U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced a dairy assistance program during a visit to Vermont on Thursday and heard about farmers’ work to reduce pollution in Lake Champlain.
At a roundtable event with U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., at the ECHO Leahy Center for Lake Champlain, Vilsack unveiled details of the Pandemic Market Volatility Assistance Program, which he said would distribute $350 million to farmers across the country.
The program is expected to cover 80% of the revenue difference per month between July and December of 2020. The pay rate, Vilsack said, will vary by region.
When the Covid-19 pandemic prompted restaurants and schools to close, the demand for dairy dwindled across the country. Nationally, stories circulated of farmers dumping their milk, and erratic weather patterns across Vermont contributed to their struggles.
U.S. Department of Agriculture officials plan to contact independent dairy cooperatives and handlers to distribute the funds, which are expected in the next several months.
John Roberts, executive director of the Champlain Valley Farmer Coalition, attended Thursday’s roundtable discussion and said he’s pleased to see additional assistance funneled toward dairy farmers.
Along with a decreased demand for dairy, Roberts said farmers faced other pandemic-related expenses, such as purchasing personal protective equipment to keep employees safe and ensuring they could maintain access to feed while some trucking services stopped.
Additionally, farmers have dealt with drought, increased precipitation and heat waves this year — all of which affect production, Roberts said.
“The price of milk last year was not where it was expected to be before the pandemic,” he said.
Roberts is hoping that Vilsack will continue to address the gap between the price paid by the consumer and the cost of production.
“It’s good to help the farmers,” he said. “They’ve had a very difficult time of it.”
During Thursday’s roundtable, state officials also described to Vilsack their efforts to reduce phosphorus pollution in Lake Champlain by incentivizing cover cropping and manure injection.
“Agriculture has been responsible for more than 90% of all reported phosphorus reductions in Vermont,” said Anson Tebbetts, secretary of Vermont’s Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets.
Farmers in the state have made advancements in sustainable agriculture in the seven years since Vilsack most recently visited Vermont when he served as agriculture secretary in the Obama administration. For example, Vermont farmers have increased the use of cover crops from 5,000 acres in 2014 to 36,000 in 2020.
These improvements have been funded, in part, with federal dollars distributed by Vilsack, Leahy said.
That funding “has literally changed the landscape of Vermont,” Leahy said. “As I drive through our dairy counties now, in the spring I see mostly green fields of cover crops rather than bare muddy fields. Plowing is greatly reduced, and our barnyards are cleaner.”
Vilsack said the USDA is in the process of finalizing a “climate smart” agricultural plan for the Biden administration.
“I think you’ll see a recognition that by providing the farmers and partners with resources, that the progress that we need can be accelerated significantly,” he said.
Officials also recognized the work that still needs to be done. Agriculture contributed around 40% of the phosphorus runoff into Lake Champlain, according to a 2015 document outlining pollution reduction requirements. Cyanobacteria blooms, prompted by excess nutrients like phosphorus, have persisted this summer.
