This is Part 9 of Downstream, a 10-part series looking at what’s changed — and what hasn’t — one year after catastrophic floods swept through Vermont.
ESSEX JUNCTION — Strolling through rows of apple trees and blueberry bushes at Paul Mazza’s Fruit and Vegetable farm on a crystalline-skied day in late June, you wouldn’t know that these fields were underwater nearly one year ago.
Look closely, though, and the evidence is there. Squishy deposits of river sediment occasionally dimple the fields. The odd apple tree grows on an angle, knocked askew by flood waters. The nearby Winooski River — which overflowed its banks, infiltrating the Mazzas’ farm last July — remains high, and is an opaque brown.
“That is one body of water I would not want to go jumping in,” Paul’s daughter, Kaity Mazza, mused to VTDigger on a recent visit.
The Mazzas’ farm was one of many in Vermont pummeled by last summer’s floods. According to a state Agency of Agriculture report released in February, 264 farms reported flood damages to the agency last summer. Flood damage was reported in every Vermont county, totaling more than 27,000 acres of farmland in the state.
In total, the Agency of Agriculture estimates that agricultural producers suffered nearly $45 million in losses due to the flood.
For many farmers in 2023, it wasn’t just the flood that wreaked havoc. A deep freeze in May had already devastated countless bushels of fruit crops. By the time the flood arrived in July, farmers were handed a one-two punch.
From there, according to Vermont’s Secretary of Agriculture Anson Tebbetts, “It just never let up.”
“It’s not only the event of the major flood, but we had persistent rains that continued throughout the crop season,” Tebbetts told VTDigger. “It’s going to take a very, very long time, I think, for a lot of our farmers that were impacted to dig out from this sort of catastrophic weather event.”
‘Just pray to God that it comes back’
For many of Vermont’s crop farmers, last year’s floods arrived at the worst possible time: peak growing season. To lose a ripe crop, ready for the picking, to a natural disaster is not just heartbreaking. It can be financially devastating.
Farmers often front some of their season’s greatest expenses in the spring — buying seeds, straw, fertilizer, packaging and more in one fell swoop — using either loans or their savings.
“Gosh, in the spring, it’s absurd the amount of money farms spend,” Kaity said.
Kaity Mazza reflects on the toll that last year’s flooding took on the farm fields of Paul Mazza’s Fruit and Vegetable Stand in Essex on Tuesday, June 25. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger
In a state with a short growing season such as Vermont, farmers then have a matter of weeks to make back all of that money, plus enough to pay themselves and their workers and — fingers crossed — stash away some for next year.
It was during those precious few harvest weeks that last summer’s flood hit. It was “horrific” timing, according to Leanne Porter, who manages Farm First, a program that offers mental health resources to Vermont farmers.
“Crops were just about to begin coming to the point of harvest, and they got wiped out,” Porter told VTDigger. “It was devastating.”
It was this spring, when it came time to invest in this year’s crop, that Kaity saw her father “so discouraged.”
“There were many times where he was like, ‘I don’t know why I’m putting all this money in. Chances are I’m not going to see it again this summer,’” Kaity recounted of her father. “And when you work in an industry where you dump all your money in in the spring, and just pray to God that it comes back to you — that’s not sustainable.”
‘It’s a nightmare’
As farmers tried to financially and physically dig out from last year’s floods, their best bet to quickly recoup some of their financial losses was likely to file a claim with their crop insurance — if they had it.
Most farmers in Vermont don’t. The Agency of Agriculture said in its February report that 70% of farmers surveyed reported not carrying crop insurance, which is serviced through the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
According to the University of Vermont Extension’s director, Roy Beckford, the problem for Vermont farmers is that, “The crop insurance system, designed by the federal government, was designed essentially for economies of scale.”
“In other words, the larger the operations and the more conglomerate the farming system was, the more able they were to not just receive this insurance, but to pay for it,” Beckford told VTDigger. “Our smaller-type farmers in the eastern part of the country, certainly in New England, cannot afford the level of insurance — the premiums and so on — and consequently, they’re grossly underinsured.”
Kaity Mazza put it more simply. For the Mazzas’ relatively small operation, Kaity said crop insurance winds up being “such a racket.” Her dad opts not to carry it.
