New Uses Of Farms Sought To Preserve Farmland

HARTFORD (AP) — A new type of farming may help boost farmland preservation in Connecticut.

A legislative task force considering farmland preservation issues is considering ways to promote so-called boutique farming, which calls for the sale of products such as ice cream and raw milk directly from farms.

“We want to support farmers who want to make agriculture viable,” said Senator Andrew Roraback, R-Goshen, a member of the task force. “The agricultural landscape has changed in the 30 years since farmland preservation programs were created.”

A new focus is on direct marketing and alternative value-added commodities.

Research will include studying a consortium of dairy farmers in eastern Connecticut who are establishing a small cooperative processing their own milk and selling it — without middlemen — directly to retailers.

Another measure would be consumer subsidies such as a “Connecticut grown” logo on milk cartons.

Connecticut is losing between 8,000 acres and 9,000 acres of farmland a year, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

Between 1992 and 1997, the rate of development of Connecticut’s prime farmland more than doubled. About 30,000 of the remaining 357,154 acres of farmland left in 2002 are protected against development.

“The majority of farmland in Connecticut is associated with dairy, so you can’t write off dairy farming,” said Steven Reviczky, a property agent with the state’s farmland preservation program. “But it is the land that is at greatest risk as it becomes available for other uses, often outside of agriculture.”

In Newtown, former state agriculture director Shirley Ferris, her husband, Charles III, and two of their sons operate Ferris Acres, a dairy farm that recently added an ice cream stand. The Ferris family, which operates the last dairy farm in Fairfield County, hopes to add a full dairy operation eventually. The Steve Paproski farm in Newtown no longer sells milk but breeds cows and has a hay maze, hay rides, and other activities each fall.

East Canaan dairy farmer Matthew Freund has ideas of his own to continue making a living. Three years ago, he sought a value-added product to supplement income from milk production.

He came up with an idea to turn the 4,500 gallons of manure slurry his herd of 225 milking cows produces into a marketable product. He calls it manure management, or disposing of a nutrient at a profit instead of a loss.

Mr Freund’s idea was to market, manufacture, and distribute pots made with pressed manure and used by gardeners. He got a boost two weeks ago from the US Department of Agriculture, which granted $72,130 to fund a feasibility study and a business plan.

Pressed into an odorless pulp, the pots and their available nitrogen encourage bigger, healthier and faster growing plants.

Mr Freund hopes his product will be launched in the spring.

Connecticut’s dairy industry is at risk of being displaced by milk produced in the Midwest, he said.

“The bottom line is that it costs more to produce milk in the Northeast than in other parts of the country,’’ he said. “People need to understand that if they want the land, they will have to pay farmers to keep it in production.”