No-Cost Listening Sessions For Specialty Crop Growers

No-Cost Listening Sessions For Specialty Crop Growers

I’m Lacy Gray with Washington Ag Today.

The USDA Farm Service Agency and Risk Management Agency and the Washington State Department of Agriculture will be conducting cooperative listening sessions for specialty crop growers in order to gather input about the effectiveness of crop insurance and insurance-type programs available to producers. Chris Bieker, Outreach Coordinator with the USDA Farm Service Agency, is back today to talk about what the ag agencies expect to hear from specialty crop growers during the sessions.

BIEKER: We have heard that the programs can be complicated for specialty crop producers. So, we could hear about the complexity, we could hear about the cost benefit ratio. The NAP program does not cost a lot to participate in and we do encourage people to be participating in that currently.

In regards to the Non-Insured Crop Disaster Assistance Program in particular Bieker says it is meant to be a catastrophic loss program so a producer would need to have considerable loss before they received a payment.

BIEKER: That’s something that could change with this farm bill, again we don’t know what Congress will come up with, but we have heard there is a move in that direction. NAP is inexpensive and is a good deal for peace of mind. We do have disasters here in Washington state occasionally, that’s why we have safety net programs because it is important to protect our farmers and to protect that food supply. And so even for those crops where insurance is not available there is an option, and we would like to make sure that that option is something that’s workable for our farmers in this state.

The no-cost listening sessions are February 20 in Mount Vernon at the WSU Research and Extension Center and February 24 at the Port of Chelan Confluence Technology Center in Wenatchee, both from 9:30 to 11:00 a.m.. Attendees are encouraged to register by calling 509-323-3000.

That’s Washington Ag Today.

I’m Lacy Gray on the Ag Information Network.