MONTPELIER — Taxpayers spent $285 million supporting the state’s dairy industry between 2010 and 2019, according to the state auditor.
Tax breaks and the Current Use Program contributed to the bulk of the support, said State Auditor Doug Hoffer on Tuesday. His office released a report earlier this week on the subject. Also, it looks at support the industry has received in order to help it comply with water-quality protection laws.
Hoffer said the goal of the report is to spark conversation in the Legislature and in the Governor’s Commission about the Future of Vermont Agriculture about what the state is getting for what it spends. The latter was created earlier this year and plans to draft recommendations for lawmakers on the dairy industry’s future.
According to Hoffer, the dairy industry is one of the few to receive direct public aid. The other notable one is the tourism industry. With regards to tourism, the state spends about $3 million a year on it, while the private sector spends upwards of $100 million, making it impossible to tell exactly what the state is getting back on its investment.
Hoffer said this audit report doesn’t go far enough to show what the state is getting in return on its dairy investments, but he hopes that’s something others will be considering moving forward. The report makes no recommendations, but it points out things like, half the milk produced in Vermont is made by 59 farms.
“What has happened over time with the consolidation and reduction of farms and the impact of dairy on the economy of the state, it’s not just how much revenue they collect,” Hoffer said. “In the old days, and this is true for many industries, farmers used to buy a lot of their inputs locally, whether it was feed or seed or fixing your tractor, all the stuff farmers needed that they didn’t do themselves, they bought locally.”
That created a multiplier effect, keeping the aid money local, but with a shrinking number of farms turning to more and more consolidated support industries, its questionable how much money is staying in-state these days.
Hoffer said this report isn’t making value judgements or knocking dairy farmers. He said it’s clear that the Current Use Program is keeping many farms in business, protecting agricultural soils, and perhaps most visibly, keeping land open.
“Every Vermonter knows the important historical contribution dairy farming has made to our state’s economy and identity,” Hoffer stated in a release. “We also know the last few decades have been extremely challenging for small and mid-sized dairy farms. Below-cost payments from milk processors, industry consolidation, water quality requirements — these and other pressures help explain why Vermont went from 4017 farms in 1969 to fewer than 650 today.”
Steven Collier, general counsel for the Agency of Agriculture, said these issues are always on the state’s mind.
“Our agency welcomes a conversation, and it’s not so much because of the spending as it is our belief in the importance of agriculture in the state,” he said.
Collier said that while the agriculture commission is co-chaired by Agriculture Secretary Anson Tebbetts, the agency can’t speak for it. That said, he believes Hoffer’s report is the kind of information it’s looking to review.
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Auditor hopes report will spark conversation about Vermont dairy industry - Bennington Banner
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