A Legal Guide to the Business of Farming in Vermont

This project was originally conceived from Attorney Annette Higby’s participation as a speaker in a business planning course called “Tilling the Soil of Opportunity.” The course includes a section called “The Legal Terrain” that covers legal considerations of which farmers should be aware when starting or expanding their businesses. Attorney Higby developed an outline from questions posed by class participants, and through her continued participation in the course, observed several commonly asked questions. This outline eventually formed the core of the guide’s contents.

To ensure that the guide was relevant to the needs of service providers and farmers, project
beneficiaries were involved at key steps throughout its development. For example, prior to submitting the proposal, we conducted a brief survey of potential project beneficiaries to determine the guide’s direction and usefulness. Service providers were asked to prioritize topic areas that the guide could address, how they might use the guide, and their interest in reviewing it. All respondents indicated they would use the guide in serving their farm clients. When asked how they would use the guide, most participants referred to the guide as a resource they would use to help inform farmers. For example, one respondent said, “As a means to identify specific resources. Especially important, [the] foundation of legal guidelines prior to a consumer of our program further develops his/her operation or creates a new one.” Another said, “I would provide the guide as an additional resource to FARMS students in their final two years of education, while working on business plans.”

Several suggested specific topics they wanted to see addressed in the guide, such as cooperatives and labor issues. Others suggested that the guide be available in both paper and web-based formats. A majority of the respondents offered to review the guide, and included comments such as, “I believe that I may be able to offer some useful feedback to this project upon review of the guide’s content.”

We continued to solicit feedback from service providers throughout the guide’s development. For example, a proposed table of contents was developed and sent to several service providers, as well as farmers, for review and comment. We used this feedback to further refine the focus of the guide on the following topics: legal structure of the farm business; farm transfer and estate planning; farmland tenure and leasing; agriculture and land use regulation; farm labor regulation; water quality and environmental regulation; farm insurance; regulation of organic agriculture; and regulation of on-farm food processing and marketing.

Our goal was for the guide to be comprehensive, and therefore we determined that it must be a collaborative project. To that end, we sought out professionals with extensive background in the topics covered to serve as either contributing authors or reviewers. For example, Sandy Levine, staff attorney for the Vermont chapter of the Conservation Law Foundation was asked to write the chapters on land use and environmental regulations as she has extensive experience with the agriculture provisions under Act 250 and other land use law in Vermont, as well as regulations governing Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations and other Clean Water Act regulation. As another example, Brian Norder, director of the Vermont Food Venture Center, was asked to write the chapter on regulation of on-farm food processing and marketing, as he routinely works with food producers and is extremely knowledgeable about state and federal regulations around this issue.
Service providers and farmers were also asked to review the draft of the guide for clarity and relevance. We sent the draft guide to 29 reviewers. These included four farmers, six Extension specialists, six attorneys, and other public agency and non-profit organization personnel. Reviewers completed a survey sheet to respond to questions about the usefulness of the guide, level of detail covered, and missing topics. They also included questions and comments directly on the text of the guide, which was forwarded to the authors for final revisions.

First and final drafts of the guide were reviewed and edited by a professional editor and the guide layout was designed by a professional graphic designer. The guide was made available on-line, both by individual chapter and as a whole document. We created an entry page to capture user’s email addresses for the purpose of a follow-up evaluation but found that many people who accessed the guide did not use the entry page.