Credit for our Thanksgiving feasts —and today's leftovers — is due in no small part to the Connecticut farmers who produced the corn, potatoes, and turkey, among other commodities. But those weren't Connecticut farmers' biggest money makers last year. Those would be flowers.
Of Connecticut's estimated $686 million in agricultural sales in 2022, 24.4% came from floriculture, according to sales and survey data compiled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Turkey sales made up 2.4% of all sales in Connecticut, and a variety of other crops made up 38.4%. The specific crops in the miscellaneous category are not disclosed by the USDA to protect the privacy of farmers' individual operations.
And compared to the rest of the country, Connecticut's share of flower sales is the second-highest, right after Alaska, where flower sales accounted for 29% of the industry.
And while Connecticut's and Alaska's flower sales made up a large portion of their state's totals, at the national level, they only contributed 2.5% and 0.2%, respectively.
Read more at ctmirror.org