This commentary is by Neil Ryan, a third-generation Vermont farmer and consultant helping brands and nonprofits in Corinth.  Rural Vermont is more than a “forest block,” as defined by planners via geographic information system maps and rulemaking. Rural Vermont is a human institution cr eated by generations of men and women who loved the land and their way of life. I am a third-generation Vermont farmer who has called three different farms in three Vermont towns home. Each of those farms would likely face significant new regulatory hurdles under Act 181 and the emerging revisions to Act 250, Vermont’s more-than-half-century-old land use and development law. READ MORE Most Vermonters have no idea what’s coming. My family started farming in Starksboro in 1981 with a dairy cow and a tent on an abandoned hill farm. My grandparents raised Highland cattle and Christmas trees and built for multifamily living. My aunt and uncle created Highland Sugarworks, pioneering specialty glass bottles for Vermont maple syrup and helping establish organic standards for the industry. They didn’t have to spend thousands navigating bureaucratic mazes. They simply did the hard work of farming. Under Act 181, which divides Vermont into mapped tiers that determine where Act 250 applies, none of this would ever have happened.  Act 181 restructures Vermont’s land-use system by mapping the state into Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 designations. Tier 1 (1A and 1B) includes downtowns and designated growth centers where most housing is exempt from Act 250 review to encourage development. Tier 2 includes rural lands outside growth centers, where Act 250 review is triggered more broadly than under current law. Tier 3 designates lands identified through GIS mapping as the state’s highest conservation priorities, including core forest blocks, habitat connectors, significant wetlands and floodplains. Beginning Dec. 31, 2026, most development in Tier 3 — including potentially a single-family home — will require Act 250 review under conservation-focused criteria. In all areas outside Tier 1, construction of a road longer than 800 feet, or a road and driveways totaling more than 2,000 feet, triggers Act 250 jurisdiction under the new road-length rule. When I started out 20 years ago as a young farmer, I homesteaded on affordable land in Roxbury. I built a road, constructed a barn on the footprint of a 140-year-old foundation and drew water from a prior generation’s stone-lined well. Under Act 181, a young person probably could not do this. Act 181 makes it far harder for the next generation to homestead on the only affordable land left to them. Today, I raise beef cattle on 200 acres in Corinth and Orange that the regional planning commission has designated rural conservation land without my input. This land – slated for Tier 2 and Tier 3 restrictions – was Governor Deane C. Davis’s boyhood farm. Ancient roads through the farm connected to a Norwegian commune, a brick kiln and the early 20th century Maplewood Hotel with its bowling alley and swimming pool. My land has three vestigial sugarhouses, stone sheep pens from the 19th-century sheep boom and barbed wire fencing from when milk was shipped to the creamery. Planners call all of this a “forest block.” This is the profound ignorance at the heart of Act 181: distant planners with computer models decided they know better than the people who work the land. They see static categories — what they term “forest blocks” or “habitat connectors” — drawn on screens. I see 200 years of human stewardship creating a biodiverse mosaic of field and forest. Want to build a house for your children? Prepare to spend thousands of dollars and wait a year or two to hear if your application has been approved or denied. The accessory farm businesses that keep small farms viable? Farm stays aren’t clearly exempt. Events require permit review. Processing farm products could leave you in violation if 51% of a batch of applesauce came from your neighbor’s apples. Under Vermont law, an accessory on-farm business is a secondary commercial activity — such as lodging, events and retail sales — that must remain subordinate to agriculture, with at least 51% of gross income derived from products grown or raised on that farm. While permitted, these activities may trigger Act 250 review if new buildings or long access roads are involved, particularly in Tier 2 and Tier 3 areas. The math is brutal: Small diversified farmers cannot afford the permits, the time, the lawyers or the uncertainty. Act 181 exemptions in Tier 1A and 1B areas make it easier for corporate developers to build housing. The burden of restriction falls on rural landowners least able to bear it. Rural Vermont culture — the knowledge of working with land, the social patterns of multi-generational continuity — is being driven to extinction.  When you make it insurmountable for new people to start farms, you break the chain of cultural transmission. When you lock rural land into regulatory categories, you erase human history and treat rural people as a problem to be solved. Vermont had 3.3 million acres of farmland in 1925. Today, we have a little over 500,000 acres. Legislators must repeal Act 181 or amend it radically.  Exempt working farms enrolled in Vermont’s Use Value Appraisal (UVA) Program from Tier 3 restrictions. Repeal the 800-foot road rule or raise the threshold to prevent actual sprawl, not farm access.  Restore full Act 250 exemption for all accessory farm businesses. Require landowner consent before Tier 3 designation — make it opt-in, not imposed.  Extend timelines and improve notice — many landowners don’t even know their land has been restricted. Ground decisions in reality by walking the land before mapping it; the current draft maps are inaccurate. Vermonters, contact your legislators now. Attend Land Use Review Board hearings. Demand to know if your property has been mapped as Tier 3. Ask your representatives: Do you want farms in Vermont or a playground for the wealthy? Do you want rural communities with young people and families, or further rural decline? The final Tier 3 rules aren’t due until September 2026, but jurisdiction begins Dec. 31, 2026. Most landowners don’t know what’s coming. By the time they do, it will be too late. Small farms are a way of life that has sustained Vermont for generations and could sustain it for generations more — if we act now. Please help us pass this land down to the next generation with its possibilities intact. Read the story on VTDigger here: Neil Ryan: Save small farms from Act 181 . ...read more read less