An open letter to Vermont legislators and citizens

By Neil Ryan

Rural Vermont is not just a “forest block” as defined by planners via GIS maps and undemocratic rule making. Rural Vermont is a human institution created with care by generations of men and women who were willing to work the land.

I am a third-generation Vermont farmer who has called three different farms in three Vermont towns home. Each of those farms—the foundation of my family’s livelihood—would be impossible under Act 181 and the emerging Act 250 revisions. Most Vermonters have no idea what’s coming.

My family started farming in Starksboro in 1981 with a dairy cow and a tent, purchasing an abandoned hill farm with a caved-in house and rotted barn. My grandparents raised Scot Highland cattle, planted 10,000 Christmas trees, and built for multi-family living. My uncle created Highland Sugarworks there—pioneering specialty glass bottles for Vermont maple syrup and helping establish organic standards for the industry.

They didn’t ask permission or spend tens of thousands navigating bureaucratic mazes. They simply did the hard work of farming.

Under Act 181, none of that would be possible. The multi-family housing would require navigating Tier 2 and Tier 3 designations. The roads to access the farm would trigger the 800-foot road rule requiring Act 250 permits. The diversified operation would run afoul of restrictions on accessory farm businesses.

In my twenties, I homesteaded in Roxbury. I built a quarter-mile driveway to reach another abandoned farm, constructed a barn on a 140-year-old stone foundation, and drew water from a prior generation’s stone-lined well. Under Act 181, a young person could not do this. The capital and time required to navigate permitting would make it impossible. Act 181 ends opportunities for the next generation to homestead on the only affordable land left to them.

Now I farm 200 acres in Corinth and Orange that the regional planning commission designated “Rural—Conservation: Land set aside for natural resources” without my meaningful input. This land—slated for Tier 2 and Tier 3 restrictions—was Governor Deane C. Davis’s boyhood farm. It has had four different home sites over two centuries. Ancient roads connected to a Norwegian commune, a brick kiln, and the early 20th century Maplewood Hotel with its bowling alley and swimming pool. My land has three vestigial sugarhouses, stone sheep pens from the 19th-century sheep boom, and barbed wire fencelines from when milk was shipped to the creamery.

Planners call all of this a “forest block.”

This is the profound ignorance at the heart of Act 181: distant authorities with computer models decided they know better than the people who work the land. They see static categories—”forest blocks,” “habitat connectors”—drawn on screens. I see two hundred years of human stewardship creating the biodiverse mosaic of field and forest that defines Vermont.

Beginning December 31, 2026, any construction in Tier 3 areas—including potentially a single-family home—will require full Act 250 permits. Want to build a house for your children or aging parents? Prepare to spend tens of thousands of dollars and wait a year for permission from five appointed officials who have never seen your property.

The road rule takes effect July 1, 2026: any private road over 800 feet triggers Act 250 review. Eight hundred feet—less than the distance from my barn to my round bale feeder. My home and garden are more than 2,600 feet from the town-maintained road. Under this rule, I may not access parts of my own land without state permission.

The on-farm businesses that keep me afloat? Farm stays aren’t clearly exempt. Events require permit review. Processing farm products requires proving 50 percent of sales come from my own production—a moving target that could leave me in violation without knowing it.

The mathematics are brutal: Small diversified farmers cannot afford the permits, the time, the lawyers, or the uncertainty.

Act 181 creates exemptions in Tier 1A and 1B areas making it easier for corporate developers to build housing. The burden of restriction falls on rural landowners least able to bear it. We’re being asked to subsidize development goals with our property rights while being denied the opportunities the wealthy enjoy.

This is cultural genocide through regulation. Rural Vermont culture—the knowledge of working this land, the social patterns of multi-generational continuity—is being systematically destroyed. When you make it impossible for young people to start farms, you break the chain of cultural transmission. When you lock rural land into regulatory categories, you erase human history and treat rural people as a problem to be solved.

Vermont had 3.3 million acres of farmland in 1925. Today we have just over 500,000 acres—an 85 percent loss. The state’s response is to make what’s left even harder to farm.

What Legislators Must Do

Repeal Act 181 or amend it radically:

• Exempt working farms enrolled in Current Use from Tier 3 restrictions
• Repeal the 800-foot road rule or raise the threshold to prevent actual sprawl, not farm access
• Restore full Act 250 exemption for all accessory farm businesses—stays, events, education, processing
• Require landowner consent before Tier 3 designation—make it opt-in, not imposed
• Provide compensation for regulatory takings—if conservation matters, everyone should pay, not just rural landowners
• Extend timelines and improve notice—many landowners don’t even know their land has been restricted
• Restore local control—let towns decide, not five appointed officials
• Ground decisions in reality—walk the land before mapping it; current draft maps are inaccurate

What Vermonters Must Do

Contact your legislators now. Attend the Land Use Review Board hearings. Demand to see if your property has been mapped as Tier 3. Ask your representatives: Do you want farms in Vermont or a playground for the wealthy? Do you want rural communities with young people and families, or further rural decline?

The final Tier 3 rules aren’t due until September 2026, but jurisdiction begins December 31, 2026. Most landowners don’t know what’s coming. By the time they do, it will be too late.

Farmers have a right to the land we own—not granted by government, but inherent in the labor we’ve invested and the care we’ve given. We have a right to pass this land to the next generation with its possibilities intact. We have a right to farm without begging permission from distant bureaucrats.

These aren’t radical claims. They’re about conserving a way of life that has sustained Vermont for generations and could sustain it for generations more—if we act now.

Neil Ryan is a third-generation Vermont farmer and consultant in Corinth. Contact your state legislators at legislature.vermont.gov. Learn more about Act 181’s impacts at act250.vermont.gov.