Washington, DC — The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the United States Department of Commerce will convene virtual hearings next month to discuss foreign trade policies that may be harming American growers of seasonal and perishable produce. At the hearings, officials from the federal agencies will hear from interested persons on how the Trump Administration can support these producers and redress any unfair harm.
The hearings, which were originally scheduled to take place in Florida and Georgia in April, will take place virtually in light of the ongoing pandemic caused by COVID-19. USTR will continue to evaluate additional opportunities to engage directly with stakeholders in Florida, Georgia, and elsewhere on this important issue.
The virtual hearings are scheduled for the following dates:
(1) August 13, 2020 at 9:00 a.m. EDT
(2) August 20, 2020 at 9:00 a.m. EDT
The Federal Register notice with instructions on how to submit requests to participate in the hearings and written materials can be viewed here.
NOTE: The hearings will be made public and viewable online, and further details about viewing the hearings will be provided ahead of the hearing dates. Full transcripts of the hearings will also be posted online after the hearings.
We are now exporting more fruit from the United States than we were last year. According to a story from Gary Crawford, we are also importing much less fruit.
According to a University of Florida/IFAS blog, the corn earworm is especially concerning to corn and tomato growers. It causes serious damage when it feeds on corn silk and kernels and tomato fruit.
Corn earwom adult. Photo credit: J. Capinera, University of Florida
In corn, eggs are laid on silk and the caterpillar hatches and feeds on silk and kernels. In tomato, eggs are laid on leaves, flowers or fruit. The caterpillar feeds by burrowing into tomato fruit. The corn earworm prefers warmer climates. Adult moths migrate north from southern states and can overwinter as far north as Ohio and Kansas.
Caterpillars are a common pest of vegetable plants. They can reduce fruit quality and yield by feeding on leaves or fruit. One important caterpillar pest is the corn earworm (Helicoverpa zea). This caterpillar develops into a relatively harmless nondescript moth, but the caterpillar causes major crop damage in corn and tomato. It is also known as the tomato fruitworm, cotton bollworm, soybean podworm, and sorghum headworm. Some experts consider it one of the most damaging pests in the United States.
Identification
Identification of caterpillars can be difficult and may require the assistance of an expert. Caterpillar body color is variable and can change as it grows older. They can be brown, green or even pink. There is usually a pair of narrow stripes that run down the back. There is also usually a white net pattern on the head. Adults are also difficult to identify. They have brown to yellow forewings with a dark spot in the center.
Lookalike
The corn earworm is established in the United States, but it looks identical to the old world bollworm (Helicoverpa armigera) which is considered an invasive pest. In order to distinguish the two species, DNA molecular analysis or dissections must to be performed by an expert. If you find a caterpillar that you are unsure is the corn earworm or the invasive old world bollworm, contact the FDACS-DPI help line at: DPIHelpline@FDACS.gov or 1-888-397-1517.
Pecan producers will soon enter a critical point in this year’s production season in ensuring their trees have adequate moisture. If the current dry period continues as expected into August, water needs will be even more essential.
According to UGA Extension Pecan Management calendar, water needs increase from 120 to 158 gallons per tree per day in July to 300 to 350 gallons per tree per day in August. The needs increase from 1,440 to 1,896 gallons per acre per day in July to 3,600 to 4,200 gallons per acre per day in August.
“If we turn off really hot and dry in August and September, which we have seen happen many times in the past, if you’re not watering adequately during that time, mid-August through September, you can lose a lot of your crop,” University of Georgia Cooperative Extension pecan specialist Lenny Wells said. “Especially when they’re really loaded, there’s a huge water demand there. If they get stressed at all for water in a situation like that, they’ll start aborting nuts. It would be a big problem.
“We really need to get really good kernel fillings. We do need a few timely rains during that mid-August to that mid-September period to really help us get kernels filled like we need. Especially when the trees are this loaded.”
Irrigation will be critical. According to Pam Knox, UGA Extension Agricultural Climatologist, hot and dry conditions are expected to persist throughout the Southeast for the next month.
It is never too early start thinking about next year’s Southeast Regional Fruit and Vegetable Conference. In the age of the coronavirus pandemic, industry leaders like Charles Hall, executive director of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association, must start thinking about an event still several months away.
“We’re operating on the premise that we’re going to have a show in January in Savannah (Georgia). But we’re looking at, if the outbreak doesn’t calm down, if the requirements are such that we can’t hold the show, we’re looking at what the options are,” Hall said. “We’re just trying to do some preliminary, looking at different ways of doing that and whether we have virtual shows, live presentations. We’re just hoping that things calm down enough that we can have the show and get things going from there.”
Scheduled for Jan. 7-10
The conference is slated to be held in Savannah, Georgia on Jan. 7-10. It’s one of the largest events in the Southeast. It attracts 3,200 attendees and 280 companies that have booths to showcase their agricultural products.
