11/08/05 Farm Bill Forum fruit comments

U.S.D.A. Secretary Mike Johanns received knowledge of what the Northwest fruit industry needs in the way of federal supports and programs when he hosted the recent Farm Bill Forum in Cheney Washington. Several private growers and those representing commodity organizations were not bashful about expressing their needs. For example, Chris Schlect of the Northwest Horticultural Council provided input on which current programs needed increases in support. SCHLECT: Plant protection quarantine both on the inbound side for pest and disease control and outbound side. We need F.A.S. to knock down the trade barriers. That's a great agency of your department along with A.R.S. Finally the area of nutrition is just critical to the country at large and to our industry obviously we would benefit but we think the feeding programs, W.I.C. and others that are valuable should reflect the dietary guidelines which I think fruit and vegetables would benefit from that, and so would the nation's populations. Wenatchee area orchardist Dale Foreman said the fruit industry would benefit greatly from more support for the Market Access Program. FOREMAN: And we hope that the new Farm Bill will increase the M.A.P. funding. We are very much in support of that because that helps us open foreign markets and sell our fruit crops abroad. But perhaps the one area that Secretary Johanns and U.S.D.A. were called to support most through the next Farm Bill is research and development.