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For most of Connecticut's agriculture sector, the harvest has already concluded by this time of year.

But for a new crop of farmers growing sugar kelp in the waters of the Long Island Sound, planting season is just wrapping up and the seeds are germinating under the surface. By mid-spring, they'll be pulling up thousands of pounds of kelp fronds -- resembling giant, greenish lasagna noodles -- from long ropes strung between buoys.

Connecticut's small kelp industry grows the seaweed primarily for food, but the farmers say it has potential for a wide range of applications they're eager to support.

Jon McGee of New England Sea Farms in Guilford said he harvested roughly 10,000 pounds of sugar kelp on his farm last spring, and he expects to grow roughly five times that volume this year. He leases a 5-acre site, a half mile off the coast between Sachem Head and Leetes Island, from the state of Connecticut.

While McGee is running "significantly more lines" of kelp seed on his farm this year, he's still only using about a quarter of the total area.

"I have the other space to, you know, expand," he said.

That expansion is contingent not only on driving more local demand for edible kelp -- which has been challenging -- but also on finding and developing new ways to use the plant. Sustainable fuel, biodegradable packaging and food preservation are among the new applications being tested in Connecticut.

There are 14 permitted kelp farms in Long Island Sound, 10 of which are growing the crop, according to the Department of Agriculture. The permitted plots tend to be small, given the volume of boat traffic in the Sound, and just three of the operators are currently selling raw kelp in the general market, Agriculture Commissioner Bryan Hurlburt said.

"I don't think the restricting factor today is available water to grow in," Hurlburt said. "I think the restricting factor today is moving the kelp once you've grown and harvested it."

The industry is also relatively young. The state first allowed licenses for planting and cultivating seaweed in 2013.

Hurlburt said the Bureau of Aquaculture within the Department of Agriculture helps farmers understand the scope of the work, from licensing to equipment, logistics and finding a market.

"We've been kind of on the front end, making sure that the farmer is educated about complexities and the challenges, from a holistic perspective, of what it's going to take to be successful," he said.

The University of Connecticut's agriculture school has offered technical expertise to seaweed farmers through a division of its extension program, known as Sea Grant, based at the Avery Point campus. Earlier this year, Sea Grant published a comprehensive business planning guide for prospective kelp farmers. "They're there to help the growers grow," Hurlburt said.

And a nonprofit organization called GreenWave has also been helping the kelp industry to scale up. It provides seed string to farmers like McGee and also offers them training, tools and access to new technologies, including apps where they can find interested buyers for their crop.

"I think it's a pretty good package deal of support for these operations," Hurlburt said.

Hurlburt was a member of the General Assembly in 2013 when the state passed legislation allowing licensed kelp farms. Proponents at the time pointed to the crop's wide range of benefits and potential uses beyond simply eating it (currently the most common use for the seaweed around the world, particularly in Asian markets).

Advocates highlighted its role in the ecosystem, absorbing carbon dioxide and nitrogen from the water, as well as its potential applications from fertilizer to animal feed, biofuel and biodegradable packaging. And in the years since the legislation passed, a small movement of farmers, chefs and restaurants, nonprofits, academic researchers, local governments and others in Connecticut have been spreading the word.

The more markets kelp can breach, the more stability and economic potential seaweed farming will have for Connecticut.

That's certainly how McGee sees it, now five years into the business.

"They opened up this opportunity to say, 'OK, well, let's grow the stuff.' And now we're in the phase of saying, 'OK, what do we do with it?'" he said. "We've been in that phase for a little while, and it's a whole area of really exciting stuff that's happening."

In 2021, McGee and a handful of other farms known as the Sugar Kelp Co-Op held the first New England Kelp Harvest Week, offering education about the plant, farm tours, cooking classes and more to promote kelp's use as an ingredient in regional dining. Since then, the group has expanded its network of restaurants, farm stands and markets where they sell edible kelp, and they work together to dry and preserve excess product for use year-round. McGee said he's fielded interest from chefs as far away as Philadelphia.

His efforts go beyond food. McGee frequently hosts researchers on his bay boat, taking them out to the farm site to check on the plants, conduct tests and discuss collaborative projects.

On a recent afternoon, UConn researcher and entrepreneur Mingyu Qiao, Southern Connecticut State University professor Emma Cross and graduate student Kaitlyn Wagner joined McGee for a trip out on the water.

Cross and Wagner, who work with CT State's "Project Blue" research initiative in Long Island Sound, were dropping probes to test the water quality on different parts of the farm and pulling plankton samples to examine the types of marine life that live in and around kelp.

The purpose is "to see the biodiversity, if it changes or not," Wagner said. "We're going to keep taking data as it's planted, and then, once he harvests it, we're going to see how it changes. That's helpful for municipalities and towns, because it gives them concrete data to see how [kelp farms] can benefit the ecosystem."

That, in turn, could help new operators to obtain the permissions and funding they need to start farms in communities that aren't familiar with the practice, Wagner explained.

Qiao's laboratory, within the UConn agricultural school's department of nutritional sciences, is focused on "identifying different applications, like bioplastics or even biofuels, to try to find more channels or products" that can be made from kelp, he said. One of the goals is to help farmers like McGee to expand into new markets, including industrial applications and alternative packaging. "We are trying to actually commercialize those technologies," he said.

Qiao recently launched a startup company, Atlantic Sea Solutions, that manufactures and sells a fresh food preservative made from seaweed extracts. And last month, Qiao's lab was awarded a $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to study ways to turn seaweed into sustainable aviation fuel.

Growing kelp for human consumption requires the plants meet certain food safety standards. But industrial applications -- like those Qiao is developing -- could utilize lower-quality kelp biomass, which can be grown and harvested year-round, McGee said. That could be a game-changer for farmers trying to scale up their businesses, he said.

McGee seems most excited about kelp's potential as a replacement for plastic packaging. Owning and running his farm in the waters off Guilford is McGee's second career, and it follows 25 years spent working in the industrial packaging industry.

During that time, he came to believe that recycling isn't an adequate solution for plastic waste. It works for some materials, but a lot of plastics simply don't break down, he said.

"The drive and focus on recycling plastics is largely a mistake. It's a distraction from changes we really need to make," he said.

Packaging made from seaweed alginate is still expensive to manufacture, and, as such, it's not a realistic solution to that problem -- at least not yet. "That would be an area that would be amazing for us," McGee said.

He's eager to work with scientists who are developing materials, researchers who are making the case for growing more kelp and advisors who can help deploy technology to make farming the crop more efficient.

"We need to know how to grow it as efficiently and intelligently as possible, because what we can do with it is so significant," he said.

Hurlburt was careful to couch his enthusiasm for kelp's prospects, given the challenges it faces in driving demand. "We are on the front end of this," he said.

"It's not like you have an established commodity and you're just moving it through established channels," Hurlburt said. "We've got to figure out the best channels -- we as an industry, and that includes stakeholders and academia, still need to figure out what the best way is to help, and what the best market is and what the price point is. ... We need an economy of scale that hasn't been achieved yet."

But, he added, "I'm hoping that we get to the conclusion that kelp is a valuable, marketable product."