farm Relief Bill that includes $19M funds to support dairy, $3.8M for dairy processors, and $7M for non-dairy farms, as well as $192K in funding for VHCB to provide technical assistance to farmers. Rural Vermont provided testimony on the bill and added joint recommendations with NOFA-VT. Meanwhile, the House Committee on Agriculture and Forestry decided against the inclusion of non-dairy farmers in their relief bill. It is challenging to participate and influence the rapid and still “virtual” legislative process which is supposed to come to an end on June 18th. With the current disparities among the two ag committees – there might be a committee of conference to negotiate the final Farm Relief Bill. 

The last dairy farmer in the legislature, Rodney Graham, spoke up in the House Ag Committee on June 9th 2020 and said “…we really need to be thinking about agriculture as a whole and not just dairy farms” he elaborated further: “The beef prices have crashed because of the slaughterhouses have shut down, the big ones, because of COVID. Produce prices are up because they couldn’t find people to pick their products because of COVID or they delayed some of the vegetable planting this year because they couldn’t get people here, etc. You know, all forms of agriculture are hurting and again, I don’t think we can do it in this bill, but I think that at some point we got to realize that agriculture is more than dairy. I understand the fact dairy farmers can make the point of hurting more than other commodities but I don’t know. The local beef markets- if you have one beef cow in your backyard that you take to slaughter and advertise it online you might be alright, but people that are actually in the beef business are taking a hit because they can’t move their product. The vegetable people as well and I’m sure other commodities, even maple syrup - we supplied a big restaurant but haven’t been able to sell any since restaurants stopped, that’s a chunk of money that we usually received. Every product across the board in some way or another has been affected by this - I just want everyone to know that.”