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Agency of Agriculture urges clearer right-to-farm law, favors Senate version of S.45
Summary
State agriculture officials told the House committee S.45 would bring needed clarity to Vermont's right-to-farm statute by shifting burdens and defining 'generally accepted agricultural practices'; lawmakers pressed on impacts for small farms, trespass, public-nuisance scope and mediation requirements.
Steve Collier, from the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, told the House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, & Forestry that Senate Bill S.45 would give farmers clearer legal standards and reduce costly litigation. "The current law is really poorly constructed," Collier said, calling the measure "a reasonable" way to define what farms must do to be protected from nuisance and trespass claims.
Collier urged the committee to prefer the Senate'passed text, saying the House Judiciary'Committee'version had introduced ambiguity that could make the law "less protective." He said the Senate passage (25'to—) and a 4'to— vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee signaled wide support in the upper chamber.
The agency emphasized four changes in the Senate text: (1) defining "generally accepted agricultural practices" to include compliance with water-quality rules in 6 V.S.A. chapter 215 and the Agency'of'Agriculture'pesticide control rules; (2) moving the evidentiary burden onto plaintiffs to show a farm violated those standards rather than forcing farmers to prove their innocence; (3)…
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