When Will the Floriculture Industry Get Paid for Coronavirus Loss?
May 22, 2020 Farmers of all kinds have been feeling the impact of the coronavirus crisis, but aid is on the way as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue has announced details of the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP), which will provide up to $16 billion in direct payments.
Beginning May 26, USDA, through the Farm Service Agency, will be accepting applications from agricultural producers who have suffered losses.
According to USDA, farmers and ranchers will receive direct support, drawn from two possible funding sources. The first source is $9.5 billion in appropriated funding provided in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Stability (CARES) Act to compensate farmers for losses due to price declines that occurred between mid-Jan. 2020 and mid-April. It provides support for specialty crops for product that had been shipped from the farm in that time period but subsequently spoiled due to loss of marketing channels.
The second funding source uses the Commodity Credit Corporation Charter Act to compensate producers for $6.5 billion in losses due to ongoing market disruptions.
For eligible specialty crops, the total payment will be based on the volume of production sold between Jan. 15 and April 15, the volume of production shipped, but unpaid; and the number of acres for which harvested production did not leave the farm or mature product destroyed or not harvested during that same time period, and which have not and will not be sold. Specialty crops include, but are not limited to, almonds, beans, broccoli, sweet corn, lemons, iceberg lettuce, spinach, squash, strawberries, and tomatoes. A full list of eligible crops can be found on farmers.gov/cfap. Additional crops may be deemed eligible at a later date.
Noticeably left off the initial list of eligible specialty crops are floriculture and ornamental plants. In an association member alert, AmericanHort’s Tristan Daedalus and Craig Regelbrugge summed up the situation as: “For the moment, nursery and greenhouse growers find themselves in a sort of no man’s land, on one hand described in the rule as ‘other eligible crops,’ but not yet actually eligible to apply for relief at this time.”
So what now for ornamental growers? Daedalus and Regelbrugge point out that USDA also is publishing a Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) – Additional Commodities Request for Information. It includes a number of questions for commodities not covered, including nursery crops. USDA has indicated it needs affected growers to provide information in response to this notice, to help it determine how to structure payment rates. Growers hoping to be eligible to apply for relief are urged to review the NOFA and consider responding to these questions.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted many in our industry, Daedalus and Craig Regelbrugge write. “Since the moment the CARES Act provided USDA with funds to directly support farmers, AmericanHort has advocated for the inclusion of our industry in the CFAP program and suggested straightforward approaches for calculating COVID-related losses. We have also pushed for the raising or elimination of per-entity payment limits that would undermine the benefits of the program for producers of high-value crops like floriculture and nursery plants. As part of our advocacy campaign, AmericanHort coordinated a letter signed by 105 national and state industry organizations, farm bureaus, and farm lenders to urge inclusion of our industry in CFAP.”
Stay tuned for updates.
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