“Part of that is the really nitpicky documentation that’s needed for it,” Kaity said. “The minute you try to make a claim for it, it’s awful. It’s a nightmare. … And then the stuff they give you is always much lower than it really, I think, should be.”
When all is said and done, many Vermont farmers decide that crop insurance simply isn’t worth the money or hassle. But when disaster strikes, Beckford said that insurance is often the quickest avenue to much needed, interest-free cash — even if the payout doesn’t cover the total losses. Without insurance, farmers are often limited to loans.
This year’s blueberry crop ripens on the vines at Paul Mazza’s Fruit and Vegetable Stand in Essex on Tuesday, June 25. Mazza’s farm fields were decimated in last year’s flooding. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger
Of all of the lessons learned from last year’s flood, Beckford said he hopes the federal government can take note of how crop insurance doesn’t work for small, local farms.
“We just need to go back to the drawing board and kind of reconfigure the way the insurance system is designed, so that it doesn’t exclude our small farmers,” he said.
‘We’re still standing by’
Shortly after the flood last year, Vermont lawmakers spoke optimistically of the possibility of financial help from Washington coming to farmers’ rescue.
Some of them came to Mazza’s farm to make their case. On July 24, two weeks after the flood, a cavalcade of policymakers and reporters trudged through the farm to see the damage for themselves. Tebbetts was there, as was Republican Gov. Phil Scott, U.S. Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., and regional representatives from USDA.
In the wake of the flood, Vermont’s farmers didn’t have the same options for federal assistance made available to other impacted Vermonters. They were not eligible for aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help rebuild, nor the low-interest disaster loans offered by the Small Business Administration to recoup business losses.
Save for crop insurance, the only other option for federal help was through loans serviced through USDA’s Farm Service Agency. A federal declaration did open up Vermont farmers to expedited, low-interest disaster loans — but they were loans nonetheless.
“Now, think about that,” Beckford said. “Easy access to loans is a good thing, but when you’ve already borrowed to the point where you know you can’t afford it, it doesn’t solve anybody’s problem.”
Weeks after the politicians’ visit to the Mazzas’ farm, they visited another, Conant’s Riverside Farms in Richmond. This time, they brought in the big guns: In tow was USDA Under Secretary Robert Bonnie. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., came as well.
It was around this time that Vermont’s congressional delegation penned multiple letters to President Joe Biden, pleading with him to include robust funding for federal agencies — including USDA — to carry out relief to natural disaster-stricken states in a supplemental budget proposal.
Those calls mostly went unanswered by Biden, then later, Congress. Last year’s supplemental budget eventually passed into law without most of the Vermont delegation’s pleas for flood aid, though it did include a $16 billion top-off to FEMA’s disaster relief fund.
Nearly one year later, Tebbetts held onto some optimism for a breakthrough, telling VTDigger, “We’re still standing by.”
“I know Congress has not passed a disaster relief package, and in the past, they have done that,” Tebbetts said. “There were so many disasters across the United States. We were hopeful that they would do that, and they could still do that. And I’m sure that at any point, Vermont producers and farmers will welcome some direct payments, if that’s possible.”
‘Can’t really do too much for you’
For Kaity, there are some hard feelings. Lawmakers came to her family’s farm, took photos in their flooded fields and said they wanted to help.
“There were those there that were very sincere and apologetic, but … it was like, ‘Can’t really do too much for you, sorry,’” she said, imitating a shrug.
The Scott administration last year did stand up a $20 million emergency grant program to flooded businesses, including farms, and the Agency of Agriculture launched a “Dig Deep Vermont” philanthropic campaign, aiming to raise at least $20 million in donations for farmers. The campaign closed June 30.
This year’s raspberry crop ripens on the vines at Paul Mazza’s Fruit and Vegetable Stand in Essex on Tuesday, June 25. Mazza’s farm fields were decimated in last year’s flooding. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger
The Mazzas received roughly $258,000 from the emergency grant program, according to a list of awardees provided by the state Department of Agriculture. The grant didn’t cover their full losses, but it was “very helpful,” Kaity said.
