22 



We certainly appreciate all the help we have gotten from the var- 

 ious individuals in the agencies to get to where we are now. We 

 have made headway. For all the elected officials who have made it 

 possible to come this far, you have our deepest gratitude. 



Thank you, very much. 



[The prepared statement of Mr. Gallant appears at the conclu- 

 sion of the hearing.] 



Mrs. Thurman. Next Mr. Olszack. 



STATEMENT OF W. REED OLSZACK, CHAIRMAN, DADE COUN- 

 TY, FLORIDA AGRICULTURAL STABILIZATION AND CON- 

 SERVATION SERVICE COMMITTEE 



Mr. Olszack. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. First of 

 all, I would like to ask that my written testimony will be submitted 

 for the record. 



Mrs. Thurman. Without objection. 



Mr. Olszack. I would like to just summarize my written testi- 

 mony and speak on some of the issues that have been raised here. 



In summary, I think it is very important at the time of a disaster 

 to assist the local committee and listen to them in establishing 

 guidelines and estimates for damage assistance and cleanup, also 

 touching on Mr. Gallant's statement about authorizing advanced 

 payments to growers, that is very important. 



When an industry is devastated, when a producer is trying to 

 clean up their home, their business, their agricultural enterprise, 

 they must be given some means to assure payment. Perhaps a 

 voucher system could be utilized to take care of that. 



Also on the crop year, we need to redefine the crop year. Obvi- 

 ously when you plant a papaya tree in the month of June, that crop 

 year starts in the month of June, not in the month of January, 

 some 6 months prior. 



Our crops don't fit into a neat definition of calendar year. It is 

 not the way of the tropics and subtropics. We also need to take into 

 account production loss for subsequent years on production of trees 

 that take 3 to 5 to 7 years to come into production. 



An example of this is the issue around dead trees. What has oc- 

 curred is the 6,200 acre lime industry is now decimated to 1,200 

 acres. Under the 60 percent rule, the lime growers were kept from 

 receiving any disaster payment for the year 1992. Because the ma- 

 jority of lime trees were destroyed by Hurricane Andrew, they are 

 not allowed to receive any compensation under the 1993, 1994, 

 1995 crop loss. 



These growers have no compensation at all. They are being asked 

 to go out on faith and replant a crop on TAP dollars that are woe- 

 fully inadequate to sustain a planting for the 3 to 5 years before 

 they get a positive cash flow from that planting. 



The lime industry also represented about 1,353 jobs, $28,500,000 

 a year. That is a sizeable industry. 



We also need to streamline computation and logging procedures 

 at the county level. As it stands now, some of these procedures take 

 about 45 minutes to over an hour per file to process. 



When you have over 2,000 files in a county office, you can under- 

 stand the logjam that occurs when you have producers waiting for 



