CT agriculture: New crops, new technologies, (many) old farmers

Excerpted from CTMirror, with permission

 Ingenuity

Ever since Yankee farmers pried glacial stones from the ground and used them to build walls around their fields, farming in Connecticut has taken hard work and creativity. That is still the case. One obvious challenge is what to grow.

Consider the Jones Family Farm in Shelton, one of the state’s great legacy farms. Owner Jamie Jones is the sixth generation of his family on the 500-acre site. Jones’ grandfather planted a few evergreens in the late 1930s as part of a 4H project. After World War II, neighbors asked if they could buy them for Christmas trees, and he sold them for $1 apiece.

Gradually, a few trees led to hundreds, then to thousands. When the family decided to drop its century-old dairy operation in the 1960s, the Christmas trees filled the gap (as they filled some of the former pastures).

In 2004, Jones started a winery, which now produces an average of 5,000 cases of award-winning wine a year. It is one of almost four dozen wineries in the state.

The farm also grows strawberries, blueberries, pumpkins, squash and gourds, along with the trees and wine grapes. Almost everything is sold directly to consumers, in the pick-your-own format.

Jones, who is 47 and holds a degree in plant science from Cornell University, also hosts wine tastings and some other public activities, as many other farms do. Farmers need to find as many revenue streams as they can generate, and one is what is called agritourism, which can mean everything from hay rides and corn mazes to farm dinners and weddings.

“It’s a family experience, and also educational, to see how a sustainable farm works,” said Jones. Anyone who has trudged through the snow with the kids to cut down a tree and drag it back to the car can agree on the family experience.

Allyn Brown, owner of Maple Lane Farms in Preston, stands in a field of Christmas trees that he grows on his 325-acre farm, May 12, 2023. Brown also grows hydroponic lettuce and has a wedding and events venue on the property. Cloe Poisson / CT Mirror

Another feature beginning to appear on farms is the anaerobic digester, a device that creates a revenue stream from the waste stream. Microorganisms in the appliance break down organic materials in the absence of oxygen, producing biogas that can be used to produce energy.

Fort Hill Farms in Thompson, a large dairy farm, has one of the first farm-based digesters, which converts manure and food waste to electricity, which is fed to the grid, said co-owner Kristin Orr.

“We power a couple of towns in Connecticut,” she said with a smile.

She said food waste comes from restaurants “from here to Newport.” The process also produces fiber that is spread on the fields as fertilizer.

The farm also offers a number of visitor activities, including nature walks, movie nights and a history-themed corn maze. Orr also grows and sells lavender.

“You can’t Google agriculture. You have to visit a farm.”

A sign greets visitors to Fort Hill Farms in Thompson, May 12, 2023. The farm includes a cooperative dairy. Cloe Poisson / CT Mirror

 

Hemp

 

It took decades for public officials to realize that hemp was pot without the pop, a variation of the cannabis sativa plant that doesn’t contain enough of the psychoactive component known as THC to create the “high” associated with marijuana.

Hemp does contain a non-intoxicating compound called CBD, which is used in lotions, pills, tinctures, candies and other things. The federal government legalized hemp in the 2018 Farm Bill, with restrictions, and Connecticut followed suit the following year.

It’s been a kind of boom and bust for hemp farmers. In 2020, there were more than 80 licensees, but in 2022 only about three dozen actually harvested a crop, said Becky Goetsch, who grows hemp and other crops on her Running Brook Farms in Killingworth and is head of the Connecticut Hemp Growers Association.

She identified two issues facing the new industry: competition from cheaper, unregulated out- of-state products and lack of a processing facility in the state. She and other hemp growers are supporting a bill in the General Assembly that would enable licensed hemp farmers to apply for licenses to grow marijuana.

I believe in the plant.

Goetsch said if the bill passes she’s not sure if she would switch; she said she likes growing CDB-rich hemp for therapeutic uses.

Aging Farmers

 

The state needs new farmers because many of the incumbents are not, as French farmers might say, poulets de printemps (Spring chickens). According to an American Farmland Trust study, the average age of a Connecticut farmer is 58, and about a third of the state’s 5,500 “principal farm operators” are over 65. More than 90% of the “senior farmers” don’t have a younger farmer poised to take over.

 

Allyn Brown of Maple Lane Farms in Preston is in such a situation. He is 67 and does not have an heir interested in taking over the farm. He has cut back. He once was the largest grower of black currants in the country, which he processed into juice at a beverage company he owned in Norwich. He has stopped growing currants, sold the company and ended his pick-your-own fruit operation. He continues with his other activities. What will the future bring?

“I don’t know.”

Challenges

Farming has never been an easy way to make a living. Farmers have many of the same challenges as other business owners, such as meeting payroll, plus some appurtenant to farming. One — a fairly new one — is bears.

The ursine raiders are wreaking havoc on farms in Litchfield and Hartford counties, going after everything from sheep and cattle to sweet corn and, no surprise, bees, said Joan Nichols of the Connecticut Farm Bureau Association. Her nonprofit supports a bill that would allow the extirpation of invasive bears on whom lesser protective measures have failed.