Hall believes a final decision will be made in the fall on whether the conference will be in-person or virtual. A lot will depend on the availability of companies being able to travel for meetings at that point.
“If some of the national companies make the decision that their employees can’t travel in January, that will begin to affect our decision of whether we do with the conference,” Hall said. “We will have a conference. The real question is, hopefully, we’ll have an in-person conference and not a virtual conference.”
The other dilemma is if the conference proceeds as normal, how will social distancing guidelines be followed with that many people expected to attend?
“Right now, if we had that conference in Savannah, you would have to be at a 50-person maximum in a room. I think is what the requirements are, and then they have to be social distancing. Those classrooms have been wall-to-wall people and they’re standing along the sides, you can’t have that many people in a classroom right now,” Hall said.
The watermelon market continues to be a sweet success for producers in the Southeast. One South Georgia watermelon farmer attests to the strong season he and his colleagues have had this year.
Watermelons for sale at the Farmers Market in Cordele, Georgia.
Bill Brim, co-owner of Lewis Taylor Farms, said on July 10 that he is had an “excellent year” with his watermelon crop.
“Prices dropped a little bit after (July) 4th. But I think they’ll pick back up after about another week. We’re still harvesting melons. We’ll probably still harvest for another 10 days any way before we’re done,” Brim said.
Similar to a belief shared by farmer Carr Hussey, Brim believes there may soon be a shortage of watermelons available in the U.S.
“There’s going to be a gap in there, probably about a two-week gap, I think. Talking with some guys up in Indiana, they’re already harvesting a few melons that they had on their hoops; but they didn’t’ have many acres on their hoops,” Brim said.
Crop Shortage
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.
He believes the cool, wet spring impacted the crop’s production and why there is less watermelons than normal.
Another South Georgia producer, Terrell Rutland, said farmers in the Carolinas and Midwest normally plant three or four weeks after he does but their plants were damaged by a late spring frost. They replanted, which delayed their harvest window another three weeks.
Acreage is down in Georgia this year. According to Samantha Kilgore, executive director of the Georgia Watermelon Association, acreage is projected to decrease this year to 19,000 acres. It would mark a significant drop from previous years’ harvests. According to the National Agricultural Statistics Service, from 2016-2018, Georgia averaged a harvest of just more than 23,000 acres.
UGA photo/Onion center rot is a financially devastating bacterial disease for Vidalia onion producers in south Georgia.
By Maria M. Lameiras for CAES News
After years of building and analyzing sample collections, plant pathologists at the University of Georgia have identified the genes that allow a type of bacteria that causes onion center rot to resist onions’ natural defenses in a “chemical arms race.”
The pathogen Pantoea ananatis can enter onions through the leaves — usually as a result of thrips feeding on the onion neck — and induces necrotic symptoms and extensive cell death in onion tissue.
When cellular damage occurs, onions and other members of the Allium genus, such as garlic, produce volatile antimicrobial compounds called thiosulfinates, the same compounds that make you cry when you cut onions and that give onions and garlic their characteristic smell and flavor.
These compounds normally kill invading bacteria. However, an 11-gene cluster of the P. ananatis genome allows the bacteria to tolerate the thiosulfinate allicin and colonize dead onion tissue damaged in its initial attack, according to a paper published this month in the journal Current Biology.
Center rot of onion, caused primarily by P. ananatis in the Southeast U.S., can be economically devastating to producers, leading to high crop losses both in the field and postharvest, said Brian Kvitko, an assistant professor in the Department of Plant Pathology at the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and lead author of the study.
Kvitko’s research into this pathogen is important because the bacteria resist onion’s natural defenses.
“Onions are a tricky host. Anyone who has ever cut onions knows they release a very potent irritant that can kill some bacteria, but these bacteria have a one-two punch,” Kvitko said. “The onion releases thiosulfinate, a potent reactive sulfur species that causes gross damage to cells by interfering with all kinds of cellular processes. The bacteria have picked up genes that allow it to take the hit from the thiosulfinate and then take over the dead onion tissue environment as a home to make more bacteria. Like little genetic gas masks. The onion itself already had built-in antibiotics and these bacteria found a way around it.”
Kvitko said that these bacteria cause disease differently than most other bacteria, which either break down plant cells walls with enzymes or “reprogram” plant cells by injecting them with proteins.
“So, bacteria can chew up the plant cells or reprogram them, but this is neither of those. These are not proteins that are being delivered, it is a chemically focused kind of disease. This is not the only example of this we have seen, but it is very rare,” he said.
Through genome sequencing, Kvitko’s lab identified differences in the P. ananatis genome from similar bacteria.
“These bacteria did not have any of the traits that were associated with a pathogen we knew. It was strange, but we didn’t know why. Now we have been able to find this different way of bacteria causing disease,” Kvitko said. “Knowing more about the pathogen and how it causes disease helps us find treatment and resistance strategies to manage this disease in the future.”
