Vermont Agency of Agriculture Food & Markets The Working Lands program continues to increase its historic funding for those who make their living off the land. This May, the program awarded $3.1 million in grants that will help grow agriculture and forest businesses in Vermont. New Supply Chain and Market Level Impact specific grants will help businesses leverage supply chain partnerships at a significant scale, with awards of up to $250K. Please follow the link in each category to view the individual businesses receiving 2022 program funds.

by C.B. Hall, Vermont Business Magazine Each year, the people who study such things inform us that our state's dairy farms, so emblematic of what makes Vermont, Vermont, continue to dwindle in number. According to the state's Agency for Farms, Food and Markets, Vermont had 973 cow dairy farms in 2012. Five years later, there were 796 — 18% fewer. By the first quarter of this year, the number stood at 564, a further decline of 29%. Thirty-eight farms — one or two a week — disappeared in the seven months between May and December 2020, following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which occasioned a major decline in demand as schools and restaurants shut down. In three months, the average price that Vermont's dairy farmers received for their product through the federal milk market system plummeted 27%, to $12.82 per hundredweight of raw milk, according to the USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service.

by Meg Hansen One signature and one vote thwarted the attempt to upend heating in Vermont's built environment. Governor Phil Scott won the game of political ping pong against the Legislature, when the latter failed to override his veto of the Clean Heat Standard (CHS) bill by one vote. The CHS was touted as the most impactful plan to meet the carbon reduction goals mandated by the Global Warming Solutions Act (GWSA). But Scott asked for the invoice upfront. Politicians who buy today with the promise of paying tomorrow (when they'll be gone) were then forced to defang the bill. The new version still lacked “details on costs and impacts” and delegated outsized policymaking authority to the three-member Public Utilities Commission. So, Scott rejected it.

Leonine Public Affairs The Vermont legislature adjourned sine die on Thursday evening after a whirlwind final week. It was the first time in years that legislators convened and adjourned neatly within the allotted 18-week timeframe. But the first partially in-person session since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic was full of starts and stops that gave it a rocky and turbulent cadence. The final week was no different. 

Vermont Business Magazine State reports strong tax revenue results for March; Unemployment rate falls two-tenths to 2.7 percent in March; Bill Stenger gets 18 months for role in AnC Vermont EB-5 case; Quiros gets five years, fined over $8 million, for EB-5 fraud; DFR Commissioner Mike Pieciak to step down in May; GMCB cuts hospital rate request; Inaugural Vermont State University president named; and more.