47 



and assess damages. After the initial effort most of these people 

 returned to their home offices leaving a skeleton crew to administer 

 the on going ASCS disaster assistance programs. The local ASCS staff 

 have been excellent in their performance to help the farmers, however, 

 their hands were tied when it came to policy decisions and program 

 rul es . 



The ASCS program with the most promise for helping growers with their 

 lack of income from the disaster was the Crop Disaster Assistance 

 program. As the rules of the program were announced it became clear 

 that few framers on Kauai would qualify for assistance. The program 

 states that crop loss assistance is for crops that lost production in 

 the year of the disaster. Whatever production had occurred in the 

 disaster year was deducted from the mandatory 40% deduction in the 

 program formula. Most crops on Kauai are either harvested year round 

 such as papaya, banana and tropical flowers or have more than one year 

 growing period and the farmer has many fields of different ages. In 

 either of these cases the grower is ineligible for assistance because 

 he has already been harvesting his crops for 8 months which puts him 

 under the 40% minimum production necessary to qualify for assistance. 

 This same grower will have little or no income for the next 2 to 3 

 years because his production for the years following the disaster is 

 zero. The Crop Disaster Assistance program is designed strictly for 

 growers of annual crops and is prejudiced against growers of perennial 

 and tree crops . 



An example of how totally inadequate the program was for our farmers 

 is the case of one papaya grower. He had 21 acres of papaya that were 

 beginning to produce fruit in September when they were all killed by 

 the hurricane, the first years production from this orchard would have 

 been one million pounds. He received $2400 in Crop Disaster Assistance 

 payments for a crop that had a value of $350,000. This comes out to 20 

 cents per tree or the value of one half pound of fruit per tree. 



Another example is the case of a exporter of tropical flowers. This 

 farm cuts flowers every day of the year so when the hurricane hit in 

 September of 1992 they had already harvest 75% of their crop for the 

 year making them ineligible for the Crop Disaster Assistance program. 

 This farms flowers were destroyed and this business had no income for 

 the following year. They received no assistance from the program. 



Banana growers harvest their crop every week of the year and were all 

 ineligible for the Crop Disaster Assistance program. 



As a result of the nature of the crops grown on Kauai the total amount 

 of payments from this program totaled $115,000 for all the farmers on 

 the island of Kauai. Clearly legislation was needed to rescue the 

 farmers. In May, 1993 a contingent of 3 farmers from the Kauai County 

 Farm Bureau went to Washington to meet with Senator Inouye to ask him 

 for his assistance. Senator Inouye authored legislation that was added 

 .to the Supplemental Appropriations Bill, Pub. L 103-50 which provides 

 that "...funds shall also be made available to producers for 1993, 

 1994 and 1995 crop losses if such losses are due to the occurrence of 

 Hurricanes Andrew and Iniki and Typhoon Omar...". The bill was signed 

 into law on July 2, 1993. 



The farmers on Kauai were told to wait until notified to pick up 

 applications. Applications were not available until the middle of 

 August even though the filing deadline was September 17. At no time 

 were any individual farmers, grower groups or extension agents 



