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Vermont Sen. Harold Giard, D-Addison, spent 20 years running his own dairy farm.

During those 20 years, he took two days off. Otherwise, he said during a Monday morning interview, he spent 14 hours per day, seven days per week, managing a 600-acre farm with 350 head of cattle.

It was only after Giard was elected to the state Senate in 2004 that he finally found time to research an issue that had plagued him for most of the 20 years he spent farming - the responsibility of farmers to pay for what are called ''hauling and stop charges'' associated with transporting milk from their farm to dairy companies like Cabot.

NO PURCHASING POWER

Giard represents one of Vermont's two major agricultural counties. Addison and Franklin counties are the state's major agricultural centers, he said. In the Middlebury, Vt. area - which is in Addison County - between 1980 and 2005, Giard said the price paid to a farmer for milk produced on his farm averaged $13.56 per hundredweight.

''By the time you got to December 2004, inflation had eaten the $13.56 to the point that the purchasing power on it was reduced to just $6.09,'' Giard said. ''The farmer had lost 56 percent of his purchasing power in that 25-year period because he never got an adjustment for inflation. Suddenly, a $10,000 milk check bought nothing and paid for nothing. It just wasn't enough money.''

During that same 25-year period, Giard said, the salaries for Vermont state employees increased by 204 percent. College tuition increased by 375 percent. Medical care increased by 223 percent. The average family income increased 125 percent.

''The farmer was losing while everybody else was gaining,'' Giard said. ''Between 1990 and 2001, about half the dairy farms in America went out of business. Why? By the time they got done paying their bills, they had nothing left.''

Once he was elected to the state Senate, Giard said he started wondering what could be done to help the state's dairy farmers.

In an April 2008 press release, Patrick Hooker, the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets Commissioner, said dairy farms are one of the few businesses that are charged a portion of the hauling costs both when their product is purchased and shipped to a processing plant.

''I always thought that was odd,'' Giard said. ''I decided I was going to try and do something about it.''

A SOLUTION

In 1964, the Vermont State Legislature wrote a one-sentence law that said when milk is pumped from the farmer's tank to the milk producer's truck, it is no longer the property of the farmer and instead belongs to the buyer. The reason, Giard said, was because milk from one farmer's cows is irretrievably mixed with milk from other farms when it's added to the tanker truck.

''I said to myself, 'Okay, what we need to do is put a comma on the end of that 1964 law and say since that milk is not considered the farmer's milk at the time it enters the truck, the farmer should not have to pay to ship it anywhere,''' Giard said.

Giard's solution was to propose a measure requiring that milk companies - not dairy farmers - be responsible to truck milk to processing plants.

The law, known in Vermont as Act 50, was supposed to go into effect last month. But after dairy cooperatives, Vermont's top agriculture official and the Vermont Milk Commission warned that the law could harm the ability of Vermont farmers to market their milk out-of-state, the law's effective date was pushed back to January 2009.

At the time Giard proposed the legislation in 2005, it would have saved Addison County farmers $7.5 million. Farmers across Vermont would have pocketed $15 to $20 million in 2005 dollars, he said.

''That's money they could spend locally,'' he said. ''This isn't just about the farmer, it's about jobs on Main Street in Anytown, USA. If the farmer has more money in his pocket, he can buy that new tractor or that new piece of equipment. It helps out local businesses as much, if not more than, it helps the farmer.

The bill will not go into effect unless two other New England states pass similar legislation. Giard said New Hampshire and New York are the two states considering similar legislation.

In March, New Hampshire's House of Representatives passed a measure similar to Giard's, but the New Hampshire Senate in April killed the measure. Giard blamed their decision on lobbyists.

''The coops heard that I was working with New Hampshire and New York on similar measures and they went to those legislators and essentially said if those states start charging companies for milk hauling costs, none of the milk from that state would be purchased,'' Giard said. ''New Hampshire backed down. New York is still considering what to do.''

Giard said making his measure contingent upon New Hampshire and New York passing similar measures was a mistake. He said he plans to go before the Vermont legislature in January and propose removing that language from his measure.

SHARP OPPOSITION

Giard's measure has been sharply opposed.

''The Vermont State Agency of Agriculture fought it, the dairy cooperatives fought it, the Vermont Farm Bureau sat with the coops, and the National Farmer's Organization wouldn't even return my telephone calls,'' Giard said. ''It's a complex issue and everybody is in bed with everybody else. Nobody would stand up for the farmer.''

Opponents of Giard's measure feel it would jeopardize the ability of Vermont dairy farmers to successfully market their milk. Milk production companies, now saddled with shipping costs, would either buy only from farms close to the production plant, or buy from states where farmers pay shipping costs. Either scenario would render Vermont dairy farmers helpless, opponents say.

According to some Vermont newspapers, Giard's opponents are clamoring for a full repeal of the law.

In April 2008, Vermont Rep. John Malcolm, D-Pawlett - a member of the Vermont House Agriculture Committee, a recently retired dairy farmer, and a former Cabot board member - introduced a bill to repeal Giard's measure.

The Vermont House of Representatives passed the repeal, but the Vermont Senate killed the repeal effort.

''What I have learned is that each segment of society you deal with as a Senator is, in essence, its own culture,'' Giard said. ''Agriculture is no different. There are mindsets and traditions that have been in place for years and years. Ideas about milk hauling and whose responsibility it is to pay for it is no different. Changing those mindsets and traditions is incredibly difficult. It's certainly been an uphill battle.''

Giard called the milk hauling issue ''a train that, for most other segments of the economy, left the station 40 years ago.''

''Nobody pays to get their product to the store,'' Giard said. ''The store pays to get the product. The way dairy farmers are treated is backwards - and they're losing money because of it.''

New York State Assemblyman Bill Parment, D-North Harmony, said he wasn't sure what practical impact the Giard measure would have on local farmers.

''If farmers didn't pay shipping costs, I guess what would happen is, in times when there is too much milk being produced, the guy who produces his milk farthest from the plant wouldn't get his milk picked up,'' Parment said. ''If they pay for the transportation costs, the production plant really doesn't care where the milk comes from.''

Parment said his concern would be that plants would only accept milk from farms within a certain mile radius and give premiums to the closest farms as an incentive to increase their milk production.

''If a plant gets its milk from a 20 mile radius, the guy who lives 40 miles out is pretty well done,'' Parment said. ''That just doesn't seem fair.''