COVID-19’s impact is trickling down to specialty crops (fruits, vegetables, tree nuts, dried fruits, horticulture, and nursery crops). Now, U.S. Senators are asking that financial assistance not be overlooked for specialty crop and cotton producers.
The pork industry is estimating a loss of $5 billion by the end of the year. The U.S. Cattlemen’s Association estimated the cattle industry’s losses to be at $14.6 billion.
On April 17, President Donald Trump asked that the payments to agricultural producers be expedited. The first installment is nearly $16 billion, out of the $23 billion authorized by Congress to keep farmers and ranchers afloat during the pandemic.
On April 13, 29 Senators, led by Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) wrote Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue a letter, asking to ensure that specialty crop producers receive direct payments to help with losses.
The senators requested for the USDA to purchase fresh and processed specialty crops for redistribution to food banks, schools and emergency feeding organizations to stabilize prices.
The letter addressed how the fresh produce industry has experienced $5 billion in losses already with additional losses are expected, which will affect specialty crop producers that grow fruits, vegetables, nuts and more.
A separate letter, signed by the same 29 senators, was written to Perdue requesting that assistance be provided to the U.S. cotton industry. This is good news for Kansas.
While the beef and dairy industry have been making headlines for the economic pain they’re feeling, cotton producers have felt their pain trickling down as the purchase of cottonseed, used as a feed ration for dairy and beef cattle, has come to a halt.
“Almost 100 percent of our seed goes to dairies,” said Gary Feist, president of the Kansas Cotton Association. “I think they [dairy farmers] usually feed six to seven pounds per dairy cow, but I'd say they're down to half of that or less because the price of cottonseed stayed fairly high.”
Orders from U.S. textile mills have dropped as much as 90 percent in the last month.
“Most of our cotton exports, so getting it shipped, is also part of the problem,” said Feist. “The past few years, cotton has been really good economically, but this year cotton’s getting hit just like the rest of them.”
If COVID-19 had taken place five years ago, the significance of the cotton industry in Kansas wouldn’t have been so great.
In 2015, the number of cotton acres planted was 16,000. That number saw a nearly 932 percent increase in 2018 to 165,000 acres.
“Cotton has emerged over the last five years as a more predominant crop, mainly because of the decrease in prices in wheat and grain sorghum,” said Kansas Senator Dan Kerschen (R-Garden Plain), chairman of the Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee. “We want them to be profitable.”
Feist, a farmer in Anthony, Kansas, and manager of the cotton gins in Anthony and Winfield, said that cotton has also been used to conserve water because it requires less water than other commodities such as corn.
“In western Kansas, the Ogallala-Aquifer is having trouble maintaining their water and they’re using cotton to replace corn to get their water down,” he said.
Feist appreciates the requests being made to consider all crops in this tough economic time.
“Whatever crop you’re growing, specialty crop or whatever, that’s your livelihood,” said Feist. “Kansas is known for wheat and cattle, but there’s a lot of other things that make a living in Kansas too that make up the overall mix.”
Kerschen agrees.
“In this big scope of things, you can’t pick and choose randomly,” said Kerschen. “If the plan is to sustain agriculture across the board I think you have to recognize those areas too.”
Until the financial assistance is received, Feist said farmers will keep doing what they do every year: the best they can with what they have.
“It’s kind of a pick and choose, which one you want to squeeze a living out of.”
Jasmine Pankratz is a University of Kansas senior from Abbyville, Kan., studying journalism.