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…