The Iran war is having a big impact on farmers in Connecticut who are now dealing with soaring fertilizer prices. It’s a crucial material that helps grow or produce the food you buy at the grocery store.

“I go to the grocery store, and you see how expensive it is,” Jon Hermonot, an owner of Fairholm Farm, said.

High supermarket prices have Hermonot wincing whenever he makes a grocery run, but he has a good understanding of how prices are set, as he owns Fairholm Farm. It’s a dairy farm in Woodstock. Hermonot says it’s a very demanding and intensive operation with small profit margins.

“We put a lot of our money back into it, and we want this farm to be here,” he said.

He has hundreds of cows to feed and care for, but doing so has gotten harder ever since the Iran war began, especially because of the price of fertilizer.

“You combine that with the price of fuel and the other costs on the dairy farm, and to top that off, it’s like a perfect storm right now,” he said.

At the farm, they have seen the price of fertilizer double in about a month, in the tens of thousands of dollars. It’s used to grow the corn that goes into the feed the dairy cows eat.

“No fertilizer, no food. No farms, no food,” Paul Larson, president of the Connecticut Farm Bureau board, said.

He said fertilizer is crucial to grow many types of crops.

“Whether it’s vegetables, you’re raising hay, corn silage,” he said.

Larson explained that natural gas, a key component in fertilizer production, is affected by the war. That region produces a lot of it, and tankers are unable to get through the Strait of Hormuz, leading to a jump in price on the world market. Larson said farmers across Connecticut are noticing.

“It went around $400 in early February, but then after this war started in Iran, we’re now up to $850 to $900 a ton,” Larson said.

UConn vegetable and hemp specialist and educator Shuresh Ghimire said the timing isn’t great. Farmers have to decide now what to grow and how much to plant, so they’re ready for harvest in the fall.

“Not enough fertilizer would mean decreased crop yields. And that would also translate to increased produce prices at grocery stores later in the summer and fall,” he said.

Ghimire says even if the war ended quickly, there’s no immediate relief for farmers.

“The prices are not going to come down the day after. It will take some time to come down,” he said.

Larson and Hermenot hope President Trump secures a peace deal soon that ends the conflict and reopens trade to stabilize prices.

“That would be amazing. That would take the edge off of this,” Larson said.

“Maybe coming down to an agreement that can maybe open up the channel for oil to be flowing again,” Hermenot said.

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (WTNH) — Eversource is conducting aerial inspections of electrical lines in several municipalities in the state this week, according to officials.

A low-flying helicopter will survey the condition of the electrical lines to identify potential issues before they cause power outages, officials said.

The helicopters will fly along the utility right-of-way Wednesday through Friday between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. depending on the weather, officials said.

Inspections are expected in:

• Avon
• Bloomfield
• Bolton
• Cromwell
• East Hartford
• Hartford
• Manchester
• Rocky Hill
• Simsbury
• West Hartford
• Wethersfield
• Windsor

Between Monday and Tuesday, Eversource helicopter inspected Berlin, Bethany, Bristol, Cheshire, Durham, Farmington, Meriden, Middlefield, New Britain, Newington, Plainville, Plymouth, Prospect, Southington and Wolcott.

About a third of the state’s solar energy is collected in East Windsor, and another facility could be coming.

Neighbors have been airing their concerns about more solar in town. Gov. Ned Lamont toured a facility on East Road with lawmakers and people who live in the neighborhood across the street to hear some of those concerns on Tuesday.

“I love clean, renewable power that’s also affordable, but I also love open space, protecting open space, and I don’t think we have that balance right now,” Lamont said. “We’re taking open space, we’re taking fields and commercializing them. In this case with solar, I think that’s going the wrong direction.”

Neighbor Amanda Berube described a constant humming coming from the facility.

“We built our home prior to the solar array going in, and we had built it for the peace and quiet that the area offered up, surrounded by farmland,” she said. “We deal with a ringing noise that comes from this facility from sunup to sundown. And it’s extremely loud, and it just permeates through our home if we have our windows open.”

Berube also told the governor about a fire that started from one of the transformers on the facility’s property last March.

“If the wind had been blowing in a different direction that day into the panels, we don’t have the support apparatus to put that out,” East Windsor First Selectman Jason Bowsza (D) said. “We can’t use PFAS.  We don’t have fire hydrants out here.”

East Windsor and Ellington State Representative Jamie Foster backs a bill that would upgrade fire reporting. She said she’s confident it will pass.

“There’s no plan for when there’s been an incident on a solar field, and there’s a fire,” she said. “Who determines the point of safety? It certainly shouldn’t be just the developer on their own who gets to say, ‘yep, safe. I’m turning it back on.’ They obviously have a financial incentive to turn it back on.”

Plans for a proposed solar project called Saltbox Solar would build arrays across from Berube’s neighborhood, throughout East Windsor, and in Ellington. It would produce 160,000 megawatts of energy annually, according to the project’s website.

John Hoffman, the owner of Hockanum Valley Farm, said the proposed site for Saltbox Solar is prime, meaning it can produce food year-round.

“It drains well, and we are in a 45-inch rainfall zone in this state,” he said. “And you can grow, especially food. So, vegetables and corn silage or hay for dairy cows. And we have a big concentration of dairy cattle to be fed right in this area.”

Flat land near transmission lines is ideal infrastructure to build solar arrays, which is why companies drift towards East Windsor.

Saltbox Solar has not yet been considered by the state siting council, which approves solar projects, such as the recently approved 150-acre expansion of Gravel Pit Solar in East Windsor.

Currently, municipalities lack representation on the siting council. The governor said it was too early to announce his support for a bill that would implement local representation, but he admitted there needs to be a change.

“I will say we ought to make sure we have legislation in place that guides the Siting Council and DEEP towards what we think are our broad interests,” he said.

DESRI, the parent company of Saltbox Solar and Gravel Pit, was unavailable for comment.