2/10 Legislators need to hear from us to protect the Right to Grow Food!

Action Alert: This week, legislators need to hear from us to protect the Right to Grow Food for homesteaders, including the right to raise livestock and to sell food!

Due to a 2025 Vermont Supreme Court ruling, farms and farming in VT are no longer exempt from municipal zoning, which means towns can regulate where growing food is allowed, what animals can be raised, or when machinery can be operated, among other possibilities. We are working with other agricultural organizations and lawmakers to address this, and restore the exemption - but we’re meeting resistance. You may be particularly vulnerable to increased regulatory requirements if:

You are a farmer or homesteader with livestock on fewer than 4 acres, who sells anything you produce.
You are operating near a downtown, village, or "planned growth area" (or Tier 1a or 1b area; learn about this here).
You make less than $5,000 each year from farm products, or qualify as a farm under the Required Agricultural Practices (RAPs) by filing a Schedule F.

Now is the time to contact us and the legislature (contact info at the bottom) to make sure your voice is heard, and that they understand how you could be impacted by these changes.

A Vermont Supreme Court Ruling on May 30th, 2025 (In re 8 Taft Street DRB & NOV Appeals, 2025 VT 27) overturned the long-standing interpretation that farming is not subject to municipal zoning. By ignoring this precedent and focusing solely on the letter of the law, the court stated that towns may regulate most farming practices. They are only prohibited from regulating water quality, due to the court’s interpretation of the reference in Title 24 to the Required Agricultural Practices Rule (RAPs).

Advocates from Rural Vermont, the Vermont Farm Bureau, NOFA-VT, Agri Mark, Cabot, the Vermont Dairy Producers Alliance, the Connecticut River Farmer Watershed Alliance, the Farm to Plate Network, the Land Access and Opportunity Board, the Vermont Association of Conservation Districts and the American Farmland Trust, urge the Vermont legislature to reinstate the municipal exemption for farming and to codify a Right to Grow Food. We call for a statewide level-playing field for farming regulations enforced by the Vermont Agency of Agriculture Food and Markets, and in which any Vermonter has the Right to Grow Food, of any kind, at a scale appropriate for the amount of land they have.

The current proposal from the Senate Committee on Agriculture does not align with our goals. The committee has aligned in many ways with the proposal from the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food, and Markets (VAAFM), which changes the eligibility requirements of the Required Agricultural Practices (RAPs), such that farms under 1 acre, that make less than $5,000 annually (used to be $2,000), or that rely on filing Schedule F in their taxes, would not be considered farms, and therefore would not be protected from regulation, even if the municipal exemption is reinstated. We disagree with these changes, and are concerned that if the proposals to change the RAPs continue, they will stall the legal process and prevent the municipal exemption from being reinstated (in any form) in this legislative session.

Our large coalition of agricultural stakeholders is advocating for a compromise, that the Secretary of Agency should have the discretion to respond to any complaints about farms, even on parcels that are not subject to the RAPs, to determine whether or not the land base is appropriate for the existing animal husbandry practices. They have the expertise to make this determination, not town governments. The compromise agrees that towns should keep local control over the often contentious question of whether (or where) roosters are allowed.

The proposal from the House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry also does not align with our goals. They are aligning fairly strongly with the proposal of the Vermont League of Cities and Towns (VLCT), which will give municipalities some authority over farm structures in town centers or planned growth areas that achieve Tier 1 status (Act 250 exemption) in the Act 181 process. VLCT proposes that certain regulations, such as setbacks and traffic in/out, should be allowed as long as they don’t “functionally prohibit” farming (similar to the rules about the regulation of hospitals and houses of worship in 24 V.S.A. § 4413(a)(1)). The Tier 1 areas are still being defined, so we don’t yet know where this proposed law would take effect.

The House committee has agreed to a Right to Grow Food to provide protections for some smaller operations that don’t fall under the RAPs - but is only agreeing to protect personal use, proposing that towns have regulatory authority over homesteaders making money from sales of agricultural products. VLCT also only proposes to protect the Right to Grow plants (including orchards and maple) but not to protect livestock on homesteads. They want to keep existing town ordinances in place for regulating livestock on operations that do not fall under the RAPs, including those that dictate what types and numbers of livestock someone can have (February 6 testimony). For example: Barre City limits residents to 15 hens, South Burlington allows only 6 hens on residential lots, and Essex Junction Village limits residents to 4 hens per lot.

The Right to Grow Food is a human right and should be universal. People growing food of any kind, at any scale, in town or out, should not be hindered by municipal regulations. This is a critical step on the way to our statewide goal to produce at least 30% of the food consumed in the State by 2030. Furthermore, Heather Darby (Associate Professor at UVM Extension, in testimony on February 5, 2026) emphasized that protecting agricultural soils is a matter of national security because people need to not only be able to house and clothe themselves, they need to be able to feed themselves – this is not only a matter of how land is regulated, but that we have a thriving and accessible farm economy.

***Advocacy on this particular issue does not currently affect how cannabis is regulated.***

TAKE ACTION!

Legislators need to hear now from all of us, as they are making critical decisions over the next couple of weeks about these issues. Contact your Representatives and Senators, submit your written public testimony this week (however short or long) and urge them to act:

1) Protect the Right to Grow Food, including the right to raise livestock and sell food products from small operations.

2) The Agency of Agriculture (not town governments) should regulate stocking density, meaning that they should have the discretion to respond to complaints and assess if a land base being used for raising livestock is sufficient for appropriate nutrient and waste management.

Urge them to consider the message they would send to towns if they excluded livestock or operations that sell what they produce. Such exclusions would encourage restrictive policies that hinder the launch of homesteads and small farms—the very operations that strengthen our local self-reliance.

Please send your correspondence to the committees below, making sure to copy the committee assistants so that your written testimony will be posted to the legislative website!

Senate Ag

Sen. Russ Ingalls, Chair ringalls@leg.state.vt.us

Sen. Joseph "Joe" Major, Vice Chair: jmajor@leg.state.vt.us

Sen. Brian Collamore bcollamore@leg.state.vt.us

Sen. Steven Heffernan, Clerk sheffernan@leg.state.vt.us

Sen. Robert Plunkett rplunkett@leg.state.vt.us

*** Always include their committee assistant so that your written testimony will be posted on the legislative website:

Linda Leehman lleehman@leg.state.vt.us

House Ag

Rep. David Durfee, Chair ddurfee@leg.state.vt.us

Rep. John L. Bartholomew, Vice Chair jbartholomew@leg.state.vt.us

Rep. Richard Nelson, Ranking Member rnelson@leg.state.vt.us