Vermont
Small farmers hit by extreme weather could get assistance from proposed insurance program
MIDDLESEX, Vt. — Since catastrophic flooding hit Vermont in July and waterlogged crops, some farmers are trying to figure out how to get through the next season.
Water washed away seeds planted in the summer at Bear Roots Farm, which grows about 20 acres (8 hectares) of mostly root vegetables at a high altitude. Farmers and co-owners Jon Wagner and Karin Bellemare are now asking themselves whether they want to take out a loan to plant all those seeds again — especially since it’s currently raining in January in Vermont.
They estimate the extreme rainfall caused them a 50% financial loss of about $180,000. The pair support legislation introduced last month by Vermont U.S. Sen. Peter Welch, a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, as well as senators from Massachusetts. The bill aims to create an insurance program for small produce farms facing losses from increasingly extreme weather in the Northeast and other parts of the country.
“In Vermont we had frost in May that hurt a lot of our farmers, particularly orchards, and then of course we had the devastating floods in July. And those floods really wiped out crops,” Welch said at a press conference Friday at Roots Farm Market.
The flooding affected nearly 28,000 acres of farmland in Vermont, causing over $16 million in losses and damage, Welch’s office said. That came after the May frost that caused $10 million in losses, particularly to apple and grape growers.
“Unfortunately, with all the various insurance programs that are there to back up our farmers we really don’t have an insurance program that will help our small vegetable farmers,” Welch said.
The current crop insurance program is inadequate because farmers have to identify how much of a crop was a particular vegetable and potentially only get the wholesale value but farms like Bear Roots Farm sell their produce retail, he said.
The legislation, called the Withstanding Extreme Agricultural Threats by Harvesting Economic Resilience or WEATHER act, directs the U.S. Department of Agriculture to research the possibility of developing an index-based insurance program in which payouts would be based on agricultural income, according to Welch’s office.
More: Deja vu: Vermont gets flooded one week before Christmas
Grace Oedel, executive director of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont, said the group has been working with hundreds of farmers who have had devastating losses but could not recoup them with the existing programs.
“So there’s been a patchwork effort to help people make it through the season,” she said.
Wagner said that to operate, they had taken out loans with a high interest rate — and when the extreme rains hit, they didn’t have a way to pay them back. They were able to acquire some funding locally and from other sources that didn’t completely bridge the gap but was enough to get them to the current moment, he said. Usually they sell their storage crops through June and July of the following year but now there’s not much left, he said.
A fundraising campaign launched earlier this month by some business and government leaders with hopes to raise $20 million for affected farmers while the need is higher at nearly $45 million, according to the Vermont Agency of Agriculture Food & Markets.
“There’s nobody who’s unaffected, whether you’re a perennial grape or apple grower, a dairy farmer trying to cut forage when it’s raining every other day all summer, or a vegetable farmer that might have been under four feet of water,” said Justin Rich, president of the Vermont Vegetable and Berry Growers Association, and a produce farmer in Huntington. “So it was just kind of whiplash for a lot of growers.
BARRE, Vt. (WCAX) – Voters hit the polls across the country on Tuesday, weighing in on everything from high-stakes political races to municipal funding.
In Vermont, towns looked to their residents to approve a myriad of projects.
Across the state, Vermont voters considered ballot items pertaining to flood mitigation, infrastructure projects, and a new career center.
After a full workday and an evening of volunteering at the Barre Community Justice Center, Becky Wigg took to the polls.
“I moved here five years ago during the pandemic and really found my community,” said Wigg.
She voted yes to Barre’s $2.4 million flood-resilient housing project and the $3.3 million new public works building, which will be built out of the flood plain.
“I voted yes for the bonds because I believe in Barre. I want to live in a thriving community where everyone has a safe place to live, an affordable place to live, and we have the public services and resources that we need,” said Wigg.
Barre’s unofficial election results show both ballot items were approved.
“Really transformational projects, these are generational things that we’ve been trying to solve, and I’m very, very pleased that the voters showed their confidence in these projects and approved them,” said Barre City Manager Nicolas Storellicastro.
The Hinesburg Record reports that bond issues of repairing two flood-damaged bridges and installing a new well were approved.
Brighton approved their $9.6 million bond to upgrade the town’s wastewater system. Cabot approved spending a quarter million dollars on flood mitigation.
Plainfield’s request to borrow $600,000 as part of a $9 million project to build 40 new homes failed.
And so did Berlin’s bond to form a four-season rec center, as reported by the Times Argus.
