By Clint Thompson
The draft text for the Senate’s version of the farm bill was well received by specialty crop groups. But there’s always room for improvements. That’s a view shared by Kam Quarles, CEO of the National Potato Council and co-chair of the Specialty Crop Farm Bill Alliance (SCFBA).
Following the draft’s recent release, Quarles provided some “little tweaks” that would improve the bill for specialty crop growers.
“Crop insurance, we want to make sure that the crop insurance program overall is responsive to specialty crops. We don’t want to be kind of a bolted-on afterthought for policies that were constructed for our program crop colleagues. Specialty crops are different. They have unique needs, and we would really like to see things that are priced in a way that specialty crops can take advantage of them, and obviously policies that provide benefits that are going to make people want to manage their risk through those products,” Quarles said.
Economic Relief
“Second thing is, and this is the big one, is how are we going to deliver economic relief for the specialty crop industry? Both Chairman (John) Bozeman as well as Chairman (GT) Thompson have put provisions in their bills that tell USDA how to do that because specialty crops are so different than the program crops. So that’s a great thing. And then also we want to lock in some of these gains. There were substantial funds that were provided for specialty crops in research and also in the export programs. We want to lock in those gains, make sure that those funds are going to be with us through the entirety of this farm bill. So little tweaks, in my opinion, they’re little tweaks around the edges, but you know, we’re always looking to make a good bill better, and I think we can get there.”
SCFBA Co-Chairs
The SCFBA is co-chaired by Cathy Burns, CEO of the International Fresh Produce Association; Mike Joyner, President of the Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association; Dave Puglia, President and CEO of Western Growers; and Kam Quarles, CEO of the National Potato Council.