The USDA announced today that blueberry growers are now eligible for Category 1 Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP) payments.
Based on the USDA’s original assessment of the impact of coronavirus on the industry, blueberries were eligible only for Categories 2 and 3 for CFAP relief payments. USDA’s original market analysis had determined that blueberries did not demonstrate a 5% decline in price between January 15 and April 15. However, in response, the North American Blueberry Council (NABC) worked collaboratively with industry leadership to advocate for inclusion and provided the USDA with the data and analysis necessary to reverse the original eligibility assessment.
As a result, blueberry growers that qualify are now eligible for Category 1 CFAP payments.
Take Action
Growers that believe they qualify for Category 1 are encouraged to contact their local FSA office immediately to begin the application process.
The program is based on self-certification; growers should retain documentation for future claim substantiation.
To learn more about the CFAP program and Category 1 eligibility requirements, visit farmers.gov/cfap/specialty.
UGA photo/Jordan Burbage, of the UGA Soil, Plant and Water Analysis Laboratory in Athens, Georgia, harvests grapes at Trillium Vineyards, part of the collaborative research project being conducted by UGA Extension and Westover Vineyard Consulting.
By Clint Thompson
In his latest UGA Extension Viticulture blog, University of Georgia Extension Fruit Disease Specialist Phil Brannen says grape producers will soon be seeing symptoms of Pierce’s disease in susceptible varieties; typically Vitis vinifera and some hybrids.
Mild winter temperatures have contributed to an increase in Pierce’s disease at higher elevations in Georgia and throughout the Southeast. Symptoms normally start to appear in late July or August. Since symptoms are similar to drought or nutrient stress, it’s essential not to remove plants if they’re not suffering from Pierce’s Disease.
N.C. State hosted an effective workshop about Pierce’s Disease that will be helpful for all farmers.
Brannen stresses it is particularly important that you identify and destroy infected vines to prevent further spread of this disease.
The disease is caused by a bacterium that is transmitted by numerous sharpshooter insects, such as the glassy-winged sharpshooter. It clogs the grape xylem, cutting off nutrient and water flow. Once infected with Pierce’s disease, vines die within one to two years.
Watermelons on sale at the farmers market in Cordele, Georgia.
By Clint Thompson
Watermelon producers continue to enjoy high prices, though, there may soon be a shortage. Carr Hussey, a watermelon farmer in Florida and Alabama and chairman of the board of the Florida Watermelon Association, said there may soon be a shortage as producers in the Southeast region finish harvesting their crop, while the northern states are still not close to begin picking their crop.
“Georgia is finishing up. I’m here in Alabama and we’re finishing up. North of us, North Carolina and Delaware and Indiana where we normally go, won’t be ready until the end of the month,” Hussey said. “There’s not going to be a lot of fruit available for the next two weeks.”
It is a shame, too for farmers. Hussey estimates prices are averaging 22 cents per pound, a huge improvement from the 14 cents average growers normally get this time in previous years.
Hussey believes the cool, wet spring impacted the crop’s production and why there is less watermelons than normal.
“The crop never set the way it should have. What you should have harvested in four weeks took six weeks to harvest,” Hussey said. “The fruit movements in Georgia are usually around 700 to 800 trailers a day. They’ve been 400, 450, once in a while maybe at 500. There just hasn’t been the fruit.”
While producers have benefited this year, the strong prices could encourage more farmers to grow watermelons next year. At least, that is what Hussey is expecting.
“Everybody’s looking back to see how much everybody made last year so they want to cash in on it so they’ll plant, plus the fact, Georgia in particular, cotton and peanuts haven’t been worth much, isn’t worth much. So, they’re looking for something that is worth something. For those two reasons, they’ll really bunch up on watermelons next year,” Hussey said.
Georgia’s hemp crop is still being planted across the state. According to Tim Coolong, associate professor in the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, the recent rainfall could impact the crop both positively and negatively.
