🔒Connecticut farmland shrinks amid economic pressures, rising developer interest

An e-commerce distribution facility. A hotel. Residential housing. Solar arrays. Developers in Connecticut do not lack ideas for reusing former farmland. In the past several months, developers have proposed a number of projects on agricultural land, including:

• In November, a developer in Simsbury proposed a 120-room Holiday Inn Express as part of a mixed-use development on 164 acres on Hopmeadow Street.
• In December, developers in Cheshire proposed a 25-lot residential subdivision on 42 acres that formerly was the site of Norton Brothers Fruit Farm. The town approved it in February.
• In March, a developer in Wallingford proposed converting a farm house and barn into nine apartment units at 386 Williams Road.

Other projects have been completed in the past several years, including Amazon’s five-story fulfillment center in Windsor on 147 acres owned by the former broad-leaf tobacco-growing Thrall family, and the Gravel Pit Solar array, the state’s largest, on former farmland in East Windsor. All of these projects come as Connecticut farmers face growing financial pressures from rising costs for land, property taxes, energy and equipment, along with, in some cases, a lack of interest from younger generations in continuing the family business. The state has programs offering financial incentives to preserve farmland, but they often are not as lucrative as a developer’s bid to buy the land. One example: Real estate developer Mark Greenberg recently sold 35 acres of former farmland in Windsor for $350,000 per acre for industrial development. The land had been used to grow broadleaf tobacco, which he said “is not an economically viable business anymore.” Citing the increasing cost of property taxes, Greenberg said farmers sell because they can “turn something that’s a liability into a big asset. That’s what I’ve done.” Farmers and state officials, however, say they prefer to preserve the land for farming.

Preservation efforts

Bryan Hurlburt, commissioner of the state Department of Agriculture, said competing with developers has been a struggle for decades.

“We don’t have a stick that says ‘you can’t do this,’ or want the ability to deny a landowner to do that,” he said. “But we do have carrots in our tools.” The primary tools include the traditional Connecticut Farmland Preservation Program (FPP), the Community Farms Preservation Program (CFPP) and the federal Agricultural Conservation Easement Program (ACEP). Under the first two programs, the state buys the development rights from a farmer and places a permanent deed restriction on the land so it can only be used for agricultural purposes. The FPP is for parcels of 30 acres or more, while the CFPP is for smaller farms. Under the ACEP, farmers are paid for a conservation easement, which restricts the land to being used only for agricultural purposes. Since the inception of the state’s farmland preservation program in 1978, 51,347 acres across 458 farm parcels have been protected as of mid-March, the state Department of Agriculture said. In 2025, the department, along with federal and local partners, protected 13 farm parcels covering 953 acres. Hurlburt said the process has historically moved slowly. “When I came into this office (in March 2019),” he said, “I think they had done one Community Farms program closing in its 10 years.” Unlike developers, “who can move at the speed of business in real time,” Hurlburt added, “we move at the speed of state government.” On average, it once took about six years to close on a farmland preservation application, though recent changes have reduced that timeline to between three and four years, depending on complexity, he said. Even with those improvements, the timeline can be too long for farmers looking to retire. In response, lawmakers created a $10 million farmland access grant program that allows municipalities, regional councils of government and nonprofit land conservation groups to purchase farmland and secure its preservation. Those buyers can then sell the development rights to the state and transfer the land to a farmer who will keep it in agricultural use.

At risk

Despite the state’s best efforts, the number of farms and total farmland in Connecticut continues to decline. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the number of farms in the state fell by nearly 1,000 over a 10-year period ending in 2022. The department’s most recent Census of Agriculture, which is released every five years, reported 5,058 farms in Connecticut in 2022, down 919 from 2012. Farmland also declined by 65,525 acres, or nearly 15%, over that period. Those losses carry economic implications. The census report estimates that, in 2022, Connecticut’s agriculture industry contributed between $3.3 billion and $4 billion to the state economy. Data from real estate analytics firm CoStar show that dozens of agricultural land parcels in Connecticut have sold since 2021, often at widely varying prices. Among transactions with disclosed prices, the median sale was about $255,000, while prices per acre ranged from under $1,000 to nearly $900,000. Elisabeth Moore, executive director of the nonprofit Connecticut Farmland Trust, said some of the decline in farmland may reflect consolidation within the industry, with smaller farms being sold to larger operations. “So it’s actually land that is not going out of production,” Moore said. “It’s just that it’s been bought by a bigger farm.” Still, farm owners have filled the Legislative Office Building in Hartford at least twice during the 2026 session to seek help from the General Assembly, saying current economic conditions make it increasingly difficult to stay in business. In January, Gov. Ned Lamont ordered a delay in issuing new valuations for agricultural land after farmers complained the new assessments would bring huge tax increases and force some to sell their land. Lamont also formed a working group with farmers, municipal leaders, assessors and state agriculture officials to develop reforms to the valuation process, in an effort to avoid large spikes in the future. Dairy farmers, meanwhile, want the state to approve a $20 million annual tax credit program to help offset the cyclical downturns in milk prices. Connecticut now has fewer than 80 dairy farms, a 25% decline from just seven years ago, according to state data.

‘Once it’s gone, it’s gone’

Interestingly, one farm that has utilized state preservation programs is the Northeast’s largest dairy. Oakridge Dairy in Ellington has 2,600 dairy cows — nearly 14% of the state’s roughly 19,000 — and produces more than 21,000 gallons of milk daily. Founded in the late 1890s by Adolph Bahler, more than five generations of the Bahler family have worked the farm’s 1,400 acres. It now employs about 60 people. “We have committed to being a farm,” said Seth Bahler, 34, part of the latest generation to run Oakridge. “We want to be here for another five generations.” To achieve that, the family has sold conservation easements on about 85% of its land to entities including the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, the Connecticut Department of Agriculture, the town of Ellington and the Connecticut Farmland Trust.

Bahler, who is also CEO of The Modern Milkman, a home milk delivery service, said revenue from those easements has been invested in more land and facilities and used “just so we could stay in business.” In addition to the land it owns in Ellington, Oakridge also farms 1,600 leased acres spread across Ellington, East Windsor, Enfield, Somers, Stafford and Union. While some of that land is also protected, Bahler said the temptation for the landowners to sell is high. “Solar developers are coming in, housing developers are coming in, and they can offer a lot more money than we can pay in rent,” he said. “You can’t bring back farmland. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.”