After months of negotiations between state and federal officials, Connecticut will receive about $53 million from a federal block grant designed to help small and midsized farmers recoup weather-related crop losses.
Connecticut famers have been awaiting access to federal relief after experiencing damages caused by disasters and extreme weather in 2023 and 2024. Now that the state knows its portion of the federal funding approved by Congress last year, Connecticut is closer to operating its own crop loss program, with plans to open applications to receive relief in the fall.
The state’s allocation is about a quarter of the $220 million Farm Recovery and Support Block Grant Program, which is open to every state in New England plus Hawaii and Alaska. The amount awarded to Connecticut was about 63.5% of the state’s $82.3 million request. Farmers and lawmakers who had been pushing for finalizing the details of the program say they are satisfied with what Connecticut will receive.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture informed state Agriculture Commissioner Bryan Hurlburt’s office Friday about the allocation of $53 million. Connecticut is still waiting for USDA to approve of its program design and the execution of a contract, which the state expects to happen in September.
State officials will then start administering the program, though the exact timeline has yet to be determined. They are aiming for implementation some time in the fall, with more details to come about what eligible farmers will need in terms of paperwork and documentation to be able to tap into the $53 million pool.
The Connecticut Department of Agriculture “remains committed to providing a flexible, inclusive and farmer-centered recovery approach which meets the needs of the diversity of CT farmers, including small and medium-sized producers who have traditionally not participated in other national USDA programs,” the state agency wrote in its latest update about the grant on Friday.
Smaller farming states that grow more specialty crops don’t typically benefit from federal assistance in the same ways as larger producers that grow commodity crops like corn, soybeans and wheat. Most farmers in Connecticut don’t have crop insurance.
That prompted U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3rd District, and other lawmakers to push for more federal relief. The block grant was tucked into legislation last December to fund the federal government. It was designed to only apply to small and medium farming states where eligibility didn’t hinge on whether a farmer has crop insurance.
One of the influences behind establishing such a block grant was William Dellacamera, a farmer in North Branford who has been advocating for federal relief for months.
He is coming up on the one-year mark of the 13-minute hail storm that destroyed Cecarelli’s Harrison Hill Farm last August. A month later, he traveled to Washington, D.C., on his tractor to push for help from the federal government.
In December, Congress passed a government funding bill with billions of dollars in emergency disaster aid, including the $220 million Farm Recovery and Support Block Grant Program.
But as months went by with little developments and ongoing negotiations, Dellacamera came back to the nation’s capital to ask about the status of the farm block grant. He met with Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on two occasions as he made his plea for the quick rollout of the money for small and midsize farmers.
Dellacamera feels hopeful the money allotted for Connecticut will cover a lot of the losses for farmers like him. He said he didn’t expect the number to be as high as it was, noting that the $53 million is four times higher than what the state received under the last supplemental disaster program.
“It’s a big number. It should go a long way,” Dellacamera said. “We got the money right now. There’s still a lot more that needs to get done.”
DeLauro, the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, called the state’s allocation a “game changer.” She also credited fellow Connecticut representatives John Larson and Joe Courtney as well as Dellacamera and Hurlburt for helping get the program to final stages.
“I designed this historic block grant program to remove barriers for New England farmers like crop insurance requirements because our federal farm safety net fails so many of our specialty crop producers, and to give Connecticut the flexibility to decide when and where relief is needed,” DeLauro said in a statement. “This announcement is a major step towards putting dollars in the hands of farmers who have endured massive losses, and it is a dramatic improvement over what has been provided in the past.”
Earlier in the summer, disagreements emerged over the rollout of the disaster aid block grant.
As negotiations between federal officials and state counterparts continued, the U.S. Department of Agriculture gave states two options. They could run their own crop loss program by using the block grant tailored for them, but they wouldn’t get access to a larger pot of supplemental disaster aid — the option that Connecticut ultimately chose. Or they could go with the latter, run by the federal agency, but face limits on what gets covered by the block grant.
Connecticut decided it would develop a state-run program using the federal block grant. That meant the state wouldn’t get access to the $21 billion Supplemental Disaster Relief Program.
After learning of the USDA’s proposals in late May, eligible states scrambled to make an assessment and meet the deadline to make a decision between the two funding streams — before knowing how much they’d get from the block grant. States weighed which option made more sense for their farmers before they knew how much of the $220 million block grant they would receive.
Connecticut’s Department of Agriculture argued the block grant option would give the state more flexibility for specialty crop operations, especially since the supplemental disaster funds might not cover many of the farmers and producers in Connecticut.
At that time, the state agency and Connecticut’s congressional delegation pushed back against the USDA’s parameters that states cannot participate in both programs.
Questions emerged over the potential of double dipping and farmers getting money to cover the same thing.
DeLauro had argued the federal agency was going against the intentions of Congress in how it wrote the law, saying they interpreted the special grant as a supplement for smaller farmers who don’t always qualify for traditional disaster relief. A group of 29 Democratic lawmakers who represented the eligible block-grant states framed it as a “bait and switch” that pitted two disaster aid programs against each other.
For its part, USDA placed the blame on Democratic lawmakers, contending that they were delaying aid. The federal agency argued members were looking “to manufacture controversy and blame the Trump Administration.”
Ultimately, Connecticut chose the farm block grant money in June, and regular negotiations continued over the next couple of months.
Since Connecticut went in that direction, it will be fully in charge of administering the program and doling out the eventual compensation.
Farmers like Dellacamera feel like Connecticut will benefit more from this avenue than they would have through the Supplemental Disaster Relief Program. But since the block grant only covers weather losses from the past two years, he is worried about what relief farmers may need after this year, especially as Connecticut currently faces dry conditions.
“I’m feeling good about it for ’23 and ’24, but what are we going to do in ’25?” Dellacamera said. “I’m happy for us at the moment, but there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done.”
The Connecticut Mirror/Connecticut Public Radio federal policy reporter position is made possible, in part, by funding from the Robert and Margaret Patricelli Family Foundation.
This story was originally published by the Connecticut Mirror.
