Vermont legislative Attack on Farmers

[peckfarm]

The elite have turned the corner on Vermont farms and have turned their backs on Vermont farmers.
Our legislature has fast tracked a bill that could add farm buildings into the tax rolls, put a moratorium on current use enrollment and raise taxes on fertilizer? This is going to put down many farmers for good. It will also keep young farmers from starting new ventures. Also on the table are added fees and licensing for foresters.
If you eat it, build with it or burn it in the fireplace it will cost more and be harder to find. If you have never contacted your elected officials please start. What these politicians don't understand is that added taxes on every aspect of farming (maple included) have long lasting and far reaching consequences. A good place to start: http://www.vtfb.org/

[Brokermike]

These people are Morons!. We have the same size budget as NH but exactly half of the population, and Montpelier is convinced we have a revenue problem

[vtgaryw]

Thanks for the heads up, I'm not a farmer, but my father-in-law grew up on a farm and I have great respect for farmers. I will contact my legislators about this!

Vermont has a serious over-spending problem, we need to put the kibosh on it now! I'm five years from retirement, and have been having serious thoughts about relocating for my golden years, mostly because of cost-of-living here.

Gary

[CampHamp]

These people are Morons!. We have the same size budget as NH but exactly half of the population, and Montpelier is convinced we have a revenue problem


I was wondering how my state (NH) could be so much more frugal than VT and see that VT per capital state taxes are much higher than NH but the local taxes are much lower...

http://www.ppinys.org/reports/jtf2004/stlocaltaxes.htm

[eagle lake sugar]

Socialists have an insatiable appetite for taxing and spending.

[peckfarm]

The effect this will have on the maple industry is yet to be explored. Imagine a sugarmaker no longer eligible to enroll in current use, think of taxes on your sugar house and premium charges for forestry services. I have my political opinions however these tax proposals circumvent party lines, are an attack on Vermont and far beyond the pale.

[GeneralStark]

I personally think some of these proposals are bs and others actually have some merit. I also agree that there is a major spending issue in Montpelier. However, there is more to this than just tax and spend as it seems that several of these proposals are more specifically related to the current use program and attempting to reduce the less than fair aspects of the program. For instance, there are quite a few "farmers" enrolled in this program that don't actually farm. Sure they may have a barn or two and perhaps even a domesticated animal around, but they aren't really producing much food or other agricultural product.

I think it will be a tough case to make to actually get true ag. structures enlisted in the tax rolls. Even if this happens it will require an assessment system that will not value a cow or hay barn at the same rate as a house or commercial building.

The proposal related to removing landowners from current use that are contributing to known water quality issues may have some merit IMO. We are facing a significant issue in VT with water quality and agricultural practices are a significant portion of the cause in addition to suburban development and poor forestry practices. The reality is that the taxpayers of the state are going to have to foot the bill for private landowners lack of good stewardship. Just because someone is a farmer doesn't automatically mean they are a good land steward and providing farmers with a subsidy in the form of pollution isn't good for anyone.

[Maple Hill]

The last I knew you did not have to be a farmer to get in the program,all you had to have was 25 acres or 27 with a house on it.The house and 2 acres were not included in the program. If this bill passes with taxes on all farm buildings it is going to hurt a lot of farm families.Every sugar maker should call their respective legislator and voice their opinion. I know I don't want condos on my farm.

[Flat Lander Sugaring]

[QUOTE=GeneralStark;268802
in addition to suburban development
.[/QUOTE]

last time i saw a new house being built in Poultney was............................................... .......... ok wait.............................................. .....yea the one ooops nope that was NY................................................ .................................................o k over the hill from....nope NY again. jeez cant remember. I see more houses for sale than being built Just saying. lets see last NEW House I prewired was 2 years ago in Grafton.

thanks for link I will call

[peckfarm]

Attempting to justify these taxes as a solution to water quality issues is a foul dripping mess of a lie. Direct discharge laws with fines are in place, they are just not enforced. These taxes are needed to pay for the unproven experimental progressive policies of elite societal "engineers." Those who think they know better are steeling from the poor to feed millions to government.

[GeneralStark]

The last I knew you did not have to be a farmer to get in the program,all you had to have was 25 acres or 27 with a house on it.The house and 2 acres were not included in the program. If this bill passes with taxes on all farm buildings it is going to hurt a lot of farm families.Every sugar maker should call their respective legislator and voice their opinion. I know I don't want condos on my farm.

You also have to have a management plan written by a forester and then reviewed by the county forester. The plan has to call for active management of some type, typically timber or firewood harvesting. One of the issues with the program is many people are not following their management plan. They want the tax break but they don't want to cut any trees or actively manage. There are not enough county foresters and not enough educated land owners unfortunately. The whole point of the program is to keep land in agricultural or forestry use...

