Editor’s note: This commentary is by James H. Maroney Jr., who has a master’s degree in Environmental Law & Policy from Vermont Law School and is a former farmer.
A month or so before the election, I received an email from the Vermont Democratic Party asking for my views on the platform. I had not read the platform so I did, and found quite a lot of florid language about the importance of agriculture, clean water and the environment.
The platform says in its Statement of Principles: “the VDP believes the right to clean water is essential to a robust democracy and non negotiable.” It then says VDP:
• “supports measures that encourage sustainable farms … and sustainable and ecologically sensitive uses of Vermont’s natural resources” (A.1.2.);
• “VDP will encourage the review of environmental land use” (A.3.1.) and will “actively seek to identify and resolve conflicting regulations” (A.3.4.);
• “A healthy environment is essential to overall public health … as a party we are committed to environmental health” (B.);
• “We respect private property rights and support regulations and laws that discourage pollution; promote conservation of Vermont’s working landscape.” (B.2.1.)
• “We must establish systems to control or mitigate problematic runoff from all sources to create cleaner watersheds.” (B.2.3.)
I had never read the Republican Party platform either, so in the interests of fairness, I did so and found this plain language on the environment: “We value Vermont’s economic environment with the same respect that we value our natural environment.”
By now everyone in Vermont knows that Lake Champlain is not clean. We know too that the Legislature has been trying to “clean up” the lake for the past 60 years. Everyone also knows that conventional dairy is the proximate cause of 55 percent of the pollution in the lake and that the state has allocated $140 million of the taxpayers’ money over the past decade to address this problem without results.
I am a farm advocate and I too want Vermont’s farms to prosper. I approve of what the Vermont Democratic Party platform says about the importance of agriculture, the environment and clean water. But I am wondering why this language is in the platform if the House and Senate, which are 75 percent Democratic, and the administration, which is (barely) Democratic, are unable or unwilling to effect the goals so admirably described.
Recently, Secretary of Agriculture Chuck Ross, a Democrat, denied Conservation Law Foundation’s petition to mandate best management practices in Franklin County as a way to clean up St. Albans Bay, citing as his reason for doing so a statute that requires any remedy for pollution caused by dairy to be “reasonable.” His decision to deny the petition is tantamount to an admission that conventional dairy pollutes the lake with legislative approbation; that the state puts the conventional dairy industry before clean water; that it puts the needs of 700 conventional dairy farmers above the needs of 600,000 citizens, who not only have a right to expect the state to protect the public trust, but they subsidize this industry into the bargain. Secretary Ross’ decision is an admission that the state’s effort to control conventional dairy’s contribution to lake pollution goes beyond regulatory passivity and well beyond judicious tolerance; it goes all the way to willful blindness: Mr. Ross’ denial is an admission that where the environment is concerned, this green state, with its Democratically controlled Legislature and its progressive governor has a Republican policy in effect.
We see now that the problem rests not with the farmers but with the Legislature. Vermont’s land use regulations (1967) and Act 250 both exempt farming on the premise that it is benign, that they “keep the land open” or that “farms make our food;” or the land use regulations refer to the accepted agricultural practices (AAPs) rules (1995), which permit the application of 40,000 tons of artificial fertilizer to land along our rivers and streams; the AAPs also permit those lands to remain bare nine months of the year, making them an important contributor to soil erosion, water and atmospheric pollution; they permit the housing of thousands of cows under one roof, making it too expensive to properly distribute their manure. The state knows that Vermont farmers house 135,000 cows, and that one cow produces as much manure as 32 humans, which is the equivalent of a state population of 20 million persons, whose waste is all applied untreated. The AAPs also permit the importation of 200,000 tons of high protein feed supplements, which are laden with phosphorus.
At the same time, the Vermont Legislature, again almost entirely Democratic, allocates $60 million-$80 million/year of the taxpayers’ money to support its remaining 700 conventional dairy farmers, who comprise just one tenth of 1 percent of the state population, and who vote overwhelmingly, if not entirely, Republican. The state is trying to ride a horse in two directions at once and consequently, neither is effective: our farms close at the uninterrupted rate of 5-8 percent per year every year since the end of World War II, over which period we have lost 93 percent of them, and lake pollution grows daily.
Prior to World War II, all farmers were organic. By the 1960-70s, when these regulations were written, there was only one farm modality: conventional, which was designed to overproduce its markets, which drives farm prices down, which drives farm attrition, which forces farmers to consolidate and expand, which gives the few remaining more land on which to apply the practices and the substances that pollute the lake. The Vermont Democratic Party’s principles and platform would appear not to support this result, and yet we see no action coming out of the Democratically controlled administration, House or Senate that would stop the allocation of subsidies that support the conventional dairy industry with one hand while with the other taxing Vermonters again to clean up after the same industry.
Today, there is another modality that the public supports in large numbers; viz the popular GMO labeling bill, which was not so much about GMOs per se as it was about reining in Big Ag’s penchant for adulterating the nation’s food supply in the name of production. Gov. Shumlin and Secretary Ross were both against it before they were for it, but whether or not GMO labeling survives its challenge in court is beside the point: Vermont is missing out on this important trend.
My recommendations for taking advantage of it are as follows:
• Adopt Sen. Leahy’s national organic program as Vermont’s agricultural standard practices
• Make all taxpayer support (Current Use, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board, Save the Working Landscape, Farm to Plate, etc.) for Vermont agriculture contingent upon being certified organic or in the process of becoming certified organic.
• Repeal the MOU (1993) that took responsibility for clean water away from ANR, where it belongs and gave it to agriculture, which has a conflict of interest.
• Repeal the broad exemptions for agriculture in the land use regulations and Act 250.
• Repeal the “Right to Farm Law.”
• Announce these changes to take effect on a date certain 10, 15 or even 20 years hence to give those farmers who either cannot or do not wish to convert the opportunity to realize their legitimate investment backed expectations.
These actions, which may seem at first radical, are fully consistent with the Vermont Democratic Party’s platform and with Vermont’s green brand.
