Vermont officials are arguing over who will get to hassle the farmer who’s raising chickens on compost in Montpelier, the quaint capital of our rural state…
Farm or facility?
A scrap over waste definitionMONTPELIER – In a state which does all it can to encourage and protect the agricultural landscape and workforce, it can matter a lot who is called a farmer. But that isn’t always as easy a call as it might seem.
For instance, is the growing business of making compost from organic waste – from food scraps to manure and even animal carcasses in some cases – farming? Or is it something else?
Karl Hammer raises 1,200 chickens on the upper reaches of the Main Street in the smallest state capital in the country. Those chickens do a lot of the work of turning such “residuals” (don’t call some-thing so useful and valuable “waste” with Hammer around) into compost and eggs, both of which he sells. But two state agencies seem to be somewhat at odds over whether the operation is farming or solid waste management. It matters because solid waste facilities come under the jurisdiction of Act 250, the state’s rigorous environmental and land use law. But farms are, by and large, exempt from those rules and from local zoning.
The operation on Main Street is a farm, according to Hammer and the Agency of Agriculture. But the Agency of Natural Resources – and some neighbors – believe an argument could be made that the place is actually an organic waste processing center and therefore subject to Act 250 regulation. Other composting facilities around the state are regulated under Act 250.
-Times Argus in Barre, VT
Geez, don’t these folks have enough to complain about with their tax bills in Montpelier? That’s a farm. Plain and simple. What do his neighbor’s want? Everything they eat produced in factories and delivered from half way round the world in plastic wrap? I’ll bet those same people consider themselves ‘green’. Just color them mean.