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E-mail StoryFarm bill could boost specialty crop growers
| Thursday, May 15 2008 6:30 PM
Last Updated: Monday, May 19 2008 8:50 AM
The true impact of a nearly $290 billion farm bill Congress passed this week won’t be known for a while as the agriculture industry sorts through what the massive legislation actually does, but the initial reaction in Kern County Thursday was one of validation. Finally, to paraphrase Rodney Dangerfield, California farmers are getting some respect.
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“In the past, we’ve been ignored,” said Steve Murray, owner of Murray Family Farms in Bakersfield, which grows cherries, blueberries and table grapes. “This is the first time that the specialty crops that are grown in the West have had a seat at the table.” In the past, the farm bill primarily benefited Midwestern and Southern staple commodity crops such as wheat, soybeans and corn, said Pete Belluomini, vice president of farming for Lehr Brothers, which grows potatoes on about 2,500 acres in Arvin and Edison.
“The growers in the coastal communities of California and Florida who grow fruits and vegetables were not at the top of the pecking order for disaster help and those types of things," he said.
The 2008 Farm Bill passed in the U.S. House of Representatives Wednesday, and Thursday the Senate OK’d a similar version.
Both passed by a wide enough margin to override a threatened presidential veto. The Bush Administration contends the bill is too expensive and packed with unrelated perks such as tax breaks for Kentucky racehorse owners.
Nearly three-quarters of the bill pays for food and nutrition programs, mostly targeting school children and the poor. Another 16 percent funds agriculture programs, and 7 percent is set aside for farm-related environmental and conservation initiatives.
The bill includes $1 billion to expand a fresh fruit and vegetable school snack program nationwide. Right now, it’s in just 14 states, and California isn’t one of them.
“Traditionally, the federal government has pushed allocating discretionary funds to more of the proteins, like meats and dairy,” said Sharon Briel, food service director of the Kern High School District. “It looks like this will allow us to spend more on fruits and vegetables, which we’ve been doing, but now we can do more.”
The farm bill also allocates $466 million over 10 years for block grants that will help growers of such specialty crops as fruits, vegetables, nuts and flowers. States will oversee awarding the grants for marketing, pest management and other efforts to improve and promote agriculture. Another $407 million will fund pest detection and surveillance efforts, including inspections at domestic ports.
A new program pushed through by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and U.S. Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Merced, will get $150 million to improve air and water quality in rural areas with, for instance, more environmentally friendly farm equipment and greener pesticides.
“People who live in agricultural areas deserve clean air, and my new program will help USDA partner with farmers and ranchers to address air quality concerns in the Central Valley and rural areas throughout the country,” Boxer said in a statement issued after the Senate vote.
That’s especially useful to California, said Gabriele Ludwig, senior manager for global technical and regulatory affairs for the Almond Board of California. “We have so many air quality and water issues here,” she said.
She also praised the bill’s $230 million in research and development funding.
“We do not want any direct subsidies or price support systems,” Ludwig said. “What we want is assistance to help keep us competitive in the global marketplace with better technology and pest management and things like that.”
Still, it’s not fair that such subsidies will continue for Midwestern commodity crops even as, for the first time, growers of those crops are permitted to rotate in specialty crops from time to time, Murray said.
“So they’re competing with us while they’re getting subsidies that we aren’t getting,” he said. “Part of what they’re giving California is offset by what they’ve taken away from us. But in the end, we got a little bit more than we lost.”