Onion center rot was first identified in Georgia in 1997 and can cause latent infections that are activated postharvest even if there were no overt signs of disease in the field.
“This is kind of an insidious disease in that the producer sometimes doesn’t know there is a problem until the crop is harvested, packed and shipped,” Kvitko said. “This disease is a big problem in onion-growing regions because bacterial diseases are hard to manage. There are a lot of diseases caused by fungi that we have fungicides to control, but we don’t have that kind of chemical strategy for bacteria.”
Although there are currently no identified onion cultivars with resistance to P. ananatis, knowing how a pathogen causes disease is a good step toward knowing how to find good host resistance, he added.
“To be able to fight something effectively, you have to know how it works. We know this thing is different. Knowing why and how it causes disease helps us to find a better way to fight it,” Kvitko said.
A key part of the research is the work being done by Bhabesh Dutta, assistant professor of plant pathology and UGA Cooperative Extension vegetable disease specialist on the UGA Tifton campus, who has collaborated with growers by collecting extensive samples of diseased plants for analysis. He then works with Kvitko on research both in the lab and in the field, an example of basic and applied agricultural research partnerships, which is a hallmark of collaboration and discovery at land-grant universities like UGA.
“We would not have made as much progress without Dr. Dutta’s long history with the systems and the good collection he’s been putting together for years,” Kvitko said. “The key thing that made this work wasn’t just collecting samples from diseased onions, but also from weeds in the fields and the thrips that are important in spreading the disease. That gave us a large panel of diversity to work from. We were able to look at all of the bacterial strains, even those that were very close to one another, to identify the genetic differences. We compared key regions of the genome that were only present in the strain that could infect onions. The genes that make specific regions of the genome different made the difference between which bacteria can and can’t cause diseases.”
With Vidalia onions at the top of the vegetable commodities grown in Georgia — at an annual farm gate value of $150 million — identifying the genetic traits of the bacteria responsible for the No. 1 disease in the state’s onion crop is an important factor in preventing financial losses for producers, Dutta said.
“There are 21 counties in Georgia with the marketing rights to grow and sell Vidalia onions, with nearly 65-70% of Vidalia onions being grown in Tattnall and Toombs counties,” said Dutta. “This is a high-value commodity for Georgia growers and this bacterial complex has become endemic in the Vidalia onion zone.”
While not all bacteria cause disease, Dutta’s research team has identified eight bacterial pathogens that are endemic to Georgia and which cause economic losses. Among the eight, one of the most prominent bacteria is Pantoea sp., which causes center rot. Other than Pantoea sp., Burkholderia cepacia — the causal agent of sour skin disease — is also prevalent in Georgia.
Building on a collection started by his predecessor, Ron Gitaitis, in the 1980s at UGA-Tifton, Dutta has assembled a collection of nearly 250 Pantoea bacteria strains from a diverse variety of sources including onions, weeds and thrips in his research program.
“Identifying the strain of bacteria that causes onion center rot allows us to survey producer fields and, if Pantoea sp. is prevalent in the environment, but it is not a disease-causing strain in onion, it gives us the ability to assess the risk that producer might have for center rot developing in onions during postharvest storage,” Dutta said.
Now that they have identified the 11-gene cluster responsible for the allicin resistance, Kvitko’s lab can start studying those genes.
“That’s where we are now. We know they have a cluster of 11 genes, but we don’t know exactly how it works. Is it specific to this type of bacteria? Or is there a way to keep bacteria from turning that resistance on?” Kvitko said. “Knowing more about the system, we have a nice list of potential weak points we can try to target, either through host resistance or some sort of novel chemical strategy. Bacteria are really tricky to manage; we have a limited tool set to work with and we want to have more.”
Because it would be impossible to change all P. ananatis bacteria, Kvitko’s team will also use what they’ve learned to develop pathogen-resistant onions.
“We are trying to see if there is any onion out there that the pathogen can’t kill. Finding onions that are resistant to the chemicals that are released by the bacteria and giving growers accurate information is important for mitigation,” he said.
An increasing likelihood of a La Nina weather event this fall could impact row crop farmers and specialty crop producers as well, said Pam Knox, University of Georgia Cooperative Extension Agricultural Climatologist.
“When we do have a La Nina, we do tend to have a little bit drier than normal fall. Dryness in the fall isn’t necessarily bad. It’s helpful for the people that’s trying to harvest. It’s just that if you’re trying to fill in the last of the pecans or get a little more growth out of the peanuts then dry conditions are not necessarily good,” Knox said.
According to the pecan production calendar, pecan’s water requirements are especially high in August and September. UGA pecan experts say water needs are 300 to 350 gallons per tree per day or 3,600 to 4,200 gallons per acre per day.