[GeneralStark]

Attempting to justify these taxes as a solution to water quality issues is a foul dripping mess of a lie. Direct discharge laws with fines are in place, they are just not enforced. These taxes are needed to pay for the unproven experimental progressive policies of elite societal "engineers." Those who think they know better are steeling from the poor to feed millions to government.

The idea with the tax on fertilizers is to get farmers to use less. I don't personally think taxes are a good way to change behavior, but this is a tool governments do use, and it does work. Perhaps instead they should charge farmers rent for the storage of fertilizers and other toxic pesticides and herbicides in our public water supplies and for the cleanup of the associated water quality problems. I doubt that would go over well, but who is supposed to pay for a private individuals impacts on a public good?

Direct discharge (point source) is a drop in the bucket and is much easier to regulate. The primary issue is with non-point source runoff. In the lake champlain watershed the majority of this comes from ag. and from development. Land development is getting much more highly regulated with landowners and developers being forced to take responsibility for the stormwater leaving their property. The big question is how to deal with ag. runoff because historically the state hasn't wanted to touch it with strict regulation. Now the EPA is stepping in so the state has to do something...

The science on this matter is very clear, and managing runoff is actually a pretty easy thing to do. The challenge is shifting people's perspectives away from "I should be able to do whatever I want on my land" to " what I do on my land has impacts beyond my lands' boundaries and can have negative impacts on public goods". This issue is the result of many years of poor land stewardship and inadequate regulation and enforcement. The big question is what tools will the state effectively use to manage runoff?

I personally think that education on this issue is the most important thing because the majority of vtr's don't understand that what they do on their land may have an impact downstream. They see these types of policy changes as an attack on their rights, but what about the rights of their neighbors and other tax payers? Someone has to pay for pollution and that will be all of us whether we like it or not.

[Dill]

NH is almost completely supported by property tax. We pay tax on all permanent structures regardless of use. I think there is merit to making current use a bit more complicated. And having the land actively farmed or managed should qualify for a different rate. In NH we have a tiny percentage of land open for crops or pasture. I believe its under 7%. But our lowest rate for current use is un-managed woodlot. And managed timber, pasture and crop land go up quite a bit. I think that's completely backwards.

[BreezyHill]

Just because someone is a farmer doesn't automatically mean they are a good land steward

This is true but if a farmer does not take care of his production property he will not be a farmer for long. When you lose the top soil or have fertilizer run off he/she is throwing money in the wind to never see it again. With the farm economy where it is, no farm can do this and stay in farming. On the other hand what looks bad to people out of the loop is actually a very sound farming practice.

Take plowing in the fall. In some areas this will lead to soil erosion; while in other areas not plowing in the fall will lead to soil compaction of wet spring fields and erosion. Each farm is different and requires different farming practices.

75% of our farm is in NYS where my taxes are over $10,000 and yes buildings are taxed on the farm. The remainder is in VT for under$1000 annually. At one time NYS was cheaper but spending went wild and the school district signed contracts that were bad, made horrible spending decisions and just got shot down for over 17 million in spending again, by the voters.

Taxes don't solve any problem...they just make more. So when a farm goes out and the land is no longer farmed it is now a fire hazard. If you live next to one of these fields your fire insurance goes up. All it takes is one brush fire in a county and the insurance adjusters go wild.

If you want to be scared, take a look at the milk futures...dairy is in for another rough year...like any state can afford to lose anymore dairy farms. In one generation our schools class size has shrunk by 30%, farm kids went from 20% to not more than 2% and many grades 0. My section of the community went from 6 dairies to total more than 700 cows to less than 700 in the entire community. Reason = Taxes. Why take over the family farm just to have to close the doors in a decade or less. Many are growing houses. And many of those are either bank owned or for sale now.

Name one tax that solved a problem and did not create another.

Each diesel truck is required to meet EPA standards...do you know that a dodge with the Cummings motor pays a fine instead for the last several years? It was way cheaper to pay the fine than to meet the regs.

Follow PeckFarms lead and make that call!

[GeneralStark]

Obviously the loss of nutrients and soil from ag. land is a loss to the farmer. It's a waste that can easily be avoided...contour plowing, adequate buffer zones adjacent to waterways, proper road design and management, recycling manure, proper manure storage, keeping cows out of the streams, etc.....Using chemical fertilizer is a choice a farmer makes and is not necessary. There are techniques to build topsoil and enrich soils without costly inputs...If a farmer decides to use chemical fertilizer they should be managing the resource well. The problem arises when nutrients are not managed well and they end up in the watershed. Something beneficial to soil and plants becomes a pollutant and wreaks havoc in aquatic ecosystems.

