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Agency proposes statutory fixes after court narrows agricultural exemption; recommends raising sales threshold to $5,000
Summary
The Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets told a legislative committee it will propose statutory changes to clarify the Required Agricultural Practices (RAPs) exemption after a Vermont Supreme Court decision, including raising the sales threshold that determines which operations are governed by the RAPs from $2,000 to $5,000.
Steve Collier, from the Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets, told the Legislative Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, & Forestry that a recent Vermont Supreme Court ruling and the 2015 Clean Water Act changes to the Required Agricultural Practices (RAPs) have created uncertainty about what towns may regulate.
Collier said the law’s long history shows farming has been exempt from municipal zoning since the state’s early statewide zoning statute (Act 250) in 1970, and that the RAPs were meant to describe farming activities rather than narrow municipalities’ authority. "They changed the word 'accepted' to 'required,'" Collier said, describing how Act 64 (the Vermont Clean Water Act) renamed previously "accepted agricultural practices" as "required agricultural practices," a shift he and agency staff view as relabeling…
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