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Agency of Agriculture warns of shrinking farmland and climate pressures; calls for targeted conservation and farmer support
Summary
Ryan Patch of the Vermont Agency of Agriculture briefed the committee on land-use trends, noting declining farmland, limited prime soils, increasing climate risks, and potential co-benefits from conservation practices; he emphasized an economic and financing gap that limits farmers’ ability to adopt resilience measures.
Ryan Patch, policy manager at the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets, told the committee that Vermont’s land base and soils pose constraints for expanding agriculture and that the state has been losing farmland for decades. Patch used historical and recent data to show the shift from a largely agricultural landscape in the 19th century to one in which only a small percentage of statewide soils qualify as prime for farming.
Patch said Vermont contains about 5.9 million acres of land (including roughly 250,000 acres of inland water) and that prime statewide soils represent a very small portion of that total. He noted that, statewide,…
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