Because the ecosystem is a public good, and provides services to society, who is responsible for the farmer's nutrient input that they could have kept on their land? Is it still the farmer's responsibility? A tax per ton on fertilizer is an attempt to raise funds to deal with the choice the farmer made. That nutrient does not go "away". Whatever the tax per ton fee is it will likely be no where near the cost to the tax payers of what that ton of nutrient can do in the state's public waterways. Consider the cost of having to maintain fish hatcheries, or the loss of revenue from beach closures, or loss of tourism dollars because people don't want to swim in Lake Champlain.

If a landowner is enrolled in current use, and is therefore receiving a reduction in their tax bill, they should also therefore be following the recommended practices for managing that land. If they are not and their poor or inadequate land management is actually costing the taxpayers, should they not be removed from the program?

[n8hutch]

I grew up on a dairy farm that my family owned & lived on several other large farms in Vermont. I have to say I think Farmers have good intentions as a rule & do not pollute or create erosion intentionally. That being said they do at alarming levels. Weather it is because they are too busy to do things the right way just trying to make ends meet, or they don't care, or maybe they are ignorant to the actuality of the damages they are causing. I Agree with the General something should be/needs to be done.

I work in the Excavation & Logging business now & weather we are working in Maine or New Hampshire we are constantly being monitored by Forest Wardens & Water shed protection agencys . if everyone works together things go pretty smooth, people want to but heads & some projects seem pretty long.

I would probably tend to lean towards education & Enforcement more than taxing as a solution.

As far as current use goes I like it & I don't. I think your land should be eligible if you or your family have owened it for a length of time. I don't think it was intended to be a way for people to scoop up large parcels of land, sit on them & pay essentialy very little compared to what it is worth, regardless of how it is being used.

[BreezyHill]

By all means if some one is not properly taking part in a program they must leave, but that is not adding a new tax that is just eliminating a reduction service.

Education and enforment is a far better tool than taxation. Taxation is on all and enforcement is on those that do not obey.

Since there is tubing left in the woods from sugar makers that die or have to abandon an operation for one reason or another; is a tax of 10% fair to charge all producers on their tubing??? I think not. I think that education of recycling locations and programs is far more beneficial at correcting the issue and this helps all producers.

Taxing fertilizer does not help anyone: the retired person that is taking care of his lawn, the soccer facility that is keeping kids off the streets, or the local farmer that is harvesting nutrients in his hay and is selling that to other farmers, gardeners for mulch, or horse owners that need the hay. How is that farm operation going to be able to keep a productive nutrient profile in the top soil. LISA programs fail more often than not due to Low Input is not Sustainable in Agriculture. A dairy farm has tremendous nutrient stock piles in manure but they still need other nutrients that are not in the manure to have maximum yields for sustainability.

Sulfur is one of the largest limiting factors in corn production now that acid rain is not supplying sulfur from sulfur dioxide. Manure is not a product that can any longer be transported from farm to farm due to Johnyes, BVD, IBR, PI3, etc. Every farm has to defend against biological issues, pollution of water, soil, air and sound every day.

Taxation is what the Boston Tea Party was about...It didn't work then and it doesn't work now.

Education and punishment is a better deterrent to poor behavior than a fine or a tax. Often it is cheaper to pay the fine then to correct the mistake.

I have a farm house built in 1843 of brick...I pay a tax luxury tax because it is brick, as do those with log homes.

I like the logger bumper sticker that says " If you don't support logging, try wiping your A$$ with plastic toilet paper!"

It ranks right up there with " Those that support Taxes don't pay their fair share yet!"

[sjdoyon]

Several years ago my land was re-assessed and the assessment was increased solely on the basis the VAST (snowmobile club trail) ran through my property. Justification was the land was more valuable due to direct access to the trail. I allowed the trail through my property to encourage tourism and promote traffic for the local businesses. Found it fairly ironic that I would have to pay more taxes to allow the VAST trail pass through my property. After all the local landowners informed the snowmobile clubs all trails would be closed, it didn't take long for the extra assessments to be dropped from our property bills.

[Greenthumb]

Not to get too many people riled up but state and federal goverment seem to be out to destroy the middle class. It goes for both side of the aisle. d and R

[BreezyHill]

Several years ago my land was re-assessed and the assessment was increased solely on the basis the VAST (snowmobile club trail) ran through my property. Justification was the land was more valuable due to direct access to the trail. I allowed the trail through my property to encourage tourism and promote traffic for the local businesses. Found it fairly ironic that I would have to pay more taxes to allow the VAST trail pass through my property. After all the local landowners informed the snowmobile clubs all trails would be closed, it didn't take long for the extra assessments to be dropped from our property bills.

Goes to show: No good deed will go unpunished.

I just got back from grooming trails in NYS we have been trying for years to get a tax reduction for land owners that share...Last two season we were open 1 day in 2012 and 4 in 2013. Spring time brought the closing of 3 trail side restaurants. No $$$ all winter long from sleds and the til was empty.

Though I don't have time to ride VAST; Thank You for allowing the trail!

Ben