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Vermont advocates and agriculture agency clash on how to define municipal authority and a broad 'right to grow food'
Summary
Advocates urged the Legislature to restore a long-standing municipal exemption for agriculture and secure a broad "right to grow food" protecting backyard producers; the Agency of Agriculture proposed acreage rules for livestock and urged targeted statutory fixes to fill gaps in earlier definitions.
Graham Euneng Strofenoff, policy director at Rural Vermont, told the committee that farm groups want the Legislature to restore the long-standing rule that agriculture is exempt from municipal zoning and to protect a broad "right to grow food," including small-scale sales and donations.
The proposal, Strofenoff said, would protect anyone producing food under farm production and avoid reopening the RAPs for wholesale revision. He warned that local rules in some towns—citing Essex Junction—now restrict agricultural activities to…
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