Land Stewardship

Preserved Land               Forests              Wetlands

Farmland

 

Less agricultural land was preserved in 2022 than last year and the previous ten-year average. 

In 2022, Connecticut preserved just 652 acres of agricultural land.²⁵ This is approximately 54 percent of the 1,204 acres preserved in 2021, and a 44 percent decline from the previous ten-year average of 1,168 acres. 

The cumulative acreage preserved by the Connecticut Department of Agriculture (DoAg), which began preserving agricultural land by purchasing development rights in 1978 has increased slowly and now totals approximately 48,000 acres. Council projections prepared in 2022 indicate that it would take approximately 70 years to achieve the state’s farmland preservation goal of 130,000 acres, based on the average annual acquisition rate for the last ten years. During that time, additional farmland can be expected to be lost to development.

In addition to the production of food and agricultural products, Connecticut’s farms have a role in mitigation, adaptation, and resiliency to the negative impacts of climate change. Well managed farms store carbon from the atmosphere in soils and plants, capture and store water from extreme precipitation events, and provide for bio-mass derived renewable energy. Soil is one of the sinks for atmospheric carbon, and one that can be managed to mitigate the effects of climate change.²⁶

From 1985 to 2015, it is estimated that Connecticut lost approximately 45,000 acres of “agricultural fields”,²⁷ which represents a loss of approximately 16 percent. The rate of farmland loss may change as demand for locally produced food and agricultural products increases or as development pressure increases, such as electricity generation. As detailed in the solar photovoltaics indicator, there are provisions for the DoAg to review certain solar proposals* on agricultural land and determine if such development would have a “materially affect” on the status of such land as prime farmland.

_{Technical Note: *Some of the proposals on agricultural land included some type of agricultural co-use activities at the sites. The potential agricultural viability of the co-use activities is unknown.}

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²⁵ _{Connecticut Department of Agriculture (DoAg); personal communication from C. Weimar, January 5, 2023.}
²⁶ _{DEEP, GC3 Final Report: Working & Natural Lands Working Group - Agriculture/Soils Working Subgroup; portal.ct.gov/-/media/DEEP/climatechange/GC3/GC3-working-group-reports/GC3_WNL_Ag_Soils_Final_Report_111320.pdf.}
²⁷ _{UConn, CLEAR, State Land Cover Statistics; clear.uconn.edu/projects/landscape/ct-stats/.}