By VDC staff
To grow or not to grow, that is the question that the Senate Agriculture Committee is taking on with its newest bill that challenges a ruling of the Vermont Supreme Court that opened the door to allow towns to regulate agriculture, even gardens and backyard chickens.
Information for In Committee news reports are sourced from GoldenDomeVt.com and the General Assembly website.
The committee hopes to turn back the clock by clarifying the area of law that the court used in the ruling. Known as the “Taft Street” ruling, it hinges on the court’s interpretation of 24 V.S.A. § 4413(d)(1). The language in the bill makes very clear the intention of the legislature that towns should not be regulating agriculture.
As stated in an early section of the draft bill, “to avoid the unchecked and unintended consequences of the decision in In re 8 Taft Street DRB & NOV Appeals, 2025 VT 27, it is necessary for the General Assembly to clarify and restate that municipalities under ordinance or bylaw shall not regulate farming or the construction of farm structures as set forth in 24 V.S.A. § 4413(d).”
This part of the bill would also expressly prohibit municipal regulation of growing plants and raising poultry, except roosters.
The bill doesn’t currently have a number and is still a work in progress in the committee but initial discussion suggests that the changes it proposes may face opposition on the floor in either the Senate or House that could backfire for its supporters.
There are currently twenty-six sections in the forty-five page draft and they cover areas including: income tax exemptions for net farm profits up to $10,000, tax exemptions for the sale of farms to relatives or employees of ten years, changing the threshold for permitting on-farm accessory businesses, changing the definition of “agricultural land” to include land where a certain amount of crops are donated, creating a new class of food manufacturing establishments for on-farm production, and a section that covers the same issues with solar permitting as Representative Gregory Burtt’s bill, H677, as reported by Vermont Daily Chronicle on January 29.
If passed in its current composition, the bill would be a big win for its supporters, both in the statehouse and farms around the state. However, testimony before the committee this last Thursday suggests there may be blood in the water. During discussion on Section 6, covering the permitting threshold for on-farm accessory businesses, Steve Collier, the General Counsel for the Agency of Agriculture, Food, and Markets, stated his concerns on what could happen during the legislative process.
“My concern with this issue, it’s there’s really important issues here, but we barely got what we got a couple of years ago, and this is one of those ones that opening it up is a little bit concerning. Not to say that it can’t be better, but I’m also quite concerned that this one could get worse…It might be nice to talk to a couple of other committees even privately about the viability only because this was amended on the floor a couple years ago. It was a big battle. And we got some changes that we’ve been pushing for for a long time, and they weren’t perfect, but they were a lot better than they were for farmers. That’s my only concern with this issue, not because it’s perfect, but because it could get a lot worse”, said Collier.
During the legislative process it is common for bills to face opposing amendments and modifications during intense floor debates, which may entirely rewrite the bill. During discussion in the committee, there was mention of opposition among lawmakers to various sections of the bill and that even within the agriculture community there isn’t complete consensus on what direction the state should go with some of these issues.
“If we stay with the language the way it is in this bill, you’re going to get a ton of pressure. I can tell you where it’s going to come from. It’s going to come from people within our own industry. It’s going to come from Farm Bureau. It’s going to come from NOFA [Northeast Organic Farming Association]”, said Committee Chair Sen. Russ Ingalls (R-Essex)
The committee will continue to hear testimony on the bill before it moves from the committee.