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USDA’s specialty crop program still being developed

The CEO of the National Potato Council says the USDA is still working on the specialty crop and sugar portion of the Farmer Bridge Assistance Program.

Kam Quarles tells Brownfield understanding the needs of specialty crops can be a challenge.

“For the specialty crops, they have no futures market. Most of those transactions occur in the private market and so creating a price trigger model will never work for specialty crops because the data simply doesn’t exist.”

Quarles says the USDA’s Marketing Assistance for Specialty Crops Program would be a good foundation for the program, due to its efficiency.

“You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. There’s not a lot of creativity, new creativity that’s involved here. It’s simply rinse and repeat with enough resources.”

He says potato farmers would appreciate help as they deal with rising input and labor costs, along with trade disruptions.

“Simply for the russet variety, a single variety of potatoes, we’re looking at losses to growers of over half a billion dollars this year. And that’s just one variety of potatoes.

The USDA has $1 billion set aside for the specialty crop sector in the program. Quarles says that’s not enough money and the USDA will need to partner with Congress to address the need.

“We anticipate a lot of collaborative work between the Hill and the administration here when Congress returns.”

Quarles says he’s optimistic the administration and Congress will find a solution.