Knox said we are in a La Nina watch right now and is unclear how strong of a La Nina it’s could be.
“Typically, when we have a La Nina occurring, and right now we’re under a La Nina watch, the conditions in the Eastern Pacific Ocean are cooler than normal. They’re expected to stay that way. Usually it takes four months before they’ll declare an official La Nina,” Knox said. “The predictions are it might last until January or February and then go back to neutral conditions. It’s not necessarily one that’s going to be really long.”
While coronavirus will prevent the citrus industry from gathering this year at Citrus Expo, it will not stop growers from getting the education they need.
The 2020 Citrus Expo educational program will be held live online Aug. 19–20 and will include door prizes. If you’re lucky, you could walk away with one of four $200 Bass Pro gift cards!
The online virtual event will include three parts: 1) a general session for everyone, 2) a citrus program and 3) a vegetable and specialty crop program.
In the general session, Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services Director of Cannabis Holly Bell will give an update on the state’s hemp program. Bell made a big splash at last year’s Expo, and we are excited to welcome her back to the event. She’ll discuss how the Florida hemp program is becoming the role model for the country. The general session also is expected to cover trade and water issues, two major current concerns for Florida growers.
Some of the topics University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences researchers are planning to speak about in the citrus program include:
Soil health and cover crops
Soil amendments and conditioners for root health
Tree care considerations for individual protective covers
Economics of grove management
Nutrition and irrigation practices for HLB management
Exotic viral diseases
Performance of rootstocks and varieties
The seminars will remain available online after the live event, but there will be additional content available exclusively for those who attend the live two-day program. It is expected that continuing education units will be available toward the Florida restricted-use pesticide license as well as the Certified Crop Adviser designation for those viewing the seminars.
Not to be missed in the virtual event will be a special vendor corner. This is where exhibitors and sponsors will share their industry expertise and connect with attendees.
Registration is sponsored by Syngenta, and details will be provided soon on how to sign up for the event. For now, mark your calendar for virtual Citrus Expo on Aug. 19–20. Please note that this is one week later than Citrus Expo was originally planned for.
ATLANTA, Ga. – Reps. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) and Austin Scott (R-Ga.) sent a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer urging the Administration to protect American farmers from Mexico’s unfair trade practices as it works to implement the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).
“As you may know, Mexico’s increased market share of produce and perishable goods at record-low prices in the United States negatively impacts Georgia’s seasonal and perishable produce farmers, as well as those throughout the Southeast,” they wrote. “Over the past several months, we have witnessed the damaging economic and production consequences the coronavirus pandemic has had on crops across the nation. In Georgia, blueberry and vegetable producers are facing not only a decreased market for their goods, but in recent years a market saturated with Mexican products as a result of that country’s unfair trade practices.”
As they point out, the administration has committed to addressing concerns regarding Mexico’s practices within 60 days from the agreement’s implementation on July 1, 2020.
“As the Administration works to implement the USMCA, we stand ready to partner with you to ensure trade officials, farmers, and producers find a solution that works for the Southeast’s agriculture industry,” they continued.
Below is the full letter:
Austin Scott
July 14, 2020
The Honorable Robert Lighthizer U.S. Trade Representative Office of the U.S. Trade Representative 600 17th Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20508
Ambassador Lighthizer,
First and foremost, we want to express our appreciation to President Donald J. Trump, you and your office, and many others in the Administration for your hard work on behalf of our nation’s farmers in implementing the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). This historic trade deal will increase our global competitiveness, strengthen our economy, and most importantly, support our farmers.
While we are encouraged by the progress that has been made through the USMCA, we are writing today to urge the Administration to address the lack of protections for American farmers against Mexico’s unfair trade practices. As you may know, Mexico’s increased market share of produce and perishable goods at record-low prices in the United States negatively impacts Georgia’s seasonal and perishable produce farmers, as well as those throughout the Southeast. Over the past several months, we have witnessed the damaging economic and production consequences the coronavirus pandemic has had on crops across the nation. In Georgia, blueberry and vegetable producers are facing not only a decreased market for their goods, but in recent years a market saturated with Mexican products as a result of that country’s unfair trade practices.
We understand the Administration is committed to implementing a timely remedy to address this serious trade issue within 60 days from the agreement’s implementation on July 1, 2020, and we look forward to the Administration’s hearings in Georgia to hear testimony from growers and farmers in our districts. As the Administration works to implement the USMCA, we stand ready to partner with you to ensure trade officials, farmers, and producers find a solution that works for the Southeast’s agriculture industry.
Again, thank you for your work in creating and implementing an America-focused trade agreement with Canada and Mexico. We are hopeful that your office will work with us to ensure Mexico’s unfair trade practices do not go unaddressed. Please reach out to our offices if we can help facilitate future meetings or hearings with farmers in Georgia.