Then there are solar panels. The wide open spaces on farms can lend themselves to solar installations. And clean energy is simpatico with sustainable farming — except when the panels are installed on prime growing soils. Trying to keep panels off prime farmland is “a very contentious issue” because it delves into private property rights, said Nichols.

Nichols said her organization is looking into ways to “disincentivize” the practice and is looking at ways to mount panels that are compatible with farming. Jamie Jones solved this problem by putting solar panels on the roofs of his buildings on his Shelton farm.

A broader problem is climate change. The warning planet may allow a longer growing season, but it brings erratic weather that can play havoc with crops. For example, this year’s warm January caused many peach blossoms to bud, only to be killed by a February cold spell, noted Chelsea Gazillo, New England policy manager for the nonprofit American Farmland Trust, who also directs the Working Lands Alliance. She said this isn’t the first time the peach crop has been so imperiled.

Native peaches are gong to be hard to come by this year. Hurlburt noted that maple trees were tapped earlier than ever this year.

But some help is on the way. The Alliance and others, including Gov. Ned Lamont, successfully pushed for funds to to help farmers and foresters cope with climate change.

Last year the legislature allocated $7 million, and authorized an additional $7 million in bond funds, to support Climate Smart Agriculture production and practices, which, as the name suggests, are measures — cover crops, water management and many others — aimed at countering the effects of the warming planet.

The first $7 million round received 78 applications requesting more than $55 million in grant funds. Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz announced the 12 grant recipients in March, during Climate Action Week. Advocates are seeking more funds this year.

No farms, no food

Connecticut has been losing farmland for centuries, particularly to post-World War II suburbanization, sometimes called sprawl. Drive through the suburban and rural parts of the state and you almost cannot miss a big warehouse, shopping mall or residential subdivision built on a former farm, sometimes named for the farm it displaced.

According to the state Council on Environmental Quality’s 2021 annual report, the state lost an estimated 45,000 acres of “agricultural fields,” about 16% of the total, between 1985 and 2015. The American Farmland Trust’s 2020 “Farms Under Threat: A New England Perspective” reports that 23,000 acres of Connecticut farmland were converted to urban development or low-density residential use between 2001 and 2016.

There are about 380,000 acres of cropland, pasture and farm woodlands left in the state, on about 5,500 farms. As the studies suggest, the acreage keeps dwindling, and no one has as yet turned a subdivision back into a farm. In 1978, the state recognized the problem and started the Department of Agriculture Farmland Preservation Program. The goal was to preserve 130,000 prime acres, thought at the time the amount of land needed to feed the state, by buying development rights.

To date, the program has preserved about 48,000 acres on 410 farms, with a couple more in the pipeline, said Hurlburt. Also, the Connecticut Farmland Trust has saved an additional 73 farms covering 5,600 acres since 2002, said Kathleen Dougherty of the Trust. It is the largest agricultural land trust in the state, but some local trusts have also preserved farms. (The state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection has a separate open space acquisition program, mostly aimed at saving land associated with the public parks, forests, wildlife management areas and water access areas.)

Though the farmland preservation program has made steady progress, it is still nowhere near its 130,000-acre goal. The Council on Environmental Quality’s 2021 annual report projects that at the annual rate of acquisition over the preceding 10 years, it will take 66 years to reach the goal.

Which raises the question of whether the goal is still meaningful, given the changes in farming since the 1970s.

“Great question,” said Hurlburt. He said he plans to have his farmland preservation advisory board study it.

But even with new farming methods, the goal may be worth keeping. With water shortages in the growing areas of the West and climate-related, crop-destroying flooding in the midlands, locally produced food may become more of a necessity.

“As we learned during the pandemic, food from other areas may not be available for a host of reasons, so having a local market is critically important,” Hurlburt said.

Farms bring a number of environmental benefits: they provide habitat for wildlife, help control flooding, protect wetlands and watersheds and maintain air quality by removing carbon from the atmosphere. They are scenic and soul-calming landscapes.

Also, the economic impact is not small potatoes. A 2015 study by the UConn Department of Agriculture and Health and Natural Resources found the total impact of Connecticut’s agricultural industry on the state economy was between $3.3 and $4 billion and that it generated more than 20,000 jobs.

Finally, there is history and tradition in those fields. There are farms, such as the Maple Bank Farm in Roxbury, that long pre-date the American Revolution. Kristin Orr said her Mountain Farm in Thompson was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted as a favor to his friend John Wesley Doane, the Thompson native and 19th century railroad financier who then owned the land.

The popular Sub-Edge Farm in Farmington was once owned by Theodate Pope Riddle, the state’s first female architect. An agricultural practice begun in the 19th century, the gathering of witch hazel in the lower Connecticut Valley, continues in state forests, under DEEP supervision.

In an effort to reconnect with its agrarian history as well as provide fresh food for its members, the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation has created a large farm in North Stonington called Meechooôk Farm. The farm, created in partnership with UConn, also has a training component.

The stories are many. To keep them coming, and to eat well, support Connecticut agriculture, said Jamie Jones of the Jones Family Farm: “Vote with your fork.” 

                                                                                This reporting was made possible, in part, through generous support from Robert W. Fiondella and the Fiondella Family Trust.