Ella Kennen, Research Associate
If you work on affordable housing in Connecticut, you are probably familiar with who needs it: families, seniors, and people priced out of the neighborhoods where they work. The urgency is real, and the solution is long overdue. But in our rural towns, there’s a group we rarely think about: the people who work the land. Farmers, farmhands, and land stewards are the backbone of our rural economy, but they’re often invisible in policy debates until something starts to break.
For a farmer, housing isn’t just a “cost of living” issue; it’s a job requirement. Farming doesn’t happen on a 9-to-5 schedule. It’s early starts, long nights, and reacting to weather shifts that won’t wait for a 45-minute commute.
Right now, approximately one in four Connecticut farmers does not live on the land where they work.[i] For farm employees, that gap is likely even wider. When your day already involves physical labor at relatively low wages and at the mercy of the weather, adding a long drive isn’t just an inconvenience; it can be a breaking point. The lack of affordable housing in rural areas makes it daunting to hire or retain staff and shapes whether farms can keep existing at all.
Alongside the housing crisis, there is a parallel land-use challenge. Decisions about where we build don’t just determine where people live; they also shape what happens to the land itself.
As Connecticut pushes to expand housing, towns are rightly rethinking zoning laws and identifying “developable land.” Unfortunately, the land most attractive for development, flat, cleared, and well-drained, is often the same land best suited for agriculture.
Farmland isn’t interchangeable. You can’t just move a farm to a rocky hillside and expect it to work. Some soils are powerhouse ecosystems; others take years of costly inputs and labor just to grow a viable crop. Once we pave over what the USDA classifies as “prime farmland,” it is effectively lost. We’ve all seen farmland get developed, but I have yet to see a development turned into farmland.
Despite decades of investment in farmland preservation through state programs, federal support, and land trusts, the amount of farmland in Connecticut has continued to decline.[ii] At the same time, the need for both urban and rural affordable housing continues to increase.
These are usually treated as two separate challenges, with separate stakeholders having distinct conversations, but they are deeply connected. If we build housing without thinking about agriculture, we push development onto our best soils. But if we “protect” farmland without thinking about housing, we leave that land increasingly difficult to work. If farmers and farm workers cannot afford to live near their fields, the land will not stay productive for long.
This struggle is not hitting everyone equally. Farmers with inherited land or access to capital have options. First-generation farmers, whom we urgently need as the average age of Connecticut farmers approaches 59, face a much narrower path. Meanwhile, people of color make up more than one-third of Connecticut’s population but less than 2% of its farmers.[iii] When we ignore the connection between housing and land, we reinforce a system where farmland ownership remains out of reach for many.
The tension shows up in our cities, too. In urban centers, the pressure to build is intense, and saving space for a farm plot or community garden can feel like a luxury. But those spaces provide fresh food, absorb stormwater, cool neighborhoods, and create places for community connection.[iv] When they disappear, we’re not just changing the landscape, we’re fostering housing that may meet unit targets but falls short on resilience, connection, and everyday livability.
Framing this issue as a choice between housing and agriculture is a false dichotomy. Connecticut is in the process of being reshaped. The housing plans we make today will be felt for generations. We have two responsibilities at once: ensuring all people can afford to live in their communities, and ensuring we retain the land needed to feed those same communities.
What would it look like to plan for housing and agriculture together? What would it mean to build with the understanding that a home and a harvest depend on one another? There are no easy answers. But moving forward without asking the question comes with its own cost.
Endnotes
[i] USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS). 2022 Census of Agriculture – Connecticut. Table 52. Accessed on April 12, 2026.
https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/AgCensus/2022/Full_Report/Volume_1,_Chapter_1_State_Level/Connecticut/
[ii] Connecticut Council on Environmental Quality. Annual Report (Farmland Section). 2023. Table 1. Accessed on April 12, 2026.
https://portal.ct.gov/ceq/ar-23-gold/2023-ceq-annual-report-ebook/land—preserved-land/farmland
[iii] U.S. Census Bureau, “Selected Characteristics of the Native and Foreign-Born Populations,” American Community Survey, ACS 1-Year Estimates Subject Tables, Table S0501. Accessed on April 12, 2026. https://data.census.gov/table/ACSST1Y2024.S0501?q=Connecticut.; USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS). 2022 Census of Agriculture – Connecticut. Table 52. Accessed on April 12, 2026.
https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/AgCensus/2022/Full_Report/Volume_1,_Chapter_1_State_Level/Connecticut/
[iv] USDA Climate Hubs. n.d. Urban Agriculture. Accessed on April 12, 2026. https://www.climatehubs.usda.gov/hubs/international/topic/urban-agriculture