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Language in the farm bill, which the House Ag Committee approved last week, would direct USDA to calculate future ad hoc disaster aid payments based on the producers’ sales in the year before the disaster. The provision, which is supported by the Specialty Crop Farm Bill Alliance, aims for consistency in how the agency builds and structures specialty crop aid programs.
The language in the House farm bill would also set a $155,000 payment cap for producers who do not derive at least 75% of their average income from farming. The agriculture secretary could set a cap for other producers, but it cannot be lower than $900,000 for a crop year.
Rebeckah Adcock, vice president of U.S. government relations for the International Fresh Produce Association, said disruptions in the specialty crop sector throughout the last decade and a half have resulted in recurring distributions of ad hoc assistance, though USDA’s implementation of these programs has been inconsistent and garnered mixed responses from producers. Historically, the Farm Service Agency’s programs have generally targeted row crop and livestock producers, which makes navigating specialty crop assistance a newer concept for both agency officials and producers.
Rebeckah Adcock (LinkedIn photo)“We don’t have those recurring systems, so when things happen for us, it is more episodic and less predictable and routine,” Adcock said, comparing specialty crop programs with commodity and livestock assistance programs in the agency’s portfolio. “Where and when assistance is needed, we want to make sure it’s structured in a way that … makes sense.”
Adcock noted that while many specialty crop growers were critical of the crop-by-crop approach the agency took with the first round of the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program, they were more receptive to the sales-based approach the agency took with the second round of the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program and the revenue-based approach it took with the Marketing Assistance for Specialty Crops (MASC) program.
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In the first round of CFAP, the agency used national crop price data to determine eligibility and calculate payments, an approach that limited the specialty crop producer participation in the program. For small-scale specialty crop producers specifically, USDA’s approach generally did not consider direct marketing efforts or account for producers’ struggles to pivot to new markets, according to a Congressional Research Service report.
Dennis Nuxoll, vice president of federal affairs for Western Growers, said the crop-by-crop approach applied during CFAP-1 was very complicated and created paperwork challenges for specialty crop producers who often grow a wide variety of crops, including some on the same acre of land. The reporting burden associated with calculating acreage on a crop-by-crop basis frustrated producers who otherwise have little-to-no interaction with the Farm Service Agency, he said.
Nuxoll also said calculating national crop prices is challenging due to an overall lack of data for many specialty crops. Row crop prices, on the other hand, can be more easily calculated with the agency’s own data and other sources, like futures markets, he said.
“There is no publicly traded market for bok choy. I defy you to figure out what the price of bok choy is,” said Nuxoll, pointing to just one example of a crop that it is difficult to calculate a standard price for. “And that’s the case for hundreds of crops — even our major crops.”
According to the CRS report, CFAP-1 also excluded commodities routinely grown under contract, like potatoes.
Kam Quarles, CEO of the National Potato Council, said potato producers’ eligibility was initially limited in the program’s first round, despite noting that for the industry “over half of our customers disappeared overnight” during the COVID-19 pandemic. He cited stories of producers at the time that had "piles of potatoes" with nowhere to go.
“It just really reflected how inadequate the data is for USDA for this sub-sector of agriculture,” Quarles said of how specialty crops were handled in CFAP-1.
In response to pushback from producer groups, USDA revised its approach in CFAP-2, instead allowing specialty crops for which sufficient price and acreage data was lacking for payment calculations to have their payments based on the sales value of their products in the previous year, according to the CRS report.
The agency took a similar approach with MASC, a USDA program launched in 2024 that to provide producers with $2 billion in Commodity Credit Corporation funding to help with higher marketing and labor costs. MASC payments were calculated based on a producer’s total specialty crop sales for the calendar year elected by the producer, according to an agency fact sheet.
Quarles said a standard model that calculates payments based on sales prevents future iterations of aid programs from drifting back to models like CFAP-1.
“We know what works,” Quarles said. “Don't force USDA to reinvent the wheel every time we have an economic crisis — use a model like CFAP-2, use a model like MASC, just reload it with resources, and get on down the road.”
