Since 2005, Connecticut’s innovative Community Investment Act (CIA) has been working to strengthen the role Connecticut farms play in providing access to healthy food, a clean environment, and sustainable communities.  The innovative law provides farm business improvements, farmland protection, dairy support, open space and historic preservation, and affordable housing.

Senate President Pro Tempore Don Williams (L) and Commissioner of Agriculture Steven Reviczky (R) speak at the April 18 CIA press event.

To celebrate its six year anniversary, the Working Lands Alliance, a project of American Farmland Trust, joined Senate President Pro Tempore Don Williams and other CIA coalition members on April 18^th at the State Capitol to showcase the many accomplishments of the law to date.  An exhibit of projects funded through the CIA projects will be on display at the State Capitol for two weeks.  “It is not very often that we celebrate things here at the Capitol,” remarked Sen. Williams, a key champion of the Act.  “This is something worth celebrating.”

From development of a program that expanded underserved residents’ access to fresh local produce to the permanent protection of a working orchard, the exhibit on display at the Capitol highlights the important work that has been accomplished using funding from the CIA.  Some of the stories shared at the exhibit include: 

• Bridgeport: Wholesome Wave has helped low-income families gained better access to fresh, healthy and locally grown food by opening farm stands in underserved neighborhoods.
• Sharon: Protection of 144 acres of farmland on the Wike Brothers Farm enabled the farm, which raises free range chickens and naturally grown pigs and cattle, to make needed farm improvements, such as replacing barn roofs.
• East Hartford: Futners Farm constructed a new greenhouse for tomato production to expand this third generation vegetable farm and greenhouse business, which capitalizes on its urban location to meet consumer demand for locally grown food.
• Six northeastern towns: The Farmer’s Cow received grants to create a promotional plan to enhance brand recognition of its milk and to design and implement a marketing, ordering, billing, and distribution system to more effectively sell its milk.
• Preston: Maple Lane Farm transitioned from a mushroom growing facility to hydroponic greenhouse on a farm that produces Christmas trees, orchard fruit, and berries.
• New Haven: Common Ground established the Harvest Pavilion to help ensure the continued viability of the urban farm by increasing the capacity to grow, process, store, and market produce.
• East Canaan: Freund’s Farm used dairy support payments to pay debt, balance sheets and expand a cow pot operation.
• Old Lyme: Judges Farm constructed a photovoltaic solar system for generation of electricity to power irrigation and production systems for wholesale perennial plant production.
• Sandy Hook: Rowledge Pond Hatchery installed new deep infiltration wells for a trout hatchery, supporting sales at farmers markets, fish and game clubs, and conservation organizations.
• Granby: Through the permanent protection of Bushy Hill Orchard and the support of the local community, the Clark family has been able to expand their farm.

More than 100 supporters from across Connecticut attended the press event commemorating the six-year anniversary of the CIA.

The Working Lands Alliance was instrumental in the enactment of the CIA, and continues to work with a broad coalition of farmers, environmentalists, historic preservationists and housing advocates to bring attention to how the law has helped improve and sustain communities. The vital role the CIA has played in ensuring a healthy future for agriculture in the state was pointed out on April 18 by newly-appointed Commissioner of Agriculture, and former WLA Steering Committee member, Steven Reviczky. “Without the CIA, we would not have a robust farmland preservation program in Connecticut,” explained Commissioner Reviczky. “The future of Connecticut agriculture is very closely linked to the future of the CIA.”

The CIA has positively impacted communities as a whole, bringing economic benefits on the local level. More than $56 million in CIA grants have been awarded, creating approximately $100 million of leveraged benefits. With the number of projects funded exceeding 600 in 148 towns, the effect of these dollars has been remarkable. Sen. Williams explained that CIA has been an “economic engine,” helping create more than 2,000 jobs since its inception.

These success stories will be on display through April 29.  Please stop in at the Concourse of the Legislative Office Building in Hartford to see how the Community Investment Act is helping to sustain healthy communities across Connecticut!

About the Author: Cris Coffin is the New England Director for American Farmland Trust, where she leads efforts to promote farmland protection, farm viability and conservation practices in New England through research, outreach, advocacy and policy development at the local, state and national level.

“It’s easy—you just say no,” Victor Martino told me when I asked him about the pressure from housing developers on farmers in California’s Central Valley. Martino’s family farm, Bella Viva Orchards, is only 100 miles from the Bay Area, where he sells his dried fruits to customers at Ferry Plaza and other popular farmers markets.

