Specialty Crop Block Grants

Specialty Crop Block Grants. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Yesterday, Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan announced that USDA will be investing in 55 specialty crop block grants that will fund 740 initiatives across the United States and its territories.

MERRIGAN: This is the 6th year for these awards and as you likely know, this is not USDA driven. This is really state driven. We work with our state partners to run this program and we receive the input from states as how they would like to spend essentially what is their block grant money.

These grants are being used for a very large variety of projects all across the U.S. and have been a very important part of the tree fruit industry here in the northwest.

MERRIGAN: Interestingly this year, similar to last year, there is a huge interest in locally grown. 54 out of the 55 states and territories receiving specialty crop block grants requested funding for efforts related to local and regional food systems. What I take from this is that they are sending USDA a strong message that our support is needed and the market is growing in this area.

Tomorrow we’ll talk more about the announcement of the specialty crop block grants.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.