our types of crops are the ones that you cannot run a machine through the field as they do in the Midwest with field crops. Instead, it takes human discernment to actually figure out what is ripe, what is safe, and what is aesthetically pleasing for the consumer. That type of discernment is difficult to replace with mechanization at this point. I do believe that the biggest option for next year, the lowest hanging fruit, if I may, is immigration reform. I believe that we’ve provided an excellent foundation upon which we can have meaningful immigration reform when it comes to ag labor. That’s the Farm Workforce Modernization Act that we passed out of the House of Representatives on a bipartisan basis, a piece of legislation that in my limited time in Congress was formulated in a way that I haven't seen done before. You had Democrats and Republicans, farmers and farm workers at the table grinding away to come up with not the perfect bill, but a compromise bill and we got that. It’s a good bill because of it. You don’t normally see that in Washington, D.C., but this is the way legislation should be created. We also have to ensure that the initiatives that we put forward in the farm bill for ag research are funded appropriately. When it comes to ag labor, it is a two-
we needed more data. Our farmers needed to put forward more data and after we led that letter, we got that extension. The last thing was the limitations… how much seed that an individual farmer can acquire. I led a letter to the USDA that basically asked to take the caps from the seed. They didn't quite take the caps off it but they increased it. But there are more things that we need to do. And this has us thinking outside the box when it comes to these types of direct disbursements to our
specialty crops growers, who are typically diversified among many crops. We are trying to get USDA to take a whole farm option rather than a specific crop option when it comes to CFAP. What do you foresee as the biggest opportunity for specialty crop producers? When you talk to people who work in specialty crops, they will tell you that the number one issue is ag labor because
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NOVEMBER | DECEMBER 2020
Western Grower & Shipper | www.wga.com
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