We salute Martino for his commitment to keeping his land in farming—and for his involvement with Peeled Snacks, a socially conscious company currently donating 10 percent of the proceeds from their special-edition American Farms Sampler to American Farmland Trust. Read below for more from Martino about his orchard—one of the many family-run farms growing healthy food in communities around the nation:

Life Is Sweet at Bella Viva

Business has grown steadily at Bella Viva Orchards in Denair, California, since owner Victor Martino decided to transform his family’s fruit orchard into a dried fruit operation that sells at farmers markets in the Bay Area and to companies like Peeled Snacks, an all-natural snack company now partnering with American Farmland Trust.

When Martino took over the family business from his father in the early ‘80s, the orchard had been selling its fruit wholesale to large companies like Del Monte. “I didn’t like the idea of working all year and bringing the fruit of our labors down [to the canneries] and saying what will you give me for it?,” Martino says.

Once he started drying the 50-acre orchard’s many fruits—which include cherries, apricots, peaches, pears, persimmons, nectarines, plums, apples, grapes, figs, lemons and more—Martino discovered that customers really enjoyed the dried fruit, and his business grew. “People are looking for healthier food choices all the time and we offer an all-natural piece of fruit,” Martino says. “And more people are looking for a product that was grown regionally and for products produced in the United States.”

The climate in the Central Valley, where Martino and surrounding orchardists grow their fruit, is the “best in the world,” he says. But only 100 miles from the Bay Area, the threat from development pressure looms. That’s one of the reasons Martino is happy to be growing for Peeled Snacks, a socially conscious company who recently began donating a percentage of their proceeds to support the work of American Farmland Trust.

“We especially like to deal with people who are passionate about what they do and interested in supporting California-grown and American-grown produce,” Martino says.*

*This profile originally appeared in American Farmland, the magazine of American Farmland Trust. If you are interested in receiving the magazine click here to become an American Farmland Trust member.

About the Author: Kirsten Ferguson is Editor/Writer for American Farmland Trust. She works in the Saratoga, NY office and can be reached at kferguson@farmland.org

Massachusetts dairy farmers don’t have the land base to expand into 1,000 or 2,000 cow herds, according to Peter Melnik, a fourth-generation dairyman from Deerfield. Instead, he believes diversity is the key to preserving his family’s 250-cow farm.

In search of that diversity, Melnik and four other dairies are embarking on a methane digester project with far-reaching implications for farmers, the environment and a sustainable future for the region. Organized as AGreen Energy, they will build five identical methane digesters to convert their cows’ manure and waste from food processors in the Boston area into electrical energy and fertilizer. “The way we’re trying to do it is the first in the country,” says Melnik.

AGreen Energy will manage day-to-day operation of the digesters, a key benefit according to Melnik, who points out that dairy farmers only have so many hours available in each day.

“The principal payback from the digesters is from the energy,” he says. “But we will get digested manure and compost to sell to vegetable farmers and local gardeners. We’re also applying for a value-added grant so we can use the excess heat from the digester for a greenhouse.”

“If we don’t capture the methane, it’s just going into the atmosphere.  I see the digester as a mini-local bio-cycle – we feed the cows, they process the feed into milk and manure, we capture the manure and methane, and we use that energy to power the farm and grow more food in the greenhouse, where we use our own digested manure as the fertilizer,” he says.

Melnik and his partners have added a further twist that boosts their chances of success and improves the environment:  their digesters will also accept organic waste from food manufacturers in the Boston area, incorporating it into the process stream.

“Food waste brings in more energy per pound than manure does, so this enables us to generate the same electricity from our 250-cow dairy as a 1,200 cow dairy that recycled only manure,” Melnik explains. “For a small farm, typically a digester can’t pay for itself.  [Incorporating the food waste] is what’s making this project economically viable.”

Melnik praises Massachusetts’ progressive energy laws along with the Agricultural Preservation Restriction (APR) program which have made it possible for his family to preserve most of their farm from development and which are now helping to drive the digester project. “My father was a big proponent of the APR program – he and my grandfather kind of built this farm, and my father did his job by preserving it, and now it’s my job and my son’s to preserve it,” says Melnik.

“I think in 20 years methane digesters are going to be commonplace on livestock farms.  I am a firm believer that you try as hard as you can to take care of what’s yours.  My dream is that someday instead of driving my tractor up to the diesel pump, I will pull my electric tractor up to the digester to refuel.”

In Fairfax County, Virginia, next to Tyson’s Corner—one of the nation’s biggest malls—is a small farm stand with a green sign reading, “Potomac Vegetable Farms.”  Multi-million dollar houses sprout up in surrounding fields, but farm owner Hiu Newcomb, her daughter Hana and their partner Ellen Polishuk have found a way to turn the intensely suburban location into more of a boon than a burden. 

A worker picks garlic scapes out of green buckets, as a neighboring Salvadoran family stops by the farm to purchase a live chicken. The garlic scapes are bundled with rubber bands to prepare for the week’s farmers markets in Washington, D.C., where the farm sells a cornucopia of freshly picked veggies (50 total), flowers, herbs and fruits: lettuce, Chinese cabbage, mixed mustards, Swiss chard, sugar snap peas, sweet onions, dandelion greens.