“Hemp doesn’t like it overly wet. In parts of the state, if there’s standing water in fields or if it’s saturated, that could lead to some problems,” Coolong said. “But if it’s a grower that just happened to plant, a little bit of rain could help those plants acclimate to going in the ground versus being dry and 100 degrees.”
Hemp is expected to be planted during the next several weeks, though Coolong said the Georgia Department Agriculture would issue permits throughout the summer.
“With that said, if you plant much later than that, your chances of success decrease. If you were to plant in, let’s say September, your plants are going to flower immediately and you’re going to have problems. Even if a grower were able to get a license very late in the year, planting in the field in the traditional manner wouldn’t work very well for them,” Coolong said.
Tim Coolong comments on importance of planting hemp during the summer.
Early Assessment of Crop
He added that fields he is visited so far this summer have looked pretty good and credits the cooler temperatures.
“Up until recently, it’s been a little cooler than typical; at least it seems that way, particularly in the produce world, it was a little cooler this spring. It allowed the hemp plants that were put in to adapt to the transplant shock a little bit better,” Coolong said.
Hemp interest in Georgia was expected to be high this year since it marked the first time growers could produce the crop commercially. But that interest waned some amid the current coronavirus pandemic.
“During the winter we had a lot of people express interest. I think as we got closer to the production season, a lot of those individuals may have been holding off or cut back on the acreage they were going to put in. It certainly seemed throughout the winter, there’s a lot of interest. But as people started looking into it I think, especially with the pandemic and things being uncertain right now, I think a lot of them held off,” Coolong said. “With that said, there’s still a fair number of growers approved out there.”
University of Georgia Cooperative Extension is encouraging pecan growers to thin their bumper crop this summer to avoid having a down year next season.
Southeast Georgia Area Pecan Agent Andrew Sawyer said this year’s pecan crop exceeds the 70% fruit-bearing terminals they recommend pecan trees to have at this stage in the growing season, along with having an excess cluster of nuts.
Pecan trees need to be thinned to avoid having a really down year next season.
“There’s 90% to 100% of terminals with nuts in pretty much every situation I’m seeing. Then you’re having three, four or even five nuts in a cluster on many cultivars. That’s high as well,” said Sawyer, who said Georgia was bound to have a surplus of pecans this year following Hurricane Michael in 2018.
“In Georgia this year, we’re probably having the biggest crops in a long time. It was actually kind of thought of it was going to be that way. Generally, after a really bad hurricane or weather event, the following year is pretty low just from the loss of limbs and fruiting branches. But then the year after that, which is 2020 for us, it ends up being almost overload. We’re seeing that.”
Sawyer said farmers thin their trees normally around the last week in July or first week in August. But this year’s crop is about two weeks early. He projects the third week in July to be when most producers need to act.
“If there’s any time to do it, it may be 2020. The whole reason for fruit thinning is to minimize alternation,” Sawyer said. “Alternating happens at least a couple of different ways. One of them is carbohydrate storage. That means when you have a large crop and it’s putting everything into that fruit, it doesn’t have a lot of storage for this upcoming year. That can affect next year’s crop. It can actually put those trees into alternation.
“We’ve got a large crop in 2020. All of these 90% terminals and large cluster of nuts, the tree really can’t even fill that much.”
The most common way for farmers to thin their crop is to shake the tree, much like they do when the pecans are ready to be harvested. Sawyer said to shake the trees for 1 to 2 seconds.
“Most people, they’ll never do it. It’s so hard if you’re a grower to let these nuts fall off the tree. You’re having to just let them go,” Sawyer said. “You’re doing it for the overall future, long-term production of the tree, not this year’s production.”
He cautions producers to shake a few days after a rain or turn irrigation off a few days before shaking to avoid damaging the tree. If there is abundant rainfall or high soil moisture, the cambium layer under the bark will slip more readily, making it easier to damage the tree.
Growers also need to grease between the rubber flap or pad. This will allow movement between the flap and the pad, reducing movement between the shaker head and tree bark. This further reduces the risk of damaging the tree.
