Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the creation of new programs to help farmers who grow fruits, vegetables and nuts overcome market barriers for their products, and help producers access necessary pre-market storage for their crops following severe weather events, including recent hurricanes.

Marketing Assistance Program for Specialty Crops

The new Marketing Assistance for Specialty Crops initiative will provide $2 billion to assist specialty crop growers in maintaining a strong domestic supply and expanding market opportunities. It will expand markets by helping specialty growers who typically have higher marketing costs related to the tenderness and perishability of fruits, vegetables, floriculture, nursery crops and herbs; specialized handling and transport equipment with temperature and humidity control; packaging; moving perishables to market quickly; and higher labor costs. USDA anticipates applications will open in December 2024.

Commodity Storage Assistance Program

USDA is creating the Commodity Storage Assistance Program to make available commercial storage facilities such as grain elevators and packinghouses necessary for the orderly marketing of commodities by producers experiencing reduced commercial storage access due to 2024 natural disasters. This program builds on the Emergency Grain Storage Assistance Program which helped producers respond to lost grain storage options after a series of tornadoes, derechos, and flooding in 2021 and 2022.

USDA is making $140 million in Commodity Credit Corporation funds available for this program for a wide range of commodities. Producers will have to show that natural disasters caused a loss in commercial storage or marketing. Applications are expected to be available in December 2024.

These programs would complement the disaster assistance package the Biden-Harris Administration has proposed to Congress, which included a request for resources for USDA’s Emergency Relief Program (ERP) and Emergency Livestock Relief Program (ELRP), in addition to nutrition assistance, and rural infrastructure support. The ERP and ELRP provide support for disaster losses for row crop, specialty crop and livestock producers.

Final details, including eligibility and payment rates will be set forth in a Notice of Funding Availability for each program.

Read more on the new specialty crop programs here.