Last week, Connecticut’s U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D) held a public forum, sharing the latest out of D.C. on where a long-awaited federal Farm Bill stands, while gathering input from Connecticut farmers and land preservationists on which priorities to address. Murphy was joined by Bryan Hurlburt, Connecticut’s Department of Agriculture Commissioner, and Kumar Venkitanarayanan, Dean and Director of UConn’s College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources.
“The goal of today was not really to be talking at the audience, but listening to the audience and hearing what’s on your minds, and to use this as a great opportunity in advance of the Farm Bill conversations to make sure that our federal delegation is working with Connecticut farmers, landowners, stakeholders, [and] constituents in mind,” said Hurlburt.
The Federal Farm Bill is a massive omnibus bill that dictates federal funding and support for nationwide agricultural, nutrition, and conservation programs. While the Farm Bill is usually renegotiated and renewed by Congress every five years, 2018 marks the last time Congress was able to pass a new one in its entirety. Since its expiration in 2023, Congress has succeeded only in passing one-year extensions, struggling to come to a consensus on what a fully reworked and renewed bill should look like.
The most recent round of discussions came on August 6 at a meeting of the U.S. Agriculture Committee, in which a draft of the bill failed to pass out of committee on a vote of 10-11. Democrats and Republicans are currently stalemated on the issue of the $200 billion in cuts to SNAP funding called for by Trump’s One Big, Beautiful Bill Act, as SNAP fund allocations are traditionally determined in the Farm Bill.
While a litany of concerns was raised at the forum, some of the most common requests made by farmers were renewed efforts to address labor costs and employee retention, and to more properly tailor the policies, guidelines, and requirements of various Farm Bill-funded federal programs to the needs and realities of Connecticut’s farmers. There were also requests made for the continuation of prior state and federal farming, nutrition, and preservation programs.
Keith Bishop, from Bishop’s Orchards in Guilford, recommended that Murphy introduce the idea of a federal tax credit for farmers who employ student laborers. He explained that, because the H2A visa program, which allows farms to hire foreign workers when local labor is insufficient, requires farms to pay Connecticut H2A workers $18, farmers are “up against paying everybody who does those job classifications the exact same rate.” This discourages farms from hiring student laborers, said Bishop, because they are often “green and inexperienced, and they don’t have the efficiency you need to have for paying the prevailing rate.” Bishop noted that other, less laborious jobs are often more attractive to students because they pay more, which further pushes wage pressure up on farms looking to employ and train the next generation of agriculturists.
“We need students who want to go to UConn, who want to go to Cornell, and the other Ag schools to come back into agriculture to be future owners and agriculturists here in the state, and so what do we do at that beginning level to entice them?” said Bishop. “But the farmers got to pay those wages, and because the [state] legislative labor committee doesn’t like to listen to the farmers and our complaints, I’d like to take it to your level to say, ‘Can we have a federal tax credit?'”
Paul Larson, President of the Connecticut Farm Bureau, said the federal H2A program should be reformed generally, calling it “really important.” He requested that H2A be amended to allow year-round labor for certain agricultural sectors, citing dairy in particular. He also cited the rising wages as making life “really difficult” and requested that “more work be done on labor.”
Several farmers complained that Connecticut’s rising minimum wage, which also applies to Connecticut’s H2A workers, has made it more difficult for farmers to make their ends meet. On the other hand, Matt Went, of River Ridge Farm in Portland, CT, said that the high H2A wage in Connecticut gives the state a “competitive edge” in attracting workers. He did, however, express a desire for federal and state officials to assist smaller farms in housing H2A workers.
“Part of the H2A program is also housing H2A workers,” said Went. “So, as a smaller farmer, it’s already harder to find housing or something like that. So having some sort of consideration for crediting housing, and housing stipends for local farmers in states where housing is super expensive.”
Another issue discussed was the price reimbursements and crop schedules of federal farmers’ insurance programs. While federal agencies, such as the Farm Service Agency (FSA) or the Risk Management Agency (RMA), oversee various farmers’ disaster assistance or crop insurance programs, they rely heavily on state universities and departments, such as UConn and the state’s DOA, to provide local pricing data and land-use practices for these programs.
Colleen Kesselberg, part-owner of Arthur Caroll Insurance Agency, requested that the state DOA, Murphy, and other state officials “keep putting pressure on RMA” to provide insurance policies for a greater variety of crops.
“You ask any farmer in the state, there’s a core top 10 or 12 crops that make or break them,” said Kesselber. “Vegetables are our specialty crops up here — Vegetables, fruits. These need to be covered. These are not covered, and haven’t been for a long time.”
She also recommended UConn do a better job of obtaining and updating price data for crops grown in Connecticut and provide them to federal agencies to ensure that insurance policies are predicated on the proper market price of Connecticut crops.
“A lot of times they’ll expand the product here, [but] prices are from Florida or something, which is not representative of what we get for blueberries or, whatever, sweet corn,” said Kesselberg. “So, they make the policy less useful, because they’re not supporting or ensuring what the value is of that crop that they’re growing. So we need more policies; help us with that. We need some data, third-party published data, to help support RMA to be able to make these policies.”
Venkitanarayanan thanked Kesselberg for bringing it to his attention and said that UConn’s Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics is “equipped” to do the price research she requested. Murphy said the Save Our Small Farms Act, a bill introduced by Connecticut U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes (D), has a provision that requires the FSA “to improve that data collection.”
Various speakers requested the continuation or renewal of various federal programs, such as the Local Food to Schools Cooperative Agreement, which had its funding cancelled by Trump administration officials last year, preventing $3.4 million in previously appropriated funds from making their way to Connecticut. Hurlburt recommended bringing this program, as well as the Resilient Food System and Infrastructure Program and the Land Capital Market Access Program, under the fold of the latest Farm Bill to ensure consistent future funding.
“But if it [they] became a Farm Bill program, it would be permanently available, and we, as a state, would have the opportunity to continue to draw from it,” said Hurlburt. “We wouldn’t have to go back and forth to the legislature and say, ‘Hey, this was a great program. We had it for two years under the federal government, and now it’s gone away; Can we get state funding for it?'”
Concerns surrounding the stability of federal funding also extended to land conservation stakeholders. Anne Colby of the Southbury Land Trust said the “only reason” Southbury is “dark green” on the state DOA’s conservation map is because of federal funding provided by the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), a federal agency that has previously been impacted by funding freezes. Colby said that farmland preservation deals already require long negotiation periods, which are only further hindered by insecurity surrounding the status of federal funds.
“In good faith, I don’t know that I can do this, that we can do this, without federal funding,” said Colby. “Can we depend on these federal programs?”
Murphy took notes on and made comments on each speaker’s questions and concerns, but shared a skeptical view of when a new Farm Bill might come to pass.
“We’re sort of always in the middle of Farm Bill consideration, but the bill has not yet come out of committee, and I doubt that it will show up on the Senate and the House floor by the end of the year, but it is due for extension,” said Murphy. “But I would expect that at the beginning of next year, we’ll be teed up for a reauthorization.”
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