pose of today's hearing is to review the effect of current Federal 

 disaster assistance programs on specialty crops. Most of today's tes- 

 timony will be regional focusing on the nursery, lime, avocado, and 

 aquaculture industries damaged by Hurricane Andrew in Florida. 

 For Hawaii, the focus is on sugarcane, macadamia nuts, coffee, ba- 

 nanas, guavas, and mangoes. More recently the Midwest nursery 

 industry has experienced damage due to this year's flooding. 



The lesson that many of us in Congress learned as we tried to 

 pick up the pieces for our agricultural industries devastated by nat- 

 ural disaster was that many of the Federal disaster assistance pro- 

 grams simply do not work well enough for these specialty crops. 



Hurricane Andrew destroyed $145 million in nursery crops and 

 close to 43 million dollars' worth of damage for the tropical fruit 

 industry. After Hurricane Andrew, I began to attempt to identify 

 agricultural disaster assistance programs to help us rebuild agri- 

 culture in south Florida. Much to my surprise, most agricultural 

 disaster assistance programs were unavailable to growers for var- 

 ious reasons. 



The battles that ensued to obtain adequate assistance were 

 fought on both the legislative and political fronts. Many were re- 

 solved but some are still being fought today, a year after Hurricane 

 Andrew. 



Representative Mink pointed out about the 100 percent and 50 

 percent cost. We had the same problem not only in Florida, but 

 elsewhere in the United States. 



For instance, the tree assistance program designed to help grow- 

 ers replant and rehabilitate crops was initially unavailable to Flor- 

 ida growers because the program did not cover hurricane losses. 

 Most of Florida's growers still remain ineligible for any program as- 

 sistance due to a $2 million gross sales cap that prevents most 

 growers from receiving any disaster benefit. For the past year, the 

 nursery industry has not received fence restoration assistance 

 under the emergency conservation program because their fencing 

 has not met the farm bill standard for livestock fence. Although 

 this specific situation was corrected in the June spring supple- 

 mental, the Department has yet to release ECP funding. 



Agriculture in south Florida is different. Many of our specialty 

 crops do not fit your typical definition of an agricultural crop. Most 

 operations are not family farms. Most are high scale, large inven- 

 tory operations that produce efficiently on small acreage. High 

 gross sales do not necessarily reflect a high profit to a grower. Fur- 

 ther, many people are not aware that the lime harvest continues 

 throughout the entire year. Unfortunately, these unique character- 

 istics have worked against these industries when they needed the 

 help the most. This is as equally true of Hawaiian crops. 



While the Department of Agriculture is to be commended for ex- 

 tension of deadlines and attempts to address the concerns of spe- 

 cialty crops, USDA is also a part of the problem. 



Where the Florida delegation worked in good faith to successfully 

 address necessary concerns legislatively, the Department was re- 

 sponsible for erecting barriers refusing to take administrative ac- 

 tion within the Secretary of Agriculture's discretion. More impor- 

 tantly, as is the case with emergency conservation funding for 