In the 1960s, when Newcomb and her husband Tony first started farming in the area, Tyson’s Corner was a little crossroads, with “cattle lolling under the peach trees.” The couple grew sweet corn on 1,000 acres of rented land. “That was our main crop,” Newcomb says. “We had a reputation for great sweet corn.”

No longer farming primarily on rented land, Potomac Vegetable Farms now has a production farm in Loudoun County, near Purcellville, in addition to their original farm and roadside stand on Leesburg Pike in Vienna. “When we started, we were 100 percent wholesale. Now we’re five percent wholesale,” Newcomb says. “Our preference is to direct market.”

Like Newcomb, many farmers around the country—especially those in urban-edge locations—are selling their goods directly to consumers who are eager to buy locally grown food. Some customers are driven by concerns about food safety; others find that farm fresh food tastes better and enjoy the experience of knowing the person who grew the food.

“We didn’t know in the early 1960s that we were the vanguard of a movement,” Newcomb says. “There weren’t many vegetable farms around Fairfax County then.”

These days, the farm generates about a third of its income from farmers markets, a third from its roadside stand and a third from selling CSA shares (where customers purchase a portion of the season’s harvest). It also sells directly to a few restaurants and delis in the area. The farm’s CSA shares typically sell out in less than a day.

Some of the farm’s 460 CSA customers are even its employees and neighbors. To make sure the farm “always had good neighbors,” Newcomb built Blueberry Hill, a cohousing community built on the back corner of the Vienna farm where some of her workers, family members and CSA share-holders live. But overall, the farm “ended up having really friendly neighbors who would never give us trouble,” Newcomb says.

A good relationship with the community, and her customers, means Newcomb never has trouble finding labor. “Our labor [in the past] was always college kids. My children thought that was great,” she says. “But now we have more local people and part-time workers. Some are volunteers, some work for pay and some work for food. There’s always something for somebody to do.”

Despite the economic downturn, Newcomb says the farm’s sales are better than ever. “If someone complains that it’s three dollars for a bunch of chard, I say, ‘What else are you buying for three dollars that’s as good and healthy for you?’” Newcomb says. “What’s more important than what you put in your mouth and body?”

On the outskirts of Wenatchee, a city in the heart of central Washington where golden hills surround endless miles of irrigated fruit orchards, a large apple-shaped sign reads, “Apple Capital of the World.” In a region that ships over 100 million boxes of apples a year around the nation and the world, education has been the key to helping growers—especially the valley’s many Latino orchard employees and managers—reduce their use of pesticides.

Apple and cherry grower Jesus Limón, who worked his way up the ranks at a fruit company in order to purchase his own Wenatchee Valley orchard, participated in a Latino orchard employee education program—funded by an EPA grant administered by American Farmland Trust—that teaches growers in Spanish about integrated pest management (IPM).

“You get hooked on it,” Limon says about the natural techniques for identifying and eliminating orchard pests. Since the 1970s, researchers have been exploring safer and more ecologically sound ways to manage pests like insects and plant diseases. IPM includes sustainable methods such as scouting for pests, weather monitoring, disruptions to a pest’s life cycle, and ways to reinforce a pest’s natural enemies.

The Wenatchee-region IPM classes—taught initially by pest management consultant Naná Simone and then by Leo Garcia and other IPM experts at Wenatchee Valley College—were integral in helping Limón reduce the use of pesticides in his orchard, which he then converted to 100 percent organic over a three-year period. “Knowledge is the best thing you can acquire,” Limón says. “The classes helped me tremendously because I couldn’t depend on the conventional sprays anymore.”

Limón’s conversion of his orchard to organic had a domino effect on the farms around him. “This guy just became organic and then the next guy and next guy,” Limón says, pointing to neighboring apple orchards. The program’s classes were such a success not only because the Spanish language instruction helped growers understand the complexities of IPM more quickly, but also because they were taught right in the student’s orchards and fit around the schedule of the farmers.

 “This is a much better way to get people to change,” Limón says. “This program got us away from [conventional chemicals] without forcing us. Trying to work with the farmer is better than being the mean guy on the block. If the EPA knew what this program really did for us, they would do more programs like it.”

Limón proudly points to wooden hawk boxes he installed on poles lining the rows of his apple trees. After two years, he finally got a family of hawks to move into his orchard. The hawks scare away birds that like to peck apples and cherries off the trees. This natural approach to managing wildlife is also an outgrowth of learning about IPM, Limón says. “I liked learning about how the bug populations worked. Once you start putting the pieces together, you see everything: the mice, the snakes, the cougars.”