The Fruit Growers News


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Specialty Crop Welfare Program? Just say no!

By Matt McCallum Publisher

I was going to the bank to cash my market loss assistance program check when I had a strange feeling, like I was going to the altar with a woman I don’t really want to marry. Sure, she’s cute, but she can’t cook and charges everything on my credit cards. She’ll make my life hell after the honeymoon high wears off. A can of worms was opened this year when, for the first time, a specialty crop received government subsidies. The apple industry had lobbied hard last year for market loss assistance payments to growers to help offset poor apple prices due to China dumping apple juice concentrate into the U.S. The apple industry filed and won a dumping suit against the Chinese and shut the door to the juice that was flooding the market, but not before the industry lost $760 million over the last three years. Checks from the $100-million program are a welcome relief and the apple industry likes the program so much, that they are now asking for $500 million in the next farm bill. That’s a pittance to the emergency $28 billion income support program the rest of agriculture received last year. The potato industry has always stood out against subsidies and it looks like the vegetable industry is pretty much against them too, but other forces may push the idea through. I’m totally against government “help” of any kind that could screw up an industry. Unfortunately, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that our government won’t stop cheap food from flooding our markets and pushing the family farm out of business, so there’s more people jumping on the subsidy bandwagon. Many foreign agricultural products can come into the U.S. duty free, while our products, if they are allowed in the country at all, face huge duties. It’s frustrating and at first blush a government check sounds like it would solve the problem. Accepting money from the government comes at a huge cost - you lose control of your operation. Once on the dole, growers will have to operate like some government agency tells them to. Throw out the logic and welcome frustration. We find that out in the publishing business every time we deal with the Post Office. A recent edition of The Fruit Growers News had been printed and was ready to be mailed. We got a call from the Post Office saying it couldn’t be mailed because we had an insert in it that weighed over 3.3 ounces. After hours of frustration and going through the 800 pages of regulations we found out that if we would take out one of our two staples it was legal to mail! Why does the Post Office care how many staples are in a publication? I don’t know, but what if some federal program for apple tells a grower in the East that he can’t grow Red Delicious, but can grow McIntosh. What if the government says you must farm organic to get the check? What if they tell growers they have to pay migrant workers $10 an hour and provide health insurance? The entire basis of our market – supply and demand – would be ruined. There is a lot of talk of what a specialty crop welfare program would look like. Growers might get paid only if prices went below the cost of production or the government could just pay growers a per-acre rate for a crop. The underlying problem is that there would be no incentive to grow what the market needs and wants. Growers would plant whatever would give them the biggest check. Because there are so few acres of specialty crops, it would only take a few former tobacco growers planting apples to totally distort the market. To help farmers the government needs to level the playing field for trade, improve crop insurance, fund research to keep the U.S. farmer the best in the world, support marketing orders, purchase U.S. ag products for school lunch and nutrition programs and then just stay out of the way. I’d rather see ag go out of business fighting for itself than through government incompetency. In the end the American farmer will survive if the international playing field is level and the industry can continue to change and do what’s necessary to remain profitable.

Matt McCallum is Publisher of The Fruit Growers News. Please e-mail you comments to him at email.