Pandemic Affects Ornamental Growers as Well

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

Many stories have been written these past six months about the impact this pandemic is having on our food supply. However, the pandemic has affected growers of non-food items as well.

Here’s Alabama Farmers Federation Director of Agricultural Legislation, Preston Roberts.

Roberts… “You look at these nursery growers. In Alabama, we have it a very vibrant nursery industry. You know, for example, we had a greenhouse grower who they grow poinsettias - and particularly poinsettias for Disney World . And Disney World was shut down and they canceled every single poinsettia order that they had through this particular grower. So that's just kind of one example of something that you don't typically think of, that had an impact. That's not necessarily a part of the food sector of agriculture, but definitely impacts the entire industry across the board.”

Alabama nursery growers are being allocated $1M dollars of the $26M Coronavirus Relief Fund for the Alabama Agriculture Stabilization Program.

Roberts says this is one way to help get these producers back on their feet financially as the economy recovers.