HARTFORD, CT – A few weeks ago a hail storm destroyed Will DellaCamera’s entire crop at the Cecarelli’s Harrison Hill Farm in the Northford section of North Branford in just 13 minutes.
On Friday, DellaCamera drove his green tractor to the state Capitol in Hartford for an event organized by House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford, to raise awareness about what DellaCamera describes as a lack of support from both the state and federal government. He plans to drive the tractor all the way to Washington, D.C., to deliver a petition asking for changes to a post-disaster aid system that isn’t working.
Candelora said it is time for the state to act.
“In recent years, we’ve continued to see the impact of climate change and how it is impacting our farms in the state of Connecticut,” Candelora said. “Today we are here asking both on a federal level and a state level to look at what resources we need to provide in order to make sure that when a farm is hit with a sort of a natural disaster that they have the resources to recover immediately.”
Candelora said that for farmers, unlike many other businesses, “time is never on their side. When a crop is is damaged or they’re hit with flood, they need immediate action in order to try to mitigate the damage and try to recover crops. And what we are seeing over the last couple of years, I think we as a state are falling short on providing them those resources.”
Outside the state Capitol, DellaCamera told his story. Following the devastating hail, he spent the night and following day on the phone.
“I reached out to a lot of different people,” he said. “Vinny [Candelora] being one of them, and all the organizations I thought that should be there to help me in the moment. And I don’t feel that I got the response that I should have got. But I knew I was gonna get that response because I watched that same response a little over a year before that … The whole Connecticut River valley flooded, and those farmers were left in the same position I was left in.”
DellaCamera continued: “They lost their farms to floods. I lost mine to hail. I was looking for more outreach from the Department of Ag and from our state, and I simply got two emails. One of them was for me to self-report my damages … The last thing I wanted to do was fill out a computer program with no assistance as to what I lost. And the other emails to follow that were suicide hotline emails, and that was all I got. So I feel that our Department of Ag could do more to reach out to farmers in the time of need.”
He said a few days later he got a call from the Food Safety Inspection Division, which was asking if they could inspect his farm.
“That tells me that someone has their head under a rock because the whole Department of Ag should know that I lost my whole farm,” DellaCamera said, adding that “it has been a struggle to get any information out of the state, out of the Department of Ag, and anybody else to help me figure out where I’m gonna go from here. I think Vinnie has a few good ideas as to new things that we should do, new places maybe we could find some money to help us figure out what we’re gonna do a lot quicker than waiting.”
He said that there’s a lack of outreach and resources as well on the federal level, and a lack of continuity to any of the programs.
And on Thursday, he said, he got bad news from the federal government. Candelora said that DellaCamera pays the US Department of Agriculture $15,000 a year for disaster insurance.
DellaCamera said he filed a claim for $410,000 in damages.
“Unfortunately, yesterday I was given some bad news that I was only gonna possibly receive $42,000 from the USDA to try to pay off $410,000 worth of bills,” DellaCamera said. “So that’s only added fuel to my fire of what I wanna try to do here and try to reform not only our state Department of Ag but our United States Department of Ag.”
Candelora commiserated with DellaCamera.
“And as he said, now they’re offering him $42,000 – less than 10% of his total loss. And what’s remarkable is that the local community came together and started a GoFundMe site. And I think the local community has raised almost $40,000 for the farm,” Candelora said. “It is a bit embarrassing that a federal insurance program is paying out the same amount of money that volunteer donors are paying out. So there certainly is something wrong with this program. And we do need to get it fixed.”
Candelora said he has bipartisan support from both Sen. Christine Cohen, D-Guilford, and Sen. Cathy Osten, who had proposed legislation last year to raise $20 million, possibly through bonding, to shore up the system that helps farmers recover from weather disasters. The legislation did not make it through the session.
He said that the legislature should great a working group to discuss the issue, “and I think at the very least, we need to look at creating a non-lapsing fund in the state of Connecticut to make sure agriculture is supported. Because as was stated today, this is a generational business. When it goes away, it doesn’t come back. And it is so difficult to try to help resurrect farms and build them from the ground up. So we need to keep the ones we have.”
Connecticut Agriculture Commissioner Bryan P. Hurlburt, issued a statement Friday afternoon following the morning news conference:
“Connecticut’s farms are critical to ensuring a local supply of food, jobs, and economic vitality; something that should not be taken for granted. The increased frequency of extreme weather events has challenged farmers leaving them little time to rebound financially, or emotionally, from devastating losses,” Hurlburt wrote. “We have toured impacted farms, met with state and federal leaders, and held listening sessions to better understand the challenges they face with the current federal disaster assistance programs. This has led to the introduction of pending federal legislation which would improve access to disaster assistance programs and crop insurance designed for small-sized farms.”
Hurlburt said they recognize that there are gaps in the current federal programs and acknowledge there is more work to be done.
“Additionally, Connecticut Department of Agriculture has been administering $14 million as authorized through Public Act 22-128 to invest in climate smart farming practices and long-term climate resiliency projects to ensure farmers have the tools necessary to mitigate the impacts of climate change,” he said. “We will continue to explore all possible avenues within available resources to support the state’s farmers and ensure agriculture remains a way of life for future generations.”
Tagged: 400pFriday, agriculture, Bryan P. Hurlburt, climate change, Department of Agriculture, farming, federal government, Push, Vincent Candelora