The Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets is pleased to announce that applications for the Farm Agronomic Practice (FAP) Program are now open for applications from Vermont farms to support the installation of field conservation practices this summer through next spring.

The 2022/2023 FAP Program will support Vermont farms to install the following conservation practices between July 1, 2022 and June 30, 2023:

The FAP program operates on a first-come first-served model, so apply early! Final application deadlines are as follows:

• Applications which include Rotational Grazing are due June 15, 2022. If you are applying for rotational grazing you must include a grazing plan and maps in your application.
• Applications which include Cover Crop are due August 1, 2022.
• For all other practices, applications must be submitted 30 days prior to install of the first practice for which funding is requested.

For more information on the FAP program requirements or to print a PDF application form .

Flyer for 2022 Joint Annual Meeting

More info at:  https://agriculture.vermont.gov/crep

Are you considering selling your solid manure to area gardeners or just want to be able to put a value on the manure produced by your herd? Check out the fact sheet created by Orleans County NRCD! https://www.vacd.org/conservation-districts/orleans-county/

Introduction

To get to know the FWA membership, we are highlighting an FWA member and their good work!  In this article, our featured farmer is Rolland Rainville of Rolland Dairy Farm in Franklin, Vermont. Rolland comes from a French-Canadian farming family that is on its fourth generation of farming in Franklin County around Lake Carmi (Image 1).  Rolland is family and community oriented. He is teaching his three nephews how to run the farm and has served on his local Planning Commission, serves on an agricultural advisory committee for Vermont Secretary of Agriculture Anson Tebbetts, and is a board member of the Farmer’s Watershed Alliance. Rolland also collaborates with UVM Extension’s Northwest Crops and Soils Program for cover crop research and an assessment of whole farm mass nutrient balance.

Over 40 Years of Stewardship

Rolland has put in a lot of hard work, time, and patience to get the farm where it is today. He takes great pride and great pleasure in making land productive. And for nearly forty years, he has been doing something different to make the land more productive. He maintains a healthy forest stand to tap trees to produce maple syrup. He’s squared the fields to utilize the space more effectively.  He’s leveled fields to reduce puddling which stunts plant growth and lowers quality. He grows his own grain and soy which means those nutrients are cycled in the watershed from plant to cow back to the field as manure instead of importing the nutrients in. He no-tills and cover crops where and when he can and promotes these agricultural practices with Vermont Associate of Conservation District signs (Image 2 and Image 3). He created a nutrient management plan that follows our states strict standards and updates it every year to reflect changes on his farm. This year, he is trying out a few acres of hemp. For the past four years, the only fertilizer he has applied has been fish oil.  He knows the lack of fertilizer means that his crops “aren’t the best out there, but I get a lot out of it.” And he’s excited about manure injection, which reduces the risk of run-off into waterways, and significantly minimizes odor.

When I asked Rolland what gave him the most pride on his farm, he pointed toward a nearby meadow.  He made that meadow from poorly producing pasture into high yielding, high quality hay land with good land stewardship and picking up loads, literally loads, of stones. Rolland jokes, “We can spend days picking up stones and sometimes when I’m done I think I’ve dropped the field six inches.”  However, he also says, “Where there are stones, this is good land…the land makes you work for it.”

But the early mornings and late days bring their joys too.  He smiles and says, “I love my cows…there’s nothing like seeing a cow mature, a calf being born…a new life, a new chance, a new future.” The care that Rolland puts into his work shows that he values where he lives and works. “We are doing the best job we can do. We are treating our land good because if we don’t, we won’t have a farm.” Rolland says, “I spent most of my lifetime fixing land…it’s mine to take care of while I’m here…I’d like to think I did a good job while I was here.”  Rolland appreciates the elegance of the Lake Carmi area, “you couldn’t ask for better scenery, it’s a beautiful part of the world.”

It’s that mentality that keeps Rolland at it every day of the week and helps him through the hard times like low milk prices and weather like that of this past spring. This spring was unusually cold and rainy which meant that crops got planted later than they typically do, impacting feed yield and quality, which leads to lower milk productivity, and that means less income. Back in May, Rolland noted, “It’s going to be another challenging year…there’s no right or wrong thing to do anymore…just plugging away and hope for the best. It’s not your fault if you get three inches of rain.  You put your pants back on and do something different.”

The poor weather conditions just compound the four years of poor dairy prices. Rolland reflects that when he first bought the farm in 1976, the first check of the month went to bills and the second check of the month went back into investing the farm. Now, the price farmers receive for what they produce is often not enough to cover basic costs of operation. Milk is the second most commonly bought item at the grocery store, and as Rolland notes, “we can’t make a living off of it.” Coming from a long line of dairy farmers, Rolland is not the first to farm in his family, but he wonders if he will be the last. With this dire foreboding, I ask Rolland why he doesn’t get out of farming and enjoy life. His response; “I am enjoying life. I will do this to my dying day…it’s life.  It’s what I do.”

