May 15, 2026
As a group representing people working toward a more sustainable, just agricultural future in Vermont, it has honestly been hard to find our way into the debate about Act 181, and that’s because: Act 181 is asking the wrong question. Trying to address its own limited imagination won’t get us to the policies that will really strengthen our working landscape and our people.
Act 181 and the discourse surrounding it reveal a profound need for land use policymaking to bring farmers, aspiring farmers, farmworkers, loggers, sugar makers, and all who work the land, or wish they could work the land, to the table.
As an organization whose members are all of the above, we have needed to respond to the implementation of Act 181, and have been working to ensure our members’ voices are heard at the State House. But the more important work we’ve been up to has taken place at meetings in barns and kitchen tables around the state, and this work is pointing toward a path that Act 181 just doesn’t get us to.
Over hot bowls of soup and mugs of tea, energy is growing for farmers to generate our own policy, one that will lead us to our shared vision of agriculturally-rooted communities that support the wellbeing of the earth and its people.
It’s not people OR the land. It’s people AND the land. It’s not housing OR wildlife, food OR clean water. Our vision has always been both: land and people, thriving and fed, hand in hand. The policies we collectively long for center care and reciprocity between people and the planet.
Here are some of the questions that our members have raised as we have responded to recent land use policy—including Act 181, Act 59, and the Municipal Exemption lawsuit—and shifted from reacting to imagining the policies that will move us toward the future we need:
- Why are so few people able to make a decent living working on the land? What are the policies that will actually help our farms be viable?
- Why do health care, elder care, and child care so often make right-scale agriculture impossible to sustain?
- How can we both cherish our long tradition of land-based livelihoods and joyfully welcome new arrivals who haven’t inherited a farm or can’t afford the soaring costs of land to farm in Vermont?
- How could we design land use and tax policy to incentivize farmers to stay small and keep us all fed while healing the land?
- How can we close the gap between the super wealthy with two or three homes and the people working the land who are struggling to make mortgage payments or put food on the table?
- How can we, in this civic moment, come back to the table together? How can we lay a longer table to have challenging, loving encounters with each other?
The future NOFA-VT imagines is one where people are able to make a good living tending their land with love and care, in community. It imagines policies that serve working people and build strength and solidarity.
We’ll stay engaged and responsive to whatever comes with Act 181 and Act 59, but in the meantime, we are working to build clarity together on not just what we’re against, but also what we can be FOR, with trust and integrity. Please join us. We have a form here for your input related to Act 181. Our next monthly member meeting is also coming up on Tuesday, May 19th—come share your thoughts. And, we’ll hold more member meetings in person over the summer; please join in and bring a friend. We need each other to build the future we deserve.