Specialty Crop Grants Helping Across the Board

Specialty Crop Grants Helping Across the Board. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.

Last week 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. The grants will help strengthen the market for specialty crops such as fruits, vegetables, tree nuts, dried fruits, horticulture and nursery crops, including floriculture. Money from the federal Specialty Crop Block Grant Program is being put to good use in Oregon.

PEARMINE: In Oregon, specialty crops are a majority of what we grow. So this program is vital to our growers and producers throughout the state.

Katie Pearmine with the Oregon Department of Agriculture coordinates the state program that awards these federal dollars. This year's allocation will fund 24 projects that were selected from a batch of applications.

PEARMINE: We were absolutely thrilled with the depth and breadth of the projects we saw. We saw things all the way from supporting local growers here in Washington County helping Latino growers to getting cranberries to China.
 
Specialty crops are defined as commonly recognized fruits, vegetables, tree nuts, and nursery crops. Among the projects are several that help Oregon fruit gain greater access to Asian export markets. But there also several that focus on strengthening the ties between Oregon consumers and local or beginning growers. Pearmine says, for the first time, a project proposal submitted by a food distributor is getting funded- nearly $70,000 to Organically Grown Company, the Pacific Northwest's largest wholesaler of organic produce.

PEARMINE: They are offering grower trainings, guidance, and third party food safety certification to their growers. We are really excited to see a distributor working directly with our growers to get the word out about how important food safety is.

Pearmine says the Specialty Crop Block Grant Program has helped Oregon agriculture in the past and will continue to do so in the future.

PEARMINE: These dollars are vital for our specialty crop growers in the state. Because it's a competitive grant program, they do go directly to local, domestic, and international programs. Without these dollars, we wouldn't be able to be supporting our specialty crop growers like we are.

That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.