November Advocacy and Policy Report

By Dr. Kimberly Stoner, CT NOFA Director of Advocacy

As you have surely heard, the US House and Senate have flipped from a small Republican majority to a huge — but not veto-proof — Democratic majority in both chambers. In the short term, there is a question of whether the Republicans will try to get some bills through in the next two months before the new Congress takes over.

One possibility is that they might take up the very long delayed Farm Bill, and our allied organizations are scrambling to try to avoid having some of the worst provisions in current proposals for the Farm Bill enshrined into law. Beyond Pesticides has reviewed the radical changes to pesticide regulation in the currently proposed Farm Bill, and asks legislators to reject the proposed Farm Bill, pass another one year extension now, and then pass a better Farm Bill in the next Congress. See more information and take action here.

I received a scholarship from the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition to attend their conference and lobby days in February next year. This will be a great opportunity for me to learn more about how to advocate for our farmers in Washington, and I will be in touch with the CT NOFA Policy Committee about national priorities. If you are interested in joining the Policy Committee, or just want to discuss policy issues, I want to hear from you! Email me for more information.

In Connecticut, there was also a big blue wave. All of the Executive Branch officers were re-elected by large margins: Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, Comptroller, and Secretary of State — all Democrats. Democrats already had majorities in the state House and Senate, and now have even bigger majorities. I am organizing with our state allies to get proposals before legislative leaders before the new session starts in January.

I represent CT NOFA in:

• Food for All CT Campaign. Advocating to close the SNAP gap, including the over 60,000 people falling off of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, creating a Permanent Food Fund to support an array of programs to address food insecurity and increase access to locally produced food, and planning for the future of the food system. The Food for All CT Campaign will be launching at Our Food, Our Future, hosted by the CT Food Sovereignty Collective on November 14 at Eastern CT State University. More information and registration here.
• National Healthy Soils Policy Network. CT NOFA received a grant to work with the CT Council on Soil and Water Conservation on the draft Soil Health Plan that has been developed by volunteers from universities and non-profits, and to bring farmers to environmental forums and to the CT General Assembly to advocate for proper funding and support for creating and implementing an official state plan. If you are a farmer interested in advocating for soil health during the fall and winter (with some funding for you), please email me.
• Pesticide Reporting Modernization Working Group. Established by law in 2026, this group is currently reviewing reporting of pesticide use in other states so that we can recommend a system of reporting that will create a searchable database to allow researchers, advocates, and agencies setting and enforcing pesticide policy to understand what pesticides are used, how much, where, and for what purposes. We can’t set priorities and policy if we don’t understand what the problems are. More information here.
• CT Environmental Rights Amendment Alliance. I am the coordinator of this alliance for Connecticut, putting our rights to clean and healthy, air, water, soil, and ecosystems, and a safe climate into the Constitution of Connecticut. We will be bringing this forward again in the next legislative session in early 2027.  We now have more information about the CT ERA, and links to sign up for updates and to donate to this campaign are on our CT NOFA Advocacy and Policy page, here.