eliminated payments to papaya farmers on the Island of Kauai. 

 While they received some payments for crop losses in 1992, if this 

 policy is allowed to stand, they will receive no compensation for the 

 loss of the young trees which would have bore fruit in future years. 

 Somehow a papaya tree in the books of the Department has the life 

 of only 1 year, ending December 31. 



I have with me today the head of the disaster program for farm- 

 ers on the Island of Kauai. With your permission, I would like to 

 ask him to give his testimony now following mine since this would 

 more appropriately fit in in the line of questioning. 



I hope he would be able as a farmer and as a head of the orga- 

 nized efforts on Kauai to respond more directly to your inquiries. 

 With your permission, I would like at this time to ask Michael 

 Strong from the Island of Kauai, who heads up the farm effort on 

 that island to testify. 



[The prepared statement of Mrs. Mink appears at the conclusion 

 of the hearing.] 



Mrs. Thurman. Mr. Strong, you are recognized for 5 minutes. 



STATEMENT OF MICHAEL STRONG, CHAIRMAN, DISASTER 

 RELIEF COMMITTEE, KAUAI COUNTY FARM BUREAU 



Mr. Strong. Thank you, Madam Chairman and members of the 

 subcommittee for giving me this opportunity to give my testimony 

 on the problems that we have had with the USDA disaster relief 

 programs. 



As you know, the hurricane devastated the agricultural endeav- 

 ors on the Island of Kauai. Because of the time limitations, I will 

 go directly to the main problem that was experienced by growers 

 that is an ongoing situation, and we hope for some relief now, 

 which is that the farmers were completely devastated and can ex- 

 pect no income from any crops for 1993 and in many cases no in- 

 come from crops for 1994 and 1995. 



The disaster crop assistance program was to relieve farmers by 

 supplementing their income with payments for crop losses experi- 

 enced. Now, the bill that was passed, the 1990 farm bill, only gave 

 money for crop losses that occurred in the year of the disaster, that 

 is in 1992. 



The nature of our crops in Kauai is mostly perennial. That is 

 they are harvested once a week throughout the year, which meant 

 by September, 75 percent of those crops had been picked. You need 

 a minimum of a 40 percent loss to qualify under this program, 

 which meant that farmers of these crops were to receive no com- 

 pensation whatsoever for 1992. 



Since there was no provision in the law for the following years, 

 that meant these growers were to receive no money. 



To give you an example of how the program worked was a farmer 

 of 2 1 acres of papaya that were beginning to produce fruit in Sep- 

 tember when they were all killed by the hurricane. The first year's 

 production from this orchard would have been 1 million pounds. He 

 received $2,400 in crop disaster assistance payments for a crop that 

 had a value of $350,000 for that one year. That comes out to 20 

 cents a papaya tree or the price of one half pound of fruit. Clearly 

 this wasn't going to be adequate for our farmers. 



