During a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing in July, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) asked Richard Fordyce, Trump's nominee to be Under Secretary of Agriculture for Farm Production and Conservation, about disaster relief programs for farmers operated by his agency.
00:00Thank you. Thank you. Senator Schiff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Fordyce, thank you for being here. I appreciate your work. During the first Trump administration, you oversaw the implementation of the market facilitation program, as well as the wildfire and hurricane indemnity program.
00:17Both of those programs were implemented in such a way that, as I talked to farmers throughout California, they found that they had a lot of difficulty in accessing them because of the different nature of the specialty crops they grow than farmers in other parts of the country.
00:33Will you commit to working with me to ensure that any future rollout of USDA financial assistance is more fairly distributed, that is, that specialty crop farmers are equally able to access it as other farmers?
00:49Yes, Senator, and thank you for that question. And, you know, I do appreciate very much the agriculture nature of the state of California.
00:57It is, it is the most agriculture diverse state in the country. And, and I appreciate that and understand that fairly well. I wouldn't want to, I wouldn't want to completely tell you that I know how all of those crops are grown, but do appreciate that.
01:11You know, and I think you make a, you make a good point on, on, on the, on the programs that you mentioned. And, and part of that was due to the fact that, that the, the agencies had not worked with those, those commodities, those crops and those growers really before.
01:32And so, you know, I, I, I felt like we were fairly innovative in, in, in trying to get the word out and the message out. And, um, certainly through our outreach programs and communications programs attempted to do that more on a, on a personal level, but then we discovered that, um, that it worked, it would work much better if we were having those conversations with the organizations that represent those growers.
01:56And so United Fresh and others, um, were organizations that we partnered with, which we had never partnered with before to get that information out. And it was a little bit, um, it was probably a little bit of a slow start, uh, at the beginning of the program, but I think it became quite robust by the end of both of the programs that you mentioned. Um, but absolutely I will, I would commit to working with you if there's another program similar to that, to make sure we're, we're talking to the right folks and getting the right message out there.
02:25Great. Uh, great. Uh, I appreciate that. And we're happy to help facilitate those meetings with those associations. Uh, I also want to raise a concern about USDA's ongoing rollout of disaster funding as authorized by the American Relief Act of 2025. Uh, first, I'm concerned that the rules USDA has created in establishing block grants for states which face disaster in the past few years, make it, uh, pretty much impossible for California to receive aid. Uh, second, I hope that in the second round of the Supplemental Disaster Relief
02:55program that it's developed in such a way that specialty crop and diversified farmers may more easily access relief. I recently sent a letter to the administration on this issue. And I know you're not currently a USDA, uh, but are you committed to working together on this matter and others? Uh, so we can make sure that California and specialty crop producers more generally receive their fair degree of USDA support. And just to give an illustration, um,
03:25uh, uh, a lot of the number of hurricanes to cover that was a big deal, uh,
03:28a big deal. And we're in the United States.
03:29when they went inland, that did a lot of damage.
03:32And of course, we've been ravaged by atmospheric rivers
03:36and the flooding that they result in and fires.
03:40And so to exclude certain disasters and only include others
03:45that frankly are visited on other states
03:48seems very inequitable for the West.
03:51So I wanna make sure you're committed to working
03:53on that issue as well to make sure
03:55that these decisions are made in a nonpartisan,
03:59and non-geographic way that is accessible
04:03for all farmers throughout the country.
04:06Yes, Senator, absolutely would commit to that.
04:08And I can't speak much to the progress
04:11of those disaster programs or the cause of loss
04:15for the declarations, but yes, would commit
04:17to certainly working with you moving forward.
04:20One other issue, if I could,
04:22over a third of the country's vegetables
04:24and three quarters of the country's fruits and nuts
04:27are grown in California,
04:28but just 9% of farms growing specialty crops are insured.
04:32Given your past experience at USDA, can you speak to the challenges
04:36that specialty crop producers face in accessing crop insurance
04:40and what you think you can do as undersecretary to address it?
04:44Yeah, that's a great question.
04:46That's a great question.
04:48And I know that the Risk Management Agency or the NAP program
04:53through the Farm Service Agency ensures,
04:56and we talked about this just a little bit ago,
04:59and I'm not sure how many crops that is, but it's a lot.
05:03And, you know, I think if there's not a safety net risk management product
05:10available to a specific crop grown in California,
05:15there is a process at RMA by which we can start the process
05:20to look at the opportunities to potentially have a product that is available to them.
05:25But I would commit that we'll be taking a look at that.
05:28I appreciate it.
05:29And I think some of the challenge, Chairman, is that these specialty crops
05:33and trees that are a long-term investment are really different,
05:37and some of the historic practices that go into some of these grant applications
05:42are more suitable and easier to access if you're a commodity crop grower.
05:48So it may also require some modifications to make sure that all farmers can participate.
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