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Agriculture officials are preparing to send out payments to U.S. growers of fruits, vegetables and other specialty crops later this spring after a several-month delay.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently announced the list of specialty crops that will qualify for payments under $1 billion set aside last December under the administration's Farmer Bridge Assistance program.
Referred to as the Assistance for Specialty Crop Farmers, or ASCF, payments will be based on planted acres in 2025. USDA won't announce the payment rates for each commodity until the end of March, with payments coming sometime after that.
But fruit and vegetable industry leaders are already asking for more help.
"It's simply not enough, especially when it's spread out over all these specialty crops, as well as sugar and some of these other commodities are now tapping into that," said Tamas Houlihan, executive director of the Wisconsin Potato and Vegetable Grower Association.
His group, along with more than 100 other specialty group organizations, is asking Congress for an additional $5 billion in assistance for specialty crops as part of a larger aid package being pushed by the ag industry.
Houlihan said potato growers alone have faced losses estimated at $789 million over the past three years. He said that's due in part to a roughly 20% reduction in buying from the country's largest processors.
"We're just seeing a decrease in consumption, and we are also seeing an increase in imported products and a decrease in our ability to export products," he said. "With all those factors combining, we've got a massive oversupply situation."
Houlihan said competitors in China and India have stepped up their exports, creating more competition for U.S. companies selling overseas. At the same time, tariffs on machinery and other inputs coming into the country have raised the cost of production for both growers and processors.
Wisconsin growers have already been warned by the state's largest processor, Houlihan said, that they'll likely be cutting their volume again this year. And initial prices offered for this year's crop are down between 10-20%.
He said the same is true for the state's vegetable industry, which mainly grows crops like green beans and sweet corn for the canned and frozen market. Houlihan said margins in that industry were already thin before the current downturn.
"There are a lot of scared growers as we head into this planting season," Houlihan said. "With some of these contracts, the growers don't even know how much to plant, and so they haven't firmed up their seed purchases. But they know it's probably going to be less than last year, and they know the price is going to be lower than last year, so it's not a happy picture."
Labor costs rising dramatically
Thin margins are a common problem for producers across the specialty crops. A recent Michigan State University study found the average blueberry grower in Michigan is breaking even.
Alyssa Houtby, senior director of government affairs and public policy at the North American Blueberry Council, said the cost of labor has risen dramatically over the last five to ten years, hurting specialty crop industries that still rely heavily on harvesting by hand.
Given President Donald Trump's efforts to crack down on immigrants and migrant workers, Houtby said producers need Congress to fix the H-2A visa program that allows farmers to bring workers into the country legally, adding that "American workers don't want to do the job that we need."
"The president has said it time and time again: the border is more secure now than it ever has been," Houtby said. "So now is really the opportunity for the administration and Congress to move on legislation that truly solves our ag labor crisis."
Houtby said many specialty crops like blueberries are perennial crops, meaning producers don't have the option not to grow or to change to another crop for a season.
"That's really challenging if your input costs are increasing faster than your sales prices," she said. "That's what we've found in not just blueberries, but I would say in a lot of commodities, our costs are outpacing the price that we're commanding for our fruit."
Houtby said she's hopeful lawmakers could use a disaster response to the recent freeze in Florida and other southern states as an opportunity to get the specialty crop aid passed. She said blueberry growers, along with other specialty crops like citrus, faced severe losses due to the historic freezing temperatures at the start of the month.
Federal lawmakers declined to include additional farmer aid in the most recent spending bill passed at the start of the month, disappointing both specialty crop groups and others like the American Farm Bureau Federation.
Kam Quarles, CEO of the National Potato Council and co-chair of the Specialty Crop Farm Bill Alliance, said time is not on the side of growers as they face difficult choices heading into the spring planting season.
"With every day that passes, we are getting deeper and deeper into one of the most difficult economic environments that growers have faced in the last half century," Quarles said. "And with every day that goes by without relief, without some type of safety net to support these growers, the math of their family farms just gets that much more difficult."
USDA announced on Friday that $150 million in aid will be going specifically to the American sugar beet and sugar cane industries in response to what the administration described as "temporary market disruptions and increased production and processing costs."
A statement from the American Sugar Alliance called the funding a "critical aid infusion" for growers who are experiencing tight or even negative margins.
This story was produced in partnership with Harvest Public Media, a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest and Great Plains. It reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.
