Big demand for this CT ag grant, but no money for it next year
mark pazniokas / CT Mirror
On tour of Kurtz Farms: From right, Gov. Ned Lamont, E.J. Kurtz and Peter Talbot, chair of the Cheshire Town Council.
The rows of hanging flower baskets stretched towards the back of an automated Kurtz Farms greenhouse in Cheshire that seemed to have no end. Beneath them sat colorful flats of impatiens, pansies, petunias and marigolds.
Watering booms pass over the flats, Bluetooth sensors directing how long a drink they require. Above, the baskets move on an automated line, briefly pausing at a device that weighs and waters them by need.
Gov. Ned Lamont toured the farm Tuesday to celebrate Earth Day and a one-shot Climate Smart Ag and Forestry grant program that illustrated the reach — and limits — of a state government constrained by spending caps.
With $7 million in available in carry-forward dollars that are outside the spending cap — money unspent in one fiscal year and carried over to the next — the state Department of Agriculture quickly fashioned a grant program aimed at helping the Connecticut farming industry become more sustainable.
“We’ve got over 5,000 farms in the state of Connecticut, 370,000 acres of land being worked, 30,000-plus employees that all generate $4 billion to the state’s economy,” said Bryan Hurlburt, the state commissioner of agriculture. “The greenhouse industry is the largest sector of Connecticut’s agricultural economy.”
The Climate Smart grants went directly to some recipients. Others went to organizations like the Connecticut Greenhouse Growers Association, which evaluated applications and made awards. The greenhouse growers had at least $1.7 million to award.
It’s a one-shot program. No funding for another round of grant is in the budget Lamont proposed in February or the revisions made Tuesday by the legislature’s Appropriations Committee. It was crafted from a limited pool of unspent funds and quickly put to work in a single fiscal year.
Hurlburt noted that demand far outstripped the available dollars: About 70 applicants made proposals totaling $55 million, nearly eight times the appropriated dollars.
“Connecticut farmers want to participate in a climate-smart future. They want to be able to implement this technology,” he said. “They want to be able to make these investments. But it’s hard in a low-margin industry to be able to find the available capital to put in place these pieces of equipment or these investments.”
In most cases, the state grants leveraged investments from the farms, he said.
A $257,000 grant enabled Kurtz Farms to accelerate modernization, said Earl “E.J.” Kurtz, the third generation of siblings and cousins operating a wholesale nursery business founded in 1941 by their grandparents, Earl and Ruth Kurtz. The family grows plants in 25 acres of covered greenhouses.
Cheshire long has been a center of growing bedding plants, supplying retail nurseries across Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and beyond. Kurtz farms has a catalog offering 10,000 varieties, including vegetables and tropical plants in a year-round operation.
Kurtz said the family already had invested in automation that watered plants on timers and opened greenhouse louvers, allowing greater circulation based on inputs from an on-site weather station that measurers sunlight, temperature and humidity. The grant allowed the installation of a computerized system that precisely measures and applies water, fertilization and fungicides.
He led Lamont on a tour of a greenhouse where 26,000 hanging flower baskets were growing, watered and fed by the new system.
“I love your office,” Lamont said. “So beautiful. It’s amazing, and it brings to life for me what sustainable farming, sustainable agriculture? Words we throw around a lot.”
The operation is year-round, but the demand peaks once the weather breaks in spring and backyard gardeners buy bedding plants. They grow three or four crops — turnovers, in industry parlance — of the spring standards like the Delta Cotton Mix pansies that are almost sold out, Bonanza Orange marigolds or Blue Pearl impatiens.
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