As some of you know, I currently find myself "unemployable" due to surviving cancer, and having my credit rating destroyed in the process, so I'm surviving on no income and enjoying helping people (it really freaks people out if you help out in the field and then don't demand payment.....).
The Following are my notes for the testimony I gave to the Massachusetts Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies...these are only the fleshed out notes, and don't include the q/a portion where we got into particulars to a much greater degree.
Next time I do something worth talking about I'll post again
Notes for testimony of Charles Patenaude to Massachusetts Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies
I would like to thank the committee for the opportunity to speak on behalf of the Franklin County Farm Bureau, and apologize in advance for my lack of eloquence.
My name is Chuck Patenaude and in addition to representing the FCFB, I am a small farmer in western MA, and was until this past autumn the owner of a small company (Hilltown Alternative Energy) that designed and installed sustainable energy systems for homes, farms and small businesses.
In the interest of full disclosure, my business HAE failed due to loss of credit prior to september 2008, and a concurrent inability to expand and meet contractual obligations with suppliers during an extended illness during late 2008 and the first half of 2009. During the tenure of my business, HAE designed and installed systems that eliminated the use of more than 100,000 gallons of fuel oil per year.
I would also like to apologize for not having being able to say that everything is fine, as from my perspective, and that of the people I represent today it isn't.
At the present time, while the number of farms in MA is increasing, the number of total acres farmed, and the amount of food produced in the state are both in steady decline. These numbers are primarily driven by a reduced profit and access to capital for existing operations, the relatively recent acceptance of horse operations as farms, and an increase in the number of small scale seasonal vegetable farms.
While there are many factors affecting agricultural operations in the state, I have been asked today to limit my comments and possible solutions to those that could possibly be implemented or addressed without additional outlays of capital by the state. Accordingly I will limit my remarks to those areas and situations.
Farming Issues:
Like all small businesses in the current economy, farms are currently suffering from a lack of working capital and a depressed profit margin. Unlike most small businesses, for small farms this has been a chronic condition for years if not decades, with very little respite, resulting in chronic lack of funds for maintenance. Currently nationwide estimates show about 19 cents of every retail dollar spent on grocery store items produced by farms goes to the farmer. Informal polling of operations in western MA (N = 16) show that number locally to be 11-15 cents, including farm owned retail operations. According to USDA numbers, a typical Western MA farm of 100 acres has outstanding notes (Mortgage, equity loans, operating credit lines) of $ 400,000 at a current average interest rate of 8.5%. With the potential for high profits to be made via investment in the financial sector, and prior to that in the tech sector, farms, showing profits of 2.5% or less have not seen significant private sector investment , or a favorable banking environment in 20+ years, excepting large corporate structures that can invest internally.
Cases in point; Raw milk prices (paid by the purchaser) are effectively the same as 1980, as are wholesale eggs at the Boston market. While there is some assistance being given to the dairy farmers at present, even with insurance and assistance, the money paid to dairy farmers is still only about 75% of the cost of production.
During this same period of time the average share of retail dollars going to farmers decreased 55%, while operating costs have increased, 2 to 10 fold in the case of some common commodities required by farmers.
While there is a common public perception that grants and low interest loans are readily available to farms and farmers, the reality is that there are very few available to small farms, and they are structured in such a way as to make utilizing such funding sources very difficult or impossible. In the case of grants and subsidies in the state, virtually all are given to corporate or multi-generational farms, resulting in preservation of isolated farms rather than growth of farming in general.
Further complicating the issue of grants for most small farms and rural businesses are the conditions attached to most grants both at the state and federal level. Virtually all grants require the applier of the grant to have matching funds available, most commonly for 50% of all outlays, and require that the farmer's labor or expertise not be counted towards this end. In many cases, this precludes the farm or business from doing a complete implementation or to start a project at all, and ofttimes results in a multi-year implementation that is vastly less efficient and more costly. In the case of solar projects, the farm or business is more commonly required to foot the whole bill upfront, not receiving any funding until several months after the project is completed.
At the present time almost no funding is available for biomass projects at a scale suitable for a farm or community, and attempts to obtain information about such systems generally proves fruitless, even though such systems have been shown in numerous installs in the state to have ROI's in the 2-3 year range in actual business or farming operations.
At the present time the current working definitions of sustainable, at both the state and federal level look at only type of inputs, and not at the system or scale of implementation. This inadequacy of definition results in many projects being supported on the basis of a single criteria such as fuel type, that are not sustainable within a community or region.
and my first soundbite:
http://www.wwlp.com/...