Even With Assistance on the Way, Fruit and Vegetable Growers Asking for More Help

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2026 -- 8:00 AM

(Wisconsin Public Radio) Agriculture officials are preparing to send out payments to U.S. growers of fruits, vegetables and other specialty crops later this spring after a several-month delay.

According to Wisconsin Public Radio, the U.S. Department of Agriculture last month announced the list of specialty crops that will qualify for payments under $1 billion set aside last December under the administration’s Farmer Bridge Assistance program.

Referred to as the Assistance for Specialty Crop Farmers, or ASCF, payments will be based on planted acres in 2025. USDA won’t announce the payment rates for each commodity until the end of March, with payments coming sometime after that.

But fruit and vegetable industry leaders are already asking for more help. “It’s simply not enough, especially when it’s spread out over all these specialty crops, as well as sugar and some of these other commodities are now tapping into that,” said Tamas Houlihan, executive director of the Wisconsin Potato and Vegetable Grower Association.

His group, along with more than 100 other specialty group organizations, is asking Congress for an additional $5 billion in assistance for specialty crops as part of a larger aid package being pushed by the ag industry.

Houlihan said potato growers alone have faced losses estimated at $789 million over the past three years. He said that’s due in part to a roughly 20 percent reduction in buying from the country’s largest processors.

“We’re just seeing a decrease in consumption, and we are also seeing an increase in imported products and a decrease in our ability to export products,” he said. “With all those factors combining, we’ve got a massive oversupply situation.”

Houlihan said competitors in China and India have stepped up their exports, creating more competition for U.S. companies selling overseas. At the same time, tariffs on machinery and other inputs coