Specialty Crop Grants
Specialty Crop Grants. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.
On Friday the USDA announced 29 grants across 19 states to develop and share science-based tools to address the needs of America's specialty crop industry. Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan made the announcement.
MERRIGAN: We are announcing activities and awards in 19 states. $46-million dollars. You know that this is something that has been authorized in the 2008 Farm Bill and we’re always real excited when it come to doing things that advance the cause of our specialty crops. These projects will help specialty crop producers with the information and tools they need to successfully grow, process and market safe and high quality products.
Merrigan says that will help support jobs across these 19 states as well.
MERRIGAN: There are 5 focus areas in these awards. First, you’ll see a theme of improving crop characteristics through plant breeding, genetics and genomics. Second, addressing threats from pests and diseases. Third, improving production, efficiency, productivity and profitability. Four, developing new innovations and technologies and five, the one that we never lose site of; developing methods to improve food safety.
Both Oregon and Washington were recipients of grants including Washington State University in Pullman involving tree fruit cultivars and raspberry cultivar development and USDA Agricultural Research Service in Corvallis working with red and black raspberries.
MERRIGAN: This is really the coming of age for the specialty crop industry. We now have at USDA a variety of tools in the toolkit to help advance the cause here and it’s just a real please to have yesterday announced farmers market promotion awards; many with a specialty crop focus and creating new opportunities for various size and kinds of operations and today to put out some very important awards to the best and brightest researchers across the country.
USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture or NIFA is awarding the grants, totaling $46 million, through its Specialty Crop Research Initiative.
That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.
