Staff Writer
PRESQUE ISLE – In late May, both houses of Congress voted to override President Bush’s veto of a bill replacing the Farm Bill of 2002, and that’s OK with the Maine Potato Board. “From a potato perspective,” said Donald Flannery, executive director of the MPB, “there’s not a lot of change in the 2008 Farm Bill from what we’ve seen in the past, and we – the potato industry in Maine or in the Northeast – have not been big recipients of Farm Bill money.
“However, what there is in this Farm Bill that is a change and should have some positive impact is they had a specialty crop title in the Farm Bill and potatoes are part of that,” he said. “Specialty crops are all the crops that don’t get commodity payments … fruits and vegetables.”
The Farm Bill, more accurately known as the Food, Conservation, and Energy Security Act of 2008, includes $2.1 billion in federal funding for specialty crop farming essential to Maine’s agricultural economy. Funding will be allocated through grants for specialty crop programs like state block grants, research initiatives such as those offered at the University of Maine to improve crop disease resistance in potatoes and blueberries, and organic farming.
“Every state will receive block grants to support local agriculture,” said Flannery. “It can be used to do marketing and promotion, or research. We’ll probably see something out of that that we haven’t seen in the past.
“There’s also money in the Farm Bill for USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) to help with the control of quarantined pests coming into the country, or to help regulate and overcome the impact if we find quarantined pests,” he said. “That money that wasn’t there before is a positive thing. Any time there’s a quarantined pest that has come into an area, it’s a huge impact on that area, but it also has an impact on the other production areas. For example, the potato cyst nematode that was found in Idaho has had a huge impact on us because now we have to do all this surveying, soil sampling, etc.”
The $290 billion, five-year reauthorization features a wide-array of reforms and programs essential to Maine’s various industries including more regional equity for the Northeast, food nutrition initiatives, renewable energy, and environmental programs.
“Our farmers are struggling to bolster agricultural production, consumers are trying to overcome daily surges in gas prices, and Maine is fighting for its fair share of federal resources. After almost a year and-a-half of bipartisan efforts, the Farm Bill Congress overwhelmingly passed provides much-needed relief to our farmers, consumers and producers,” said U.S. Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine). “This sweeping bipartisan legislation will afford the essential tools needed to bolster agricultural production and renewable energy production. It will include assistance for specialty crop growers, and augment programs for dairy farmers in Maine, while providing more equitable funding for land conservation in New England.”
Flannery said, for the first time, Maine will see some money in the Farm Bill “to do the things that we really need the government to do to protect agriculture.”
“The Maine Department of Agriculture will get the money and they’ll have to put together a plan as to how they’re going to spend that money,” said Flannery. “The Maine Potato Board will have input in helping to direct how that money goes out and gets back to the actual farmers.”