Bell peppers make for a delicious snack. Among additional choices, you can add them to sandwiches and pizzas, as they’re tasty and full of vitamin C, making them a popular vegetable.
Florida farmers grow far more sweet bell peppers than the hot ones, said Bala Rathinasabapathi, a UF/IFAS professor of horticultural sciences. But, as a rule, farmers are not going to grow as many bell peppers if root-knot nematodes are prevalent in the soil around them. Nematodes are microscopic worms that damage the roots, weaken the plants and reduce the yield.
And increasingly, farmers are looking for non-chemical ways to control root-knot nematodes. Scientists know they can help growers if they can find ways to make bell pepper varieties that are genetically resistant to root-knot nematodes.
“The variety we developed, although a hot pepper, can be used as a rootstock for bell peppers by using grafting,” Rathinasabapathi said. “Root-knot nematodes do their damage in the plant’s root, and if one uses a rootstock that is resistant to the nematode, the plant will not be affected much by the nematode.”
Rathinasabapathi led a recently published study in the journal HortScience in which he and his colleagues found a type of UF/IFAS-bred chile, or specialty pepper, that shows resistance to the destructive root-knot nematode. Through greenhouse and laboratory tests at the main UF campus in Gainesville, Rathinasabapthi and his team screened a handful of bell pepper varieties.
They found that one advanced bell pepper variety, named ‘RJ107(6)A3C,’ was the most resistant to three species of the most common root-knot nematodes – southern, peanut and peach. UF/IFAS scientists developed this pepper variety by cross breeding a hot pepper line and a sweet pepper. Fruit from ‘RJ107(6)A3C’ line is hot and makes for delicious pickles, Rathinasabapathi said.
Florida vegetable production has three major soil production limitations. One is plant-parasitic nematodes, the others are weeds and soilborne fungi, he said. To manage these problems, farmers use soil fumigants (pesticides) to free the soil of these pests before they plant their crops.
“These fumigants, though effective against the root-knot nematodes and soil fungi, are much less so against weeds, are highly toxic and cumbersome to use,” Rathinasabapathi said. “Farmers need specialized equipment to apply them in soil. But if we use bell pepper varieties that are resistant to the root-knot nematodes, we can circumvent these parasitic worms, thereby improving pest management options for the farmer.”
Now that scientists found the genetic resistance, what’s next in their research?
“We would like to transfer the resistance gene into sweet bell pepper hybrids via conventional breeding,” Rathinasabapthi said.
Using grant funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, Rathinasabapathi conducted this study with Donald Dickson, a professor emeritus of entomology and nematology and Mary Ann Maquilan, a post-doctoral research associate in entomology and nematology – all with UF/IFAS. Another co-author is Dominick Padilla, an undergraduate student in horticultural science at the UF/IFAS College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.
File photo shows whiteflies infesting fall cucurbits.
By Clint Thompson
University of Georgia Cooperative Extension vegetable entomologist Stormy Sparks confirmed this week that whiteflies are back with a vengeance on susceptible vegetable crops and Georgia’s cotton, which is still just a few weeks old.
“I’ve been holding off a long time on saying it looks bad. But about a week ago, it’s just hard to say it doesn’t look bad,” Sparks said. “There’s still some things that could happen, but I saw some populations in some cantaloupe that you don’t usually see for another month or two. They’re already treating some cotton, apparently.
“We’re probably a month behind 2017, but we’re at least a month ahead of our normal year.”
Sparks said in May that whiteflies were already present in Georgia vegetables.
Why So Early?
While colder temperatures do not eliminate whiteflies, they do kill many of their wild hosts. They also slow population development in cultivated hosts. Warmer temperatures this winter allowed for larger whitefly populations to overwinter and become mobile earlier.
“We already had the populations, there’s no doubt about that, earlier than normal in some areas, particularly coming out of kale. There’s a lot of things that can happen as far as weather and everything else that can impact it. There’s still some things that could happen to keep it from getting as bad as it did in 2017,” Sparks said. “If they get to a certain level, those rain events don’t have the same impact than they would at lower populations. I think we’re probably far enough long now that they’ll rebound fairly rapidly. That’s what I’m afraid of.”
