Vegetable Growers News

Asparagus Payment Delayed

Maybe next year, asparagus growers. The $15 million the U.S. asparagus industry has been waiting for is still “limping its way” through the federal system, and growers might not get money in their hands until some time next year, according to John Bakker, executive director of the Michigan Asparagus Advisory Board. The money is from the Market Loss Assistance Program, part of the 2008 Farm Bill. The program was inserted into the bill to compensate U.S. asparagus growers for the losses they incurred from the Andean Trade Preference Act, a U.S. drug policy that eliminated tariffs on a variety of products – including Peruvian asparagus – in 1991. U.S. growers tried for years to modify the act, which flooded the U.S. market with cheap Peruvian asparagus, but when they realized it wasn’t going to change, they decided to ask for money. “Our troubles began as an unforeseen impact…  » Read more

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Growers Getting Desperate in California Water Crisis

Like a lot of growers on the western side of California’s San Joaquin Valley, Joe Del Bosque has had to cut back on his plantings. Water shortages forced him to fallow roughly half his 2,300 crop acres this year – even though he’s still paying rent on much of the land. To protect the “huge investment” he made in his 660 acres of almond trees, he had to cut back on his cantaloupes, even some of his asparagus. These days, water for his drip irrigation system is just too precious a commodity to waste on less valuable crops. His crop reductions have led to labor reductions, too. He normally employs 20 or so year-round employees and about 350 seasonal workers, but had to let nearly half of them go. Those lucky enough to still have jobs had their hours cut. The story is the same for…  » Read more

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Growing Better Carrots

Back in the good old days, carrot growers in Michigan didn’t need to grow perfect carrots. They had a pretty good market for cull carrots, as the state’s half-million deer hunters lapped them up to use as bait for the state’s 2 million deer. Feeding deer – for bait in bow hunting or just to make them easier to attract and look at – was something of a rural sport. Then, in the fall of 2008, one deer was found with Chronic Wasting Disease, a first cousin to Mad Cow Disease and part of the fearsome complex of brain-attacking spongiform encephalopathies that affect humans, too. In one stroke, the state banned feeding and baiting of white-tailed deer, and the market for thousands of acres of Michigan carrots was gone. It wasn’t long after that Michigan State University horticulturist Dan Brainard’s request to MSU’s Project GREEEN program for $21,000…  » Read more

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