PDF version of the article here:  http://farmerswatershedalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/2019_May_FeatureFarmer_RollandRainville.pdf

Ever wonder if your farm is a net importer or exporter of nutrients?

Have you sat down and penciled out the math on the financial benefits of cover crops?

goCrop is here to help with that! With newly integrated analysis tools and easy to interpret reports, goCrop is a one stop shop to write your NMP and calculate a Whole Farm Mass Nutrient Balance, based on software from Cornell, and Cover Crop Economics based on the NRCS calculator.

Tim Magnant said, “Reports are nice because we can see the results. We are doing a good job. This report isn’t for me, it’s for the naysayers…The reports work in my favor because they show that the agronomics we are doing are working. It’s proof. We are doing as good as we can do. This shows me we are doing pretty well.”

Find out more about what farmers like you had to say about these new goCrop features!  Read the full article here (click link).

FWA Ecosystem Services Information PDF

PES Working Group Full Final Report January 2020

NEW – There is now an Emergency Winter Ban and Snow-Covered Ground Agricultural Waste Spreading Exemption Effective December 16, 2019 through to December 22, 2019.

To utilize the exemption (link below), your farm must read and follow the requirements of the exemption to ensure any manure or agricultural waste spreading activities comply with the requirements of the exemption as well as the RAPs.

This emergency exemption will expire at 11:59 PM on December 22, 2019.

Farmers Dedicated to Healthy Lake and Healthy Community

Originally Published in the St. Albans Messenger on 4/13/2018 in Opinions: Editorial Comment & Letters to the Editor.

The farmers of Lake Carmi share our neighbor’s concerns about phosphorous in our watershed and have come together to share the work we have done in, and for, the Lake Carmi watershed.  This work, for many, has been implemented over the past ten years and well ahead of state mandates.  From practices like cover cropping, which keeps a growing crop on the fields all year long – reducing the chances for runoff; to manure injection, which shoots fertilizer up to 10 inches under the surface to keep nutrients in the ground, and out of our waterways.  Farmers are leading the way in protecting our environment, one that we are all a part of.  Why?  Because we believe in healthy food for our communities and beyond – food that sustains us, but also sustains the earth for future generations.

We feel until this point, our story in the Lake Carmi watershed hasn’t been factually told.  We want to have a voice in the continuing conversation of protecting our waters and our communities; and we want others to make decisions based off the correct information.

Over the past month, we have met and gathered information on our practices: Nutrient Management Plans, field maps, soil samples, manure samples, and agronomy practices – information gathered with the assistance of the UVM Extension, which has taken an unbiased approach throughout this process.

We are proud to share a factually-based representation of what is really happening in Lake Carmi with you:

Data collection shows there are just over 7,700 total acres in the Lake Carmi Watershed, out of those acres, roughly 1,430 are used as agricultural crop lands, mostly hay fields.  The work done by the UVM Extension shows that of those agricultural acres, 72% utilize cover crops to reduce runoff year-round; 82% of those total Ag acres are managed using reducing tilling practices to avoid soil disturbance.

Corn, a crop that needs phosphorous to grow and thrive, makes up just 229 acres (16%) of the Carmi Watershed, and of those, 63% are cared for using manure-injection techniques to lock phosphorous underground.

When it comes to that phosphorous, farmers in the watershed apply this nutrient in responsible ways and in responsible amounts – 81% of watershed acres are managed using state mandated Nutrient Management Plans.  The remaining acres are not required to have Nutrient Management Plans, including land owned by the State of Vermont.

Whether you believe it or not, UVM Extension data shows, the facts show, that manure-fertilizer only supplies 74% percent of the phosphorous crops and fields need to grow in the Watershed, meaning there is a phosphorous deficiency on cropland (corn, hay) in the watershed.

And despite the thought that Lake Carmi is surrounded by dairy farms, there are less than 500 dairy cows total in the watershed, none of which are actively being milked.

The future of Lake Carmi is a responsibility shared by all of us, not just farmers.  The farmers of Lake Carmi are committed to continuing the environmental practices we have established, to being respectful neighbors, and moving the bar higher in Franklin County.

As a community we set ourselves up for failure thinking the work being done by farmers alone will be enough to restore the lake and to eliminate the legacy phosphorous built up over decades.  It will take all of us to make this a reality.

Research has shown and will prove that the best use of our land in Vermont is a working landscape.  Reaching a place of agricultural success and environmental protection is a balance we look forward to leading.  We take pride in our integrity as members of this community; the facts represented above will lead towards the water quality standards we all desire for the lake.

The Lake Carmi Watershed has not been impacted over-night, and it will take time to show results. We will continue to do our part – adopt new practices, stay educated on the latest science and trends, and much more.

This is the story that has not been told.  We are proud to be part of the small group of people that make food, and are proud that we are learning how to improve our practices every day for our community and beyond.  We hope you will join us in a conversation, one in which we can listen and learn from each other to make the best investments and efforts towards a healthy lake and healthy community.