Committee hears that Vermont dairy depends on migrant workers; advocates urge sustained safety, housing and training support

Researchers and farmers told the Agriculture, Food Resiliency, & Forestry Committee that Vermont’s dairy industry is highly dependent on migrant labor and that the state faces gaps in training, housing and mental‑health resources for those workers.

Dan Baker, a UVM Extension principal investigator, told the committee that surveys of dairy farms show “over 90% employed migrant workers” on farms that hire outside family labor, and that his recent work found about 925 migrant workers and their families working on roughly 50 farms in the region. He said the workforce is changing: a rising share of workers come from Guatemala, more women and children are living on farms, and many workers speak little or no English.

That trend, Baker said, raises safety and housing concerns: “with women and children … it’s a really different situation,” he said, describing requests by some farms for separate family apartments. He told the committee that housing repairs and replacements funded through a program with Champlain Housing Trust and Vermont Housing & Conservation Board (VHCB) have been popular and effective, but that some housing needs remain unfunded.

Baker described a farmworker housing repair program that offers $30,000 interest‑free forgivable loans for existing on‑farm housing, expiring after 10 years of maintained quality. He said the program had completed 19 housing units, 22 were under construction, 27 were committed, nine farms were in site‑visit stage, and the program had benefited about 282 farmworkers so far.

On safety, Baker said more than half of the migrant dairy workers surveyed in Vermont had experienced an injury; about 50% of those injuries led the worker to see a doctor, roughly two‑thirds of those visits were reportedly paid by the farmer, and about 42% of injured workers missed work because of the injury. Baker said roughly 60% of surveyed workers reported receiving some safety training when starting on a farm, but most of that instruction was delivered by co‑workers rather than certified instructors. He described a recent Northeast Dairy Business Innovation Center (DBIC)‑funded farm safety program that provided bilingual classroom training (about 70 workers trained in Vermont) but has ended, leaving a gap in statewide, ongoing training capacity.

Committee members pressed Baker on schooling for children of migrant workers and on pathways to legal status. Baker said migrant children are eligible for public school and that UVM Extension’s Migrant Education program supports school entry and English learning; he also said there is no federal visa program for year‑round dairy workers and that length of residence alone does not provide a path to citizenship.

Baker emphasized mental‑health and social‑isolation problems. He described a stress study that found immigration concerns, fear of injury, social isolation and housing worries among top stressors. He said peer‑to‑peer counseling was discussed but that many workers preferred licensed, confidential counselors; Vermont has very few Spanish‑speaking mental‑health providers and limited funding to pay for them.

Committee members and Baker flagged equipment‑specific training needs — in particular skid‑steer and tractor operation — and noted Vermont currently has extremely limited certified instructor capacity for adult equipment training. Representative Basel commented that Liz Kenton is the state’s only certified tractor safety instructor and that Kenton’s focus is youth training, leaving a gap in adult training capacity.

Baker and committee members called for sustaining and scaling programs that have been developed with limited funding, including bilingual safety training, farm housing repairs and outreach that reduces workers’ social isolation. He and members also noted that many services depend on federal grants and that proposed federal cuts could jeopardize programs the state or local partners would need to replace.

Ending: Baker closed by offering to share data and to meet with farmer groups; he said collaborative, multi‑partner approaches would be needed to keep safety training, housing repairs and mental‑health supports available for the dairy workforce.