Ben Luján

Specialty crops grown in New Mexico, such as chile peppers and pecans, would be assured of federal disaster assistance under legislation recently introduced by U.S. Sen. Ben Ray Luján and four of his Senate colleagues.

The Cultivating Horticultural Innovation in Local Economies Act, or CHILE Act, extends disaster assistance available to other producers under the Farm Bill to specialty crop growers by establishing a $5 billion Specialty Crop Emergency Assistance Framework as a lifeline in an emergency.

In an interview with the Journal, Luján said the bill attempts to fill a gap between federal support for row crops and commodities designated as specialty crops. “Right now, specialty crops in the country have not been fully supported or prioritized by the USDA,” Luján said. “What I've seen is assistance going into other parts of the country, to other farmers and ranchers.”

The bill would require the U.S. Department of Agriculture to provide direct assistance to specialty crop producers starting with the 2027 fiscal year, including fruits, vegetables, nuts and dried fruits, as well as nursery crops such as flowers and ornamental plants.

Luján, a Democrat, is the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Food and Nutrition, Specialty Crops, Organics, and Research.

The funds would be available to producers whose crops are affected by “adverse events,” including “economic crisis or market disruption,” according to the bill’s text.

Two producers in southern New Mexico spoke mainly of trade policy, tariffs and international markets in reacting to the bill.

Rafael Rovirosa, a pecan farmer in Doña Ana County, said China — once a major international importer of U.S. pecans — has turned elsewhere in the midst of reciprocal trade tariffs, while noting that New Mexico’s pecan crops are primarily sold domestically.

“This year, we had reasonable prices, but nothing like what we were seeing from 2016 to 2018,” Rovirosa said. “With increased inflation on top of that, our costs are up 30% to 35% and our prices over the last few years are down about 40%, so it’s been tough going.”

He said the CHILE Act, if it becomes law, would offer “a good bridge until we can open up new markets.”

Ben Etcheverry, a vice president with the New Mexico Chile Association, welcomed the bill’s effort to define specialty crops, a distinction he said has been muddied in discussions of crop assistance in Washington.

“What we call row crops, like corn and soybeans, all those big commodity crops — they kind of get the first milk out of the bottle,” he said.

Etcheverry also welcomed the assistance but suggested, as producers across the country contend with drought, rising costs and a trade policy that has hit farming particularly hard, it would be a “bandaid.”

“$5 billion to you and me is a big number, but not when you're spreading it across all the fruit and vegetables grown in the U.S.,” he said.

As of Wednesday, the bill’s cosponsors were all Democrats so far, who are in the Senate’s minority. Luján held out hope that the CHILE Act would attract bipartisan support, however.

“Some of the top-producing specialty crop states include places like Wisconsin, North Carolina and Florida,” Luján said, noting previous successes working with Republican colleagues.

The Republican majority’s draft Farm Bill, released on Tuesday, preserves federal cuts to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP, which would require states to cover gaps in coverage for their people.

“Senate Agriculture Committee Democrats have been clear that a Farm Bill must meet the needs of both farmers and families across America,” Luján and fellow Democrats on the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee said in a joint statement Tuesday.

“This bill does not address the devastating cuts to SNAP or the shift to state taxpayers passed into law as part of HR 1,” the statement continued. “We appreciate that bipartisan provisions have been included in the discussion draft and stand ready to work with Republicans to negotiate a bipartisan Farm Bill that both meets the moment and can be successful on the Senate floor.”