Connecticut Know Your Market: Rain damage, but hastening business
2021 wasn’t an easy year for Connecticut produce growers and wholesalers, but it wasn’t like 2020 either, so there’s that.
Many Connecticut specialty crops had a tough time this growing season, but business still bustled more than last year at the Connecticut Regional Market in Hartford — and more improvements are afoot.
Excessive rainfall challenged the state’s producers with water-related damage and losses during the 2021 growing season, Connecticut Agriculture Commissioner Bryan Hurlburt said.
“Many of our larger produce growers in the Connecticut River Valley had fields under water with significant product losses during the height of the growing and harvest season, making it a challenge to fulfill some wholesale market contracts,” he said.
However, tree fruit growers reported high yields.
And across the board, direct-to-consumer markets remained strong with sales slightly below 2020, but ahead of 2019, Hurlburt said.
To create more market access opportunities, the state Department of Agriculture, through the governor’s office, secured American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 funding to tackle food insecurity by purchasing Connecticut Grown produce for the state’s food banks.
Also, the state department isn’t just passively accepting increased weather-related challenges as inevitable, but instead is searching for solutions.
“Looking ahead, we are focused on addressing climate change challenges and steps producers can take to mitigate the impacts to their growing and harvest season,” Hurlburt said.
Regional market
More than 72 years old, the Connecticut Regional Market in Hartford has received a lot of attention the past couple of years, and it’s not over yet.
The largest perishable food distribution facility between New York and Boston covers 33 acres, with 185,000 square feet of warehouse and refrigerated space, an active railroad spur and 144 stalls in its outdoor farmers market.
In 2019, the Capital Region Development Authority invested $1.1 million in facility improvements, said Joseph Geremia, chief financial officer, and more improvement is in the works.
Open April through October, the market had better attendance than the previous year, he said.
“So that was nice, seeing not only more public customers, but more inter-farmer transactions,” Geremia said.
While the market was open to the public on weekends, many growers arranged to meet at the market on weekdays to do business among themselves to have more diversity of certified Connecticut-grown products to sell to other customers and smaller farmers markets across the state.
“There are 69 towns in Connecticut, and our products go to more than half of them,” Geremia said.
There are 16 tenants in the two main warehouses, Buildings A and B.
“Those tenants all made it through COVID. We lost only one tenant due to [COVID-related business challenges], a small hydroponic grower,” he said.
As for large retailers, Stop & Shop has about one-third of the retail market share in a designated region that contains Connecticut and parts of Massachusetts and Vermont, according to 2021 Shelby Market data.
The Big Y nabs almost one-fourth of the retail market share, and then Shoprite, Walmart and Price Rite round out the top five retailers for this new England area.
But there’s more to come with the regional market.
A quasi-governmental agency, the Capital Region Development Authority took over ownership and operations of the Connecticut Regional Market from the Department of Agriculture and Markets after a 2018 bill passed allowing the transfer.
Since then, the authority has hired other firms to handle management and operations. Most recently, the authority hired outside consultant HR&A Advisors to do a redevelopment study on an unused area of the market property with the state agriculture department’s two goals in mind:
- Decrease the number of food deserts in Hartford and surrounding regions; and
- Shorten the time it takes to get food from a supplier to local retailer or grocer.
“It seems like Mississippi is the big divide for shipping,” Geremia said. “Our goal is to get more food from east of Mississippi into our region, so it doesn’t have to stop elsewhere first, like New York City — to make the distribution process more efficient.”
The authority is also receiving requests for greenhouses to be placed on the unused area. Plus, there’s interest in a public-private partnership for a modern distribution warehouse in that spot.
The authority is working closely with the agriculture department on the two main goals, and Geremia said he’s hoping for some initial findings from HR&A by spring 2022.