But asked how she feels about ongoing natural disaster support — or lack thereof — for farms like her dad’s, Kaity said, “Not good for the future, knowing that this is going to be a lot more frequent.”
The future came all too soon for the Mazzas this past December, when their Essex Junction fields were once again consumed by the Winooski River. Less than two inches of rain had fallen, but thanks to snow melt and already saturated grounds, the farm saw flood waters nearly as high as they had been five months prior, Kaity said. Such winter floods are expected to become more common in Vermont as the climate warms.
There were no crops to be lost in December, but Kaity said 11 tractors were in the flood zone. The rushing waters once again carved a giant hole in the ground behind their fields that they had just filled that summer.
It wasn’t even worth documenting the damages, Kaity said. There were no grants available for the December flood.
Just one year after last summer’s floods, Vermonters are bracing for yet another forecast of heavy rains. After an already wet summer, the National Weather Service warned this week of up to 6-8 inches of rainfall in certain areas of Vermont.
A hidden cost
There’s another, more difficult to quantify cost to farmers of natural disasters like last summer’s: their mental health.
Porter, from Farm First, said that last summer was “definitely our busiest time ever” in the 10 years that the program has offered mental health services to farmers. And the calls were unprecedented, ranging from farmers who watched as their animals were trapped, helpless amid floodwaters, to those who had just lost everything.
The farm fields are full of growing vegetables and fruit at Paul Mazza’s Fruit and Vegetable Stand in Essex on Tuesday, June 25, 2024. Mazza’s farm fields were decimated in last year’s flooding. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger
Farming is a stressful life, Porter said, for a number of reasons, “one being that it’s a nonstop enterprise, which involves your whole family, all of your finances.” It can become all-consuming.
“And what I hear the most from farmers is that it’s so out of their control, and the weather is one of the biggest reasons for that,” Porter said.
The stakes are high. According to the National Rural Health Association, the suicide rate among farmers is estimated to be three-and-a-half times greater than that of the general population.
Beckford told VTDigger that he has known farmers throughout his career who have died by suicide after a natural disaster, “because they realize that, ‘My God, I can’t recover from this, and I owe a whole bunch of loans already. What am I going to do?’”
At the height of the flood, Porter said energy and resources were poured into “the physical things that needed to be fixed immediately — the fences, the tractors.”
“But very few people looked at the toll on farmers in the mental health aspect,” Porter said. “The most important tool on a farm is a farmer, and so we wished we could have done more in that area. … We didn’t get a ton of support to do our work.”
Over the past year, Kaity has seen the emotional toll of the flood on her father. It’s hard to watch, Kaity said, “because he loves to farm. I mean, this farm that he’s built is his baby.”
“But at same time, you can’t tell him, ‘Oh, it’s going to be okay,’” she added. “Because the truth is, none of us really know.”
‘It’s definitely not getting any easier’
Kaity, too, feels the weight of the past year on her shoulders. She graduated from the University of Vermont with a degree in food science in May, and is considering taking over the business when the time comes. She grew up on the farm — marking the start of every summer picking fresh asparagus for dinner with her dad — but last summer was her first fully embedded in the business, learning from him.
“I think we’re definitely getting into a period where this is what we’re going to be seeing more frequently, which makes me super nervous,” she said. “Some folks are in a position where they can just move their farm stand, but because we have all of our perennial crops in here, it’s not something we can just up and move. So it definitely leaves us with very few options.”
Kaity thinks a lot about all of her options. Is this the business and the life she wants? How could she make it her own while respecting what her dad has built over the past four decades? Should she diversify the farm’s business model, hosting events or overnight guests for extra income? Is that just what it takes for a farm to survive anymore? Can she run the farm while preserving her own mental health and achieving a work-life balance? Should she downsize and sell some of the land? Will the river make her decisions for her?
Sometimes she wishes she could just pick up the farm and move it somewhere else.
“I definitely think it’s a beautiful living, but it’s definitely not getting any easier here in the state,” she said.
If you are in crisis or need help for someone else, dial 988 for the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (formerly known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline) or text VT to 741741 for the Crisis Text Line.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Without a federal bailout in sight, Vermont farmers reckon with a flood-prone future.