Farmland Soils includes land that is defined as prime, unique, or farmland of statewide or local importance based on soil type, in accordance with the Code of Federal Regulations, CFR title 7, part 657. It identifies the location and extent of the most suitable land for producing food, feed, fiber, forage, and oilseed crops and is available for these uses. Includes locally important farmland soils for the towns of Ashford, Canterbury, Chaplin, Eastford, Lebanon, Milford, New Milford, and Norfolk. For additional documentation including a description of the map legend for Farmland Soils, refer to the CT ECO Complete Resource Guide for Farmland Soils.
All soil information included in the CT ECO maps and map viewers is from the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) Web Soil Survey (WSS), which is based on information originally published on the set of Soil Survey quarter quadrangle maps that cover Connecticut.
Farmland Soils can be used to identify the location and extent of lands that have productive soils. Those lands may qualify to be protected in the Federal Farm and Ranch Lands Protection Program (FRPP) which is reauthorized in the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 (Farm Bill) to protect working agricultural land from conversion to nonagricultural uses and the Connecticut Department of Agriculture, Farmland Preservation Program’s goal of securing a food and fiber producing land resource base for the future of agriculture in Connecticut.
This data set is not designed for use as a primary regulatory tool in permitting or siting decisions, but may be used as a reference source. This is public information and may be interpreted by organizations, agencies, units of government, or others based on needs; however, they are responsible for the appropriate application. Federal, State, or local regulatory bodies are not to reassign to the Natural Resources Conservation Service any authority for the decisions that they make. The Natural Resources Conservation Service will not perform any evaluations of these maps for purposes related solely to State or local regulatory programs. The Farmland Soils data does not necessarily portray land that is used currently for farming; it identifies productive soils that are suitable to be farmed. The Farmland Soils data does not incorporate current land use changes which may affect the farmland soil designation.