Vermont farms with as few as five cows or 15 pigs will soon need to take steps to protect water quality that have been recommended for decades but until now required only for medium- and large-size farms.
Legislators in several committees last week reviewed the Agriculture Agency’s second draft of practices that will become mandatory for small farms starting this summer as a result of last year’s Act 64.
Among the more significant changes between the first and present draft are definitions specifying the size of farms that must meet the standards. They now cover a broader range of species and include income as a determining factor.
Under the proposed definitions, any farm pulling in $2,000 gross income in an average year will be expected to follow what are called required agricultural practices. So, too, will any farm of 4 acres or more that holds four horses, or five bovine, or 100 laying hens, or 15 swine, or various other numbers of other species.
Another set of small farms called “certified small farms” must meet the same standards but will be subject to annual inspections to check compliance. Those farms cover at least 10 acres and have at least 50 dairy cows, or 188 swine weighing over 55 pounds, or 4,125 turkeys, or 375 ducks, and so forth.
The proposed rules grew out of extensive public engagement, said Chuck Ross, secretary of agriculture, food and markets.
“This is an effort that I think is probably unprecedented in the level of outreach that the agency has engaged in, in developing the (required agricultural practices),” Ross told legislators Wednesday morning.
The House and Senate agriculture committees, together with the House Committee on Fish, Wildlife and Water Resources, convened a joint meeting to hear Ross and several agency staffers present changes to the rules that were incorporated since their previous draft was released in the fall.
The agency held more than 30 public meetings over the fall, and by the end of the month will have held more than 30 more between February and March, to thoroughly vet the proposed rules before those affected by them, Ross said.
“We want to make sure we get this draft … as right as we can,” Ross said.
Farm Bureau President Joe Tisbert said his organization will hold meetings this week to consider the draft and likely will recommend some changes. But for the most part the requirements have not provoked opposition from farmers.
Some water quality advocates, however, panned the proposed rules as falling short of still further needed changes.
“It appears the agency is still avoiding, and understandably so, because it’s going to be a difficult conversation, as to whether some fields, some locations, are suitable for farms to begin with,” said James Ehlers, executive director of Lake Champlain International. “Until we get to that hard conversation, I don’t see us getting a lot of measurable progress very quickly.”
Ehlers said 300,000 acres of Vermont’s 600,000 acres of wetland have been developed or converted to agricultural land. Some of that should be converted back if the state is serious about improving water quality, he said.
“There are some locations that flood perennially, and each time they do, it’s going to pull nutrients and pesticides back into our waterways,” he said. “The biggest bang for our buck is going to come from taking those agricultural lands out of production and letting them convert to grass, or to forest.”
The required agricultural practices (formerly known as acceptable agricultural practices) will force farmers to manage manure and farmland more strictly. Currently, operations that under the new rules are called small farms must prevent discharge of pollutants into state waters, but how they do so has been largely up to farmers.
The rules require certified farms to file a plan to manage manure, as well as annual reports on their operations. Owners of certified farms also must attend classes on practices meant to prevent unnecessary pollution. The second draft of the rules also includes changes to manure-stacking restrictions and to manure application standards.
Many of the proposed rules won’t come as a surprise to farmers, who have had decades to prepare for them, said one legislator.
They’ve existed in some form since at least 1986, said Rep. Alyson Eastman, I-Orwell, a member of the House Committee on Agriculture and Forest Products. They weren’t mandatory at that time, but the rules were encouraged, and the University of Vermont’s Extension program has expended a great deal of effort assisting farmers in implementing the practices, she said.
“This is something that’s evolved, and I think for the most part many farmers are aware of what are now required agricultural practices,” Eastman said.
The newly required rules may represent an added burden for Vermont farmers, but it’s a necessary one, said Sen. David Zuckerman, P/D-Chittenden, vice chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture.
“We’re facing the ramifications of poor agricultural, industrial, urban and road maintenance for the last 50 to 100 years,” Zuckerman said. “We have to develop a … system where each of these sectors addresses their impacts, and (where) we as consumers recognize the real cost of our impacts on our waterways. That does not mean it’s going to be fun.”
“So, now we have to figure out how to transition from the practices of the past to the sustainable practices of the future,” Zuckerman said.
A farmer himself, Zuckerman said the regulations won’t significantly affect his own operation, due to its distance from surface waters.
But Zuckerman credited the Agency of Agriculture with recognizing that the rules could affect many other farmers, and with taking a proactive approach to engage those farmers to mitigate impacts where possible.
The changes were called for by a water quality bill passed last year called Act 64, which required this revamp of agricultural practices to be completed by July 1.
This draft, released Feb. 23, is considered still part of an informal process the agency has embarked upon before submitting a formal draft to the Legislature’s Interagency Committee on Administrative Rules, said the agency’s agriculture development coordinator, Ryan Patch.
The agency will take public comments and put together a formal draft to submit to the rules committee by the end of this month for its approval, Patch said.
Another round of public review will begin with that submission, as will a formal hearing process, Patch said.
