Agriculture committee narrows budget priorities, backs food-security and working-lands programs

Members of the Agriculture, Food Resiliency, & Forestry committee met on 2026-02-20 to review budget requests affecting farming, food-security and forestry programs and to identify a short list of priorities for a committee letter to appropriations and the governor.

The committee chair (identified in the transcript as an unnamed committee member) opened by reading a compiled list of program requests and asked members to note items for inclusion. Committee members said they would focus first on programs that serve both farmers and food-insecure Vermonters, singling out Vermonters Feeding Vermonters, Crop Cash/Crop Cash Plus and the Farm Share CSA program as top priorities.

Members also discussed funding lines in the agency and department budgets: local purchasing incentives for school food authorities (cited in the meeting at about $500,000) and a Farm to School grant line reported at about $500,875 in the governor's proposal. A committee speaker noted the statutory allocation to the Housing and Conservation Board from the property transfer tax and said, "And this year, the governor is saying, no. Don't don't note all of it to those purposes. It's 37,600,000.0," reflecting concern that the full statutorily intended amount is not being left intact.

Committee members pressed for additional Working Lands support but acknowledged limited fiscal room. The governor's budget includes a $1,000,000 base for Working Lands; committee members described requests for an additional $500,000 to the base and a one-time $3.5 million request. Several members said a smaller, targeted increase combined with a required match would spread the benefit and be more realistic in the current fiscal climate.

Funding for food-security and farmer-support programs drew repeated attention. One member said programs such as Vermonters Feeding Vermonters and Crop Cash Plus produce strong local multipliers and therefore deliver "double value" — addressing hunger while supporting farm markets. Members repeatedly framed those programs as priorities because they serve both constituencies.

Committee members also flagged uncertainty around benefit-assistance funding for navigators and SNAP outreach. Amy Scholder, speaking for staff, said "the $4,950,000 request for benefit assistance includes a little lower 477,000 for the additional match for the SNAP outreach partners" and that spreadsheets were being requested to verify whether that amount is included in the governor's proposal. Members described confusion about federal-match changes and whether the state's administrative-match obligations or outreach-partner costs were fully funded in the governor's numbers.

Other requests reviewed included a $750,000 request from a professional loggers organization for the logging water-quality program (referred to in the meeting as "SlowCam" or similar spellings) and a $100,000 ask from Salvation Farms; members noted Salvation Farms had previously received a one-time $500,000 grant for facility expansion. Speakers urged the committee not to omit conservation districts and local grant-multipliers from the committee letter.

Rather than a formal vote, members reached informal consensus on the list of priorities to include in a short committee letter and volunteered to draft paragraphs. The chair asked for volunteers to help write the letter using last year's language as a template and said the committee should submit the letter the next day. The meeting paused ahead of scheduled 2:00 p.m. testimony.

The committee did not take formal action on funding amounts during the session; members directed staff to obtain spreadsheets and budget details to clarify the SNAP outreach and administrative-match figures before finalizing the letter.