By Clint Thompson
The Farm, Food and National Security Act of 2026 is hopefully the first step in a new farm bill being in place for the country’s farmers sooner rather than later. The Specialty Crop Farm Bill Alliance (SCFBA) applauded its release and how it addresses multiple needs pertinent to the fruit and vegetable industries.
Kam Quarles, CEO of the National Potato Council and SCFBA co-chair, spoke about the farm bill’s latest development in an interview with AgNet Media. He first commended Chair (G.T.) Thompson for advancing the farm bill process.
“If you don’t get the farm bill process moving, if you don’t take this first step, you’re never going to get to the finish line,” Quarles said. “We’re three years delayed from having a new farm bill. A lot of credit to him and his staff for taking this incredibly important first step, and they’ve got a really good product that they’re putting forward to the full committee for markup (this week).”
The House Committee on Agriculture began marking up a new farm bill on Monday, March 2. Quarles addressed a couple of items that specialty crop producers have appreciated.
Additional Quotes
“A couple of big things stand out. They’re really trying to dig in and improve risk management tools for specialty crops. For years, the fruit and vegetable industry has just not had products that fully dealt with the number of challenges that come at these type of farming operations,” Quarles said. “A lot of the existing crop insurance products are sort of built for our program crop friends. Specialty crops are just different, and they need different tools in order to be equally successful along with our program crop friends.
“The second major thing is, for specialty crop economic relief, our program crop friends have been recipients of direct payments from USDA for a number of years. Specialty crops have really never played in that world up until we ran into the COVID crisis. We learned how to deliver economic relief to fruit and vegetable operations. Building on that knowledge, we had another program last year that was even more successful. The chairman in this farm bill has basically said, ‘This is how you do it for the specialty crop industry. This is the model. Don’t reinvent the wheel.’
“It’s a credit to the chairman for taking that on. If that gets to the finish line and that becomes the mechanism for specialty crops, that’s going to keep a lot of fruit and vegetable farms in business when these massive crises, like the one we’re in now, unfortunately and inevitably, hit us.”