64 



When we were made aware of the legislation written for disaster assistance 

 we were all very optimistic because it was clear that the intent of the leg- 

 islation and the funds allocated should have provided significant relief. 

 The only exception to this was that we could not understand why provisions 

 made under Public Law 103-50 singled out victims of Andrew, Iniki and Omar 

 to have our allocation factored (x .5004) by a formula employed in 1990 

 disaster payments when it was obvious that sufficient funds were initially 

 available to pay the full $100,000 limitation normally applied. 



In addition when the regulations that governed DAP were applied to nursery- 

 men most got very little inspite of loosing the majority of the .majority 

 of their inventory. This is because the regulations were written for 

 traditional ASCS program crops and cannot be applied to nurseries which 

 are year round operations in which case the crop is actually the inventory 

 at the time of the loss. 



Again, fortunately, this issue wasresolved favorably under provisions from 

 the 1993, 1994 and 1995 crop loss legislation. 



However, this does suggest that ASCS in Washington is not sufficiently versed 

 in Specialty Crops and should defer to their committees for recommendations 

 in these cases. 



The major unresolved issue under DAP is the decision by ASCS not to pay for 

 loss of production from trees killed. This primarily affects the Tropical 

 Fruit Growers, but also applies to riursery stock plants. 



This position is entirely illogical since payments are being made for product- 

 ion losses from damaged trees for 1993 - 1995. It is obvious that a producer 

 whose trees have been totally destroyed faces an even greater loss than the 

 producer whose trees were just damaged. As long as that producer intends to 

 replant he should receive at least the same level of assistance. 



The last part of this second stage of assistance would be making final pay- 

 ments for ECP clean-up and irrigation repairs. Here, an extended period 

 of at least one year should be allowed for completion. ASCS has been very 

 understanding on this issue. 



3. The third and last stage of the assistance program should be to provide 

 low interest loans to help producers rebuild and recoup some of their losses. 

 It is important to remember that even if the producer is able to benefit from 

 all these programs, at best, he will only recover a fraction of his actual 

 losses, and the percentage is worse for larger losses. 



Two choices available to producers are loand provided under Farmers Home 

 Administration and the Business and Industry Guaranteed Loan provided under 

 RDA. 



The FmHA program is attractive because of the low interest rate, but many prod- 

 ucers are discouraged and intimidated by the process which is very tedious and 

 requires that all assets are pledged as collateral regardless of the size of 

 the loan. 



