Specialty crop growers feel squeeze from big farming

YAKIMA – Fruit and vegetable growers in the Pacific Northwest want access to new markets and more money for research, rather than direct subsidies to stay afloat, a panel of farmers from Washington and Oregon told members of a congressional committee Saturday.

Their voices marked what could be the beginning of a fractious debate over dividing money in the next farm bill, between farmers who grow heavily subsidized crops and those whose specialty crops receive less federal aid.

In Washington state, agriculture is the largest industry, valued at about $5.5 billion. Washington farmers grow more than 230 crops, putting the state second behind only California in diversity of crops.

Many of those crops are considered specialty crops – generally fruits, vegetables, nuts and berries – that do not receive direct payments or other aid when prices or demand is low. Washington is the nation’s top producer of apples, pears, sweet cherries, carrots, red raspberries, juice grapes and hops.

“In the past, fruit and vegetable growers have been treated in the farm bill like stepchildren,” said Larry Olsen, who with his brother farms more than 2,100 acres of apples, cherries, grapes, hops, blueberries and wheat.

“Sometimes our crops are so small, so insignificant, in the bigger trade issues,” Olsen said. “The fear of specialty crop producers is that we will be lost in the shuffle.”

The public hearing was the seventh nationally by members of the U.S. House Agriculture Committee to hear farmers’ concerns about federal farm policy as lawmakers prepare to write the next farm bill. The bill governs everything from conservation programs to trade and marketing. The current five-year farm bill, approved in 2002, expires in September 2007.

Under the current bill, the federal government expects to spend $20 billion subsidizing farmers this year. Four of every 10 farmers receive government subsidies, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

However, those subsidies go primarily to those who grow corn, wheat, rice, cotton and soybeans.

Specialty crops finally received recognition in the most recent bill, but that support needs to increase and more programs need to be tailored to specialty industries, said Ron Rivers, who grows pears in Parkdale, Ore.

Money is needed for research to fight pests or mechanize harvesting, thereby reducing labor costs. In addition, Rivers said, specialty crop growers need more assistance to gain access to new markets. Those include an increased focus on nutrition in federal food-buy programs, such as for welfare and school lunch programs, that would aid fruit and vegetable growers.

Other farmers offered a different take on federal subsidies.

“We have a cheap-food policy in this country. To maintain that, we need to subsidize our industry, either through direct payments or otherwise,” said Larry Stap, a Lynden dairy farmer.

Key to the subsidy debate will be ongoing trade negotiations with the World Trade Organization. Poorer countries say the subsidies give U.S. farmers an unfair advantage by enabling them to undercut cheaper competitors from abroad.

Congress is unwilling to give up 60 percent of the federal government’s direct subsidies for agriculture in order to satisfy WTO demands, said Republican Rep. Jerry Moran, whose Kansas district includes many so-called program crops.

“Unfortunately, I hate to admit this, but there have been some years recently where I would not have shown a profit without direct payments,” said Curtis Hennings, a wheat producer from Ritzville.

At the same time, Hennings said, lawmakers could still find other ways to support producers beyond direct payments, such as money for water storage in the drought-susceptible Yakima Valley or to boost the renewable fuel industry.

Seven of the 46 representatives on the committee attended the hearing, as well as three lawmakers whose constituents spoke at the hearing.

Finding the money to meet everyone’s needs in the agriculture sector “no question” will be the biggest challenge in the next farm bill debate, said Rep. Doc Hastings.

“One way to alleviate the challenge is if the WTO trade talks become favorable to us,” Hastings said, though he conceded that those talks could drag beyond the expiration of the current farm bill next year.