Rain is expected all week in South Georgia, but Sparks believes a tropical storm-type system is what is needed to suppress whitefly populations.
UGA cotton entomologist Phillip Roberts said farmers are already treating for whiteflies in cotton which is month to a month and a half earlier than normal.
What Can Be Done?
Sparks, Roberts and other specialists continue to preach sanitation with whitefly management. Farmers have done better in recent years in getting rid of their vegetables once they are done harvesting. That needs to continue this summer.
“If the vegetable growers get rid of those crops that are infested, if you’re done with them; if you get done with watermelon fields and cantaloupe fields … get rid of them. Don’t let them keep reproducing. The cotton guys just need to be keeping an eye on infestations and don’t let them build up there,” Sparks said.
Whiteflies migrate from winter vegetables to spring vegetables to agronomic crops, like cotton, to fall vegetables and back to winter vegetables. Whiteflies cause feeding injury issues in vegetables and transmit two new viruses: cucurbit leaf crumple virus and cucurbit yellow stunting disorder virus. Vegetables like squash, zucchini, cucumber, cantaloupe and snap beans are highly susceptible to these viruses.
A biproduct of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic was the positive response consumers had to supporting American farmers. Nikki Fried, Florida Ag Commissioner, calls it a “consumer conscience awakening.”
File photo shows Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried visits with farmer Paul Allen, Palm Beach County Commissioner Melissa McKinlay and Tom MacVicar of MacVicar Consulting.
“When people go to the food stores, they were seeing on one point, you’ve got Mexican strawberries inside of our food stores and then you’re seeing all of the reports of our crops in Florida being plowed under and milk being poured out. They couldn’t understand what was happening,” Fried said. “People started to wake up. People are going to their local farmers, to the farmers markets and to the U-picks. We also kicked off our online marketplace, Farm To You, which allowed about 380 different commodities; we had about 500,000 hits on the webpage. You’re hearing these success stories across the state of Florida and really across the entire country where more and more consumers are going directly to the farmer and building that personal relationship, wanting more domestic grown.”
It is a sentiment that was shared by Paul Allen, president of R.C. Hatton Farms in Belle Glade, Florida and chairman of the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association. He said in May that the point of supporting American farmers was received loud and clear amid the pandemic and the constant influx of imports from Mexico.
“The American people have heard everything that’s been on the national media all about Mexico. They’ve stopped buying Mexican produce. They’re buying American produce,” Allen said.
Tough Start to Season
Unfortunately, it was not always this way this season. In a previous interview in early April, Allen said he left about 2 million pounds of green beans in the field and about 5 million pounds of cabbage. All because of the coronavirus pandemic that shut restaurants down and closed off a major supply chain to foodservice industries.
A second wave of the coronavirus pandemic is inevitable. Perhaps we are already in it, just a few months ahead of the fall forecasts that most projected would coincide with flu season.
J. Scott Angle, NIFA portrait, Oct. 31, 2019.
USDA Photo by Preston Keres
But you can pencil in COVID-19 as another challenge farmers will have to face this fall, especially as preparations are already underway for the fall crop which will be planted in a few months.
Scott Angle, the newly-named vice president for agriculture and natural resources at the University of Florida/IFAS, believes growers can learn a lot from their first bout with this pandemic, which occurred in the midst of fruit and vegetable harvests in March and April.
“Whether this fall in the next phase or the next pandemic, we better make sure we’re ready. We certainly have learned a lot of lessons. We learned a lot of lessons about how to social distance. I still think we need more research in that area because we don’t have all the answers, but we understand that’s where disease transmission can occur,” Angle said. “We have some ways of protecting workers. Whether or not those are the best methods, I don’t know if anyone knows at this point. Most of our social distancing and protective methods at least on some level are just common sense. We certainly need some research for that.
