00:00Now please recognize the gentleman from New York, Mr. Riley, for five minutes.
00:04Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to all the witnesses for being here today. I represent a rural district in upstate New York. I actually grew up just a few blocks away from the cider mill, and you'll notice I said the cider mill, not a cider mill.
00:19Folks in Broome County understand that. Every kid has a field trip at some point where you go to the cider mill. My wife, she's a Virginian, and the first time I brought her home to meet my parents, our first hometown date, I took her to the cider mill so she could see how the apples are crushed, and we got some donuts, which may or may not be why she ended up marrying me in the long run.
00:46But I raise all that because it's, you know, apples upstate. It's a big driver of our economy, but it's also a really important part of our culture. It's a really important part of our community.
00:58But I don't think, or at least I wonder sometimes whether Congress is doing enough to support our apple growers. Unlike row crops, specialty crops typically don't have the same level of access to crop insurance and to other safety net programs.
01:17And I've heard from a lot of our apple growers across upstate New York that that leaves these producers especially vulnerable when you have invasive pests or emerging diseases or shifting climate conditions end up hitting their fields.
01:33And sometimes when it comes to research dollars, our specialty crop growers are sort of an afterthought, despite the fact that they probably need the help the most given that a lot of the challenges they face are crop specific or region specific and therefore require targeted science based solutions.
01:52And so, Mr. Cameron, I was just hoping you could speak generally and share your perspective as a specialty crop producer.
01:59What are the handful of federal programs that could could be improved when it comes to pest management and research and mitigation tools for specialty crops?
02:08How should we be thinking about crop insurance? And just generally, as somebody who cares a lot about the apple industry and specialty crops, generally things that we should be focused on here in the I committee.
02:20Well, we know that our four program project has been a great boon to especially crop growers getting getting new chemistry into the hands, especially crop growers.
02:33So that's number one far program that actually does testing and brings essentially brings other other products on farm for testing.
02:45Very important.
02:46Very important.
02:47Especially crop block grants have been critical for getting projects within states and getting getting new products, new technology on board and especially crop areas.
03:01You know, as far as insurance, you're right.
03:05Many times, especially crops are left behind.
03:07They're difficult to to get insured.
03:11You go through maybe the I can't think of the term, but for NRCS, their program for noninsured crops.
03:20It's a difficult process.
03:21It's not easy.
03:23I usually don't even bother with it because it's too cumbersome.
03:27Maybe simplification.
03:28Maybe we can group them together in some way and have some type of a matrix that could could address some of the issues that you face and that we face in California.
03:40Yeah, I appreciate that and would like to work with you on some ideas for both streamlining existing programs, but also making sure they're covering more folks and covering the challenges that are particular to specialty crops across the country.
03:55Thank you all for being here for your testimony.
03:57Mr. Chairman, I'll yield back my time.
03:59Mr. Chairman, I'll yield back my time.
04:00Mr. Chairman, I'll yield back my time.
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