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James Mol
Connecticut has roughly 400,000 acres of working farmland left, and the pace of preservation is slowing. The barrier for the next generation of farmers is not interest. It is price: land sells at development value, and a young farmer cannot outbid a developer.
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Hartford has done real work here. The 2025 farm bill raised the municipal farm property tax exemption from $100,000 to $250,000 and created a 20 percent investment tax credit. A companion act authorized a program that can buy land, protect it with an easement, and sell it to a farmer at agricultural value. This year the state increased its share when it buys development rights jointly with a town.
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Then came the scare. Under Public Act 490, farmland is assessed at its use value rather than market value. New use values for the 2025 grand list produced sharp increases across Connecticut, and in January 2026 the Governor reversed them by letter. That fix lives in a letter, not in statute, and the working group looking for a permanent answer reports to the legislature that takes office in January.
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The pace is falling
In 2024 the state preserved 693 acres against a ten-year average of 1,211. American Farmland Trust projects 55,000 more Connecticut acres at risk by 2040.
Source: Connecticut Department of Agriculture; American Farmland Trust.
Congressman Joe Courtney joined James Mol at his farm in West Suffield to talk about the future of farming in our district: protecting farmland, helping the next generation of farmers get started, and keeping farms viable as working businesses.
The farmland access program authorized in 2025 does not launch until 2027 and has no dedicated staff. Preservation is running at roughly half its ten-year average. The pattern is the same one this district sees on schools: the structure gets built and the money is left for later.
Farmland here also faces PFAS, the so-called forever chemicals that do not break down in soil or groundwater. Connecticut banned PFAS in biosolids in 2024 but has no fund for testing or remediation on agricultural land. At the Air National Guard site at Bradley, in Suffield and East Granby, the Department of Defense pushed back its cleanup investigation in 2025, in some cases by nearly a decade.
Suffield High's program serves 173 students from across the region and is Connecticut's farm workforce pipeline. The state caps what sending towns may pay and funds its own share at 42 percent, so one town carries a gap that should be shared. A program this good deserves a permanent formula in law.
What I will do in Hartford
Write the Public Act 490 use-value protection into statute, so a farm's assessment does not depend on which governor is in office.
Fund and staff the farmland access program for an on-time 2027 launch, and restore preservation funding to at least its ten-year average.
Create a state fund for PFAS testing and remediation on agricultural land, and press the federal government to restore the cleanup timetable it delayed at the Air National Guard base.
Write a permanent AgriScience funding formula into law.