“I think we all understand that our economies have to keep running and mostly we just have to keep producing food. We don’t really have a choice, to say we’re going to shut down the farm for a year or two years or until we get a vaccine. We’re going to have find smarter ways to do the things we did last year.”
One Adjustment
Angle admits a big adjustment must be how farmers can adjust their marketing strategies when the demand for produce is disrupted. For example, when the coronavirus pandemic struck in mid-March, it forced restaurants to shut down across the country. These are major buyers for farmers in Florida and Georgia. When restaurants were not buying produce, farmers in Florida struggled to find a home for their fruits and vegetables.
In early April, Paul Allen, president of R.C. Hatton Farms, said he left about 2 million pounds of green beans and about 5 million pounds of cabbage in the field. Florida farmer Kim Jamerson said in late March that her produce business would lose 100% of their production costs, along with packing and shipping costs if things did not improve.
“I was on a conference call with some food manufacturers and they were joined by farmers who were saying the exact same thing, when the markets dried up, they had to pivot very quickly and sometimes would be in a matter of days. In fact, some of them said, ‘I just want to donate my food to a food bank or pantry,’ and even that they weren’t able to do very easily,” Angle said. “We need to have a more resilient marketing system that can pivot a lot more quickly.
“One good example would be, these food pantries need it and need it now more than ever because their needs have gone way up. Could there be an intermediary to step in and pay the farmers and get that food over to the food pantries for these charities?”
Similar Idea
Jamerson had a similar idea right after the pandemic became problematic for Florida growers. She reached out to the office of U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (Fla.) and spoke to one of his aides about the government helping its farmers by purchasing their crops and distributing the food to its citizens since many are unemployed. Back in March, she had not heard back from Rubio’s office.
Florida vegetable farmer Sam Accursio paints a gloomy picture for the future of farming and the availability of food in the United States.
Farmers in America have to overcome multiple obstacles every year to be successful.
“It’s dismal, unless the American consumer says we’ve had enough. We are going to support these American growers or we’re going to be hungry some day. It may not be in my lifetime. It may not be in my kids’ lifetime. But my grandkids, some day, they’re going to wonder where their food is coming from,” Accursio said. “That’s from everything; beef, pork, chicken, vegetables and fruits.
“Look at the USDA, I read an article very quickly, it’s going to allow chickens to be imported from China. Do we need them in this country? I wouldn’t think so. I think our chicken price is very reasonable in the store. I think you can still buy an uncooked chicken between $5 and $7. I don’t think we need a Chinese alternative chicken in our nation.”
Farmers have to overcome obstacles every year, whether it’s due to insects, diseases, shockingly low commodity prices, natural disasters and global pandemics, like COVID-19 this year. They also have to deal with foreign competition, which was a major problem this year. Amid the coronavirus pandemic, market prices continued to spiral downward with Mexican imports.
“Look at what they’ve done to the asparagus growers in the United States, between Peru and Mexico. They have put most of them out of business,” Accursio said. “The consumer has no idea of what they’re eating; what the regulations are that the U.S. growers are under, and you go to these other countries and the regulations are different. The human rights are different. The environmental concerns are different. Which they should all be the same, that was the idea of the free trade agreement, to bring their standards up to our standards, but it never happened.
“It made the regulations tighter on me but not south of the border. How would you like to have competition where you’re paying the employee $7 a day and I’m paying $130 a day. That’s a big impact, huge.”
There also doesn’t appear to be any relief in sight in the way of new farms. It’s such a costly occupation that most don’t have the capital necessary to get into the business.
“If you put a financial plan together, you bring it to somebody, they’ll laugh at you. You mean you’re going to spend $2.5 million before you pick anything and then you don’t know what you’re going to get back? Who’s going to loan you money to do that?” Accursio said. “I am 57. I have two sons that are in the business with me. We know the importance of food for the American people, for the world.
“Unfortunately, there’s nobody coming in behind us except for these family farms that are producing now. There’s no new farms popping up.”