Also on central Vermonters’ ballots was the option to build a $149 million new technical education center.
Central Vermont will need to pool results from different towns to find out if the career center will happen. They expect the results on that to come out on Thursday.
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Angela Myers doesn’t know what she’s going to do.
The 54-year-old from Chittenden County lives with a disability. When she needed better health insurance, she said her doctors recommended Vermont Blue Advantage, a type of Medicare provided by Blue Cross Blue Shield that could offer her extra benefits and reduced costs.
She’s been on the plan for five years, she said, and it covers all her frequent doctor visits and monthly prescriptions.
But she’s going to lose that insurance soon.
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont announced Oct. 1 that it would drop Medicare Advantage coverage in 2026, leaving the thousands of Vermonters like Meyers scrambling to secure new plans before the turn of the year. Vermont Blue Advantage covers over 26,000 people in Vermont, the company told the Burlington Free Press, and has more complete coverage than traditional Medicare, including dental work and prescriptions.
The company, which is paid by the government to run the program, says it costs too much. The “Vermont Medicare Advantage market is unsustainable for Vermont Blue Advantage to be able to offer reasonably priced and affordable products to serve as an alternative to traditional Medicare coverage,” Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont said when announcing the plan.
That’s been the national trend, with Medicare Advantage plans whittled down across many states. But for a low-population place like Vermont, the disruption for people is magnified.
A big problem with choosing a new Medicare Advantage plan is that there just aren’t many offered in Vermont. The same day Vermont Blue Advantage announced its cut, UnitedHealthcare did the same. United, itself one of the largest purveyors of Medicare Advantage plans across the country, serves almost 8,000 Vermonters, the company told the Free Press.
Medicare Advantage plans in Vermont
As of September, over 51,600 Vermonters were insured by a Medicare Advantage plan, and over 168,000 people were eligible, government data shows.
Advantage plans are run by private companies but funded by the federal government. They are for people 65 and older or who have a disability. More than half of U.S. residents eligible for Medicare Advantage are insured under it, according to KFF, a national health care reporting and research outfit.
Vermonters skew under that trend at 34% for 2024, KFF reported. But the number has been rising. A decade prior, only 7% of eligible Vermonters used an Advantage plan.
Even so, the options are slimming. Insurance plans shuttering has become almost an annual tradition in Vermont. Two Advantage plans — operated by MVP and WellCare — folded this past January.
Come next year, the only option for those seeking an individual Medicare Advantage plan is Humana, which serves Bennington, Caledonia, Essex, Orange, Windam and Windsor counties, or less than half the counties in Vermont.
People losing health insurance feel ‘abandoned’
Larry Mindell of Williston said he and his wife signed up with Vermont Blue Advantage after MVP cancelled its coverage. He said they feel “abandoned” by the companies and worry this may only be the beginning of a sharper downturn.
“I say ‘abandon’ because that’s what it feels like, and it’s happening to us for the second year in a row,” Mindell said.
Mindell has been working with an insurance broker to find a new plan, but that’s not an option everyone has.
Some were able to be proactive in changing their plans. The Vermont Treasurer’s Office announced Sept. 11 that starting next year, retired teachers receiving health insurance from Vermont Blue Advantage will be covered by equivalent plans from HealthSpring.
The change will impact over 7,000 retirees and beneficiaries in Vermont, says the Treasurer’s Office. The decision came after Vermont Blue Advantage proposed a 50% premium increase in July, and it proved to be a good one as Blue Cross Blue Shield pulled the plan altogether just a few months later.
Other people were not prepared to lose their insurance.
Frankin County resident Barb Fichter has been living in Vermont since 2022 and said it took her a few years to find an Advantage plan she was happy with before choosing Blue Cross Blue Shield’s offering in January 2024.
Now, she’s back to where she started.
“It’s so disconcerting to wade through alternatives, and I fear I may just be on regular Medicare with no prescription drug coverage or dental coverage,” Fichter said. “I’m going to have to weigh out which things I’m going to have to give up because I can’t afford the costs or co-pays.”
When is Medicare open enrollment? Special enrollment if you’re losing coverage?
The annual open enrollment period for choosing new Medicare plans runs from Oct. 15 through Dec. 7. There is a special enrollment period for those who will be losing coverage, allowing them until March 4 to find a new plan.
But as the current plans end by Jan. 1, 2026, people will have a gap in coverage if they wait to sign up for a new one.
Sydney P. Hakes is the Burlington city reporter. Contact her at SHakes@gannett.com.
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