'Once a farm is gone, it's gone': Lawmakers, farmers push for agricultural disaster relief at the federal and state levels

Yahoo

09-03-2025

On Aug. 26, 2024, William DellaCamera looked over the verdant fields of Cecarelli's Harrison Hill Farm in Northford, admiring the healthy vegetable plants as he mused about how beautiful and plentiful the upcoming harvest would be.
By the time he returned from lunch, DellaCamera was on the phone with his wife, telling her they had lost everything.
A freak hail storm wiped out DellaCamera's crops in a matter of 13 minutes.
When it was all over, the squall left DellaCamera with thousands of dollars in damage that federal insurance and other disaster programs failed to make whole.
DellaCamera was not alone. Between 2023 and 2024, Connecticut farms reported more than $72.3 million in losses from deep freezes, floods, storms and other extreme weather events that decimated crops, timber, livestock and agricultural infrastructure, according to data from the State Department of Agriculture.
Tired of hearing 'lip service' from government officials when farms were faced with financial ruin, DellaCamera hopped on his tractor and drove his John Deere 871 miles through Connecticut and down to Washington D.C.
By the end of DellaCamera's campaign, Congress had passed a $220 million Farm Recovery and Support Block Grant Program for small and medium-sized farms that were hit with extreme weather in New England, Hawaii and Alaska. The program passed in December, but farmers still have not seen a dime of the funding that could be make-or-break for their operations.
As farmers wait for their federal grants, state lawmakers heard testimony Monday on a bill that would create an emergency crop-loss fund when one-time weather events devastate production.
While Sen. Richard Blumenthal's office said the $220 million block grant is not tied up in the federal funding freeze, Blumenthal said the disbursement of the aid is sitting in a state of 'intolerable uncertainty.'
'Farmers really deserve it, and they are deeply anxious about whether they'll receive it,' Blumenthal said. 'Farmers need it without delay. As the growing season begins, farmers deserve to know whether they have a safety net when disaster strikes. And very specifically as to this aid, they need it now.'
Blumenthal said the Connecticut delegation is pushing the Trump administration to release the funds. He said the administration has not told him with 'any certainty or specificity' when that may happen.
DellaCamera said farmers need the money now, but they also need safety net programs to do their job.
During his 91-hour tractor journey, DellaCamera he said he heard the same story at every farm he stopped at.
'They say, 'Well, I don't participate in those programs because we can't afford them. I don't participate in those programs because I don't understand them. I don't participate in those programs because I did, and it didn't work for me. It didn't do what it was supposed to do.' I heard all the same. It doesn't matter where it was,' DellaCamera said. 'The programs that failed me and have failed every other specialty crop farmer clear across the United States. Those programs failed me, they failed my friends and my neighbors, and I am tired of it.'
'Our profession is the backbone of America,' DellaCamera said. 'It's not a Republican or a Democrat problem. This is a right and wrong problem.'
As weather events grow more extreme and localized, DellaCamera said, the question is not 'if' another weather disaster occurs, 'It's a when and where.'
Challenges for local farmers
Better known by his nickname Digga, Robert Schacht of Hunts Brook Farm in the Quaker Hill section of Waterford said he is 'one hailstorm away from getting a real job.'
'As long as I have farmed, I've joked about that,' Schacht said. 'Because, if what happened to Willie (DellaCamera) happened to me, I'm at the scale of farm where crop insurance doesn't really work.'
Schacht started Hunts Brook Farm in 2008, growing vegetables, fruits, flowers and greens. For him, he said, the job comes down to 'the security that food brings to myself and my community.'
'COVID was a huge example of that, watching how people reacted to the food shortages,' Schacht said. 'That sense of responsibility is strong.'
But in the last few years, Schacht explained how challenges in agriculture have left local farms more vulnerable to uncertainty.
'Every farmer I know has been struggling for the last couple of years, and I haven't heard a lot out in the world about it. I haven't heard about it in the press. I haven't heard about it from the ag partners that we have at the state level and in the different organizations,' Schact said.
'My vegetables did not pay for themselves last year for the first time,' Schacht added, explaining how grant programs kept him at break-even. 'My whole life is here. … There's really not a big separation between what I make for an income and what the farm makes for an income. … I'm able to just sort of live off the edges of the farm.'
With rapidly rising labor costs, increasing disease prevalence, new insects and shifting seasonality, Schacht explained that 'weather is just one of the many things that small farms are dealing with right now.'
'That's the unpredictable one,' Schacht said.
Schacht said an emergency crop-loss fund would help, as long as the level of documentation required to make a claim does not become a barrier to small farms that lack the manpower to weigh their harvests.
I can very easily tell you how many plants I have in the field, but I don't have time to weigh every harvest that I do coming out of the field," Schacht said. "If you end up having to put in eight days of labor to make a claim, that's where, for smaller farms like us, it just becomes too cumbersome."
Still, Schacht said, he is "glad to see that the legislators are taking this seriously.
'I have a lot of admiration for what Willie (DellaCamera) decided to do,' Schacht added. 'Not many people would've been in a position to have been able to make such a grand gesture of time and energy. Willie's a big guy with a big voice, and I think all of us small farms are very thankful that he used it.'
'Once a farm is gone, it's gone'
In the last decade, Connecticut has lost more than 15% of its farms, which fell from 5,977 in 2012 to 5,058 in 2022, according to the most recent census by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Through the process, nearly 65,000 acres — roughly 100 square miles — of farmland has disappeared from the state.
House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford, a co-sponsor of the crop-loss bill, said the emergency fund would fill in gaps where federal insurance falls short. As he testified before the Environment Committee on Monday, he described the program as an important step toward preserving the state's agricultural resources.
'Once a farm is gone, it's gone,' Candelora said. 'The land gets developed, the expertise leaves — it's very hard to bring these farms back.'
In a letter submitted to the committee, Agriculture Commissioner Bryan Hurlburt said his department lacks the capacity to establish and run such a grant program.
'This was not included in the Governor's Biennial Budget,' Hurlburt wrote.
Hurlburt suggested that farmers would qualify for financial support under a different line item in Gov. Ned Lamont's budget proposal — a program providing 'grants-in-aid to support municipalities, homeowners and small businesses who have been impacted by a catastrophic event, not exceeding $15,000,000.'
During the public hearing, Sen. Christine Cohen, D-Guilford, who sits on the committee and co-sponsored the bill, said she was surprised by Hurlburt's lack of support.
'My concern with that is that $15 million is a very small amount to apply to statewide businesses, and this is not specific to agriculture,' Cohen said. 'I'm hoping we can put our heads together with the commissioner to come up with a solution that will be beneficial for our farmers moving forward.'
When farms faced crop loss in 2023 and 2024, Cohen described the sense of helplessness shared by farmers and lawmakers.
'There was really nothing we could do,' Cohen said. 'We didn't have any tools in the toolbox at the state level.'
Sen. Heather Somers, R-Groton, said the emergency fund 'is something that absolutely could be done by the department.'
'This is one small part that we could do to try to ensure that we have some kind of insurance stopgap for these farmers,' Somers, who is also a co-sponsor of the legislation, said. 'This is a lifeline for them to hang on.'
Somers said that Connecticut needs the crop-loss fund to keep farms in the state that are struggling to survive under mounting financial pressure.
'Sterling used to have 40 dairy farms. There's one left,' Somers said. 'That really kind of highlights where we are. … Once it's gone, you're going to have single-family houses or a development brought in there. You're not going to get the farm back.'
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