WASHINGTON – Senator Charles Schumer says he would support a bipartisan farm bill that is being considered on the Senate floor this week.

The senator said the bill would be a boost to fruit and vegetable farmers that have suffered over the last year in the wake of the severe flooding and frosts.

“This program is for the future but had it been in effect, our farmers would breathe a lot easier, particularly those who had huge losses like the cherry growers,” Schumer said on Wednesday.
Orange County black dirt onion farmer Christopher Pawelski has been pushing for the conservation of muck soil program and production accounts for crop insurance and he notes New York’s senators, Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, are lobbying for both.

“That’s all you can ask for. They are only two senators out of 100 and that’s the dynamic, but they are working very hard to try to get those two programs in,” Pawelski said. “It’s not in the bill as it stands now but there is going to be an amendment process and there is also the House side and the process when it goes to conference committee as well.”
Schumer said if approved, the bill would provide positive impacts for New York’s specialty crop farmers – fruits and vegetables.

The Specialty Crop Research Initiative would prove $25 million in fiscal year 2013.