Farm recovery grant opens for CT farmers

Jan 14, 2025
By Farms.com

CT farmers urged to report weather losses

Senators Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal, along with U.S. Representatives from Connecticut, are calling on farmers who faced losses from extreme weather events in 2023 and 2024 to report their damages to the Connecticut Department of Agriculture (CT DoAg). This initiative is part of the push to ensure farmers can access the $220 million Farm Recovery and Support Block Grant, which is aimed at helping small and medium-sized farmers recover from agricultural losses caused by extreme weather.

"We strongly encourage farmers in Connecticut to participate in the CT DoAg survey on weather-related losses from 2023 and 2024,” the delegation said. “This is a critical opportunity to ensure your needs are accounted for as the state prepares to distribute disaster funding for farmers. The Farm Recovery and Support Block Grant provided $220 million in disaster relief funding for farmers impacted by extreme weather events in 2023 and 2024 and is intended to help affected farmers recoup their losses from these unexpected disasters. Farmers sharing the challenges they faced—whether it’s production losses, infrastructure damage, or increased costs due to invasive species—can help CT DoAg understand the scope of the need to address it as best as they can as soon as funding is ready. Please fill out the survey if you experienced these losses – help will soon be available.”

The Farm Recovery and Support Block Grant provides crucial relief without requiring farmers to have crop insurance or a national disaster declaration. This makes it a vital resource for farmers affected by localized weather events that might not qualify for other forms of assistance.

By completing a survey provided by the CT DoAg, farmers can report various losses, including crop damage, infrastructure destruction, and rising costs linked to invasive species exacerbated by weather conditions. The survey is essential for CT DoAg to accurately assess the extent of the damage and ensure that funding is distributed quickly once it becomes available.

The survey will remain open until January 19, 2025, and farmers who have experienced losses in 2023 or 2024 are encouraged to participate. This is an important opportunity to receive support during these difficult times, ensuring that Connecticut's agricultural community can recover and continue to thrive.

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Video: Western Canadian Agriculture: Hard Times Made the World's Best Farmers

Western Canadian agriculture produced the most advanced farmers in the world not through abundance but through adversity. The crow rate fell. The wheat price went nowhere. The brown envelopes stopped.

When the subsidies disappeared, the bad farmers left and the good ones stayed. And the ones who stayed could not just grow wheat anymore. They started growing lentils and canola and peas and flax and faba beans. They built crop rotation. They got serious about agronomy because there was no government backstop. That process produced the Western Canadian agriculture Dennis Bulani describes in this clip: the most advanced, most educated farming culture in the world.

His contrast with Iowa corn and soybean farmers is sharp. At a DeKalb farmer meeting in Okoboji, Iowa, he asked what crop rotation they ran. Beans on corn stubble, corn on bean stubble. How do you fertilize? The co-op agronomist handles it. Have you considered other crops? No need. We make so much money on corn and soybeans. Western Canadian agriculture was never allowed that comfort. And now those Iowa farmers are watching soybean markets lock up with China and corn prices slide, and they do not have the agronomy knowledge or the research base to pivot. Western Canadian farmers adapted on a dime because they had done it before.

Dennis also makes the case that Western Canadian agriculture keeps adapting in real time. Low commodity prices over the past year have pushed growers to look seriously at precision spot-spray technology. He knows a neighbor who bought a sprayer with the seeing-eye system and sprayed only 80 out of 320 acres. As a chemical retailer Dennis acknowledges that will affect his sales. He supports it anyway, because if it advances Canadian agriculture and makes farmers money, that is a good outcome.

The lesson Dennis draws from the tale of two farms: continuous improvement is the only durable strategy. When canola was $22 a bushel some growers went to Arizona instead of the Crop Production Show. When the price came down those same growers came back to the research and the discipline. Products do not go on Rack Petroleum's shelves unless they pass a replicated trial first. That is what Western Canadian agriculture built through hard times: farmers who do the work whether the times demand it or not.

Dennis Bulani is CEO of Rack Petroleum and Ultimate Yield in Biggar, Saskatchewan. Dan Aberhart hosts GTF Productions, Western Canadian Agriculture's foremost live briefing platform and its foremost AI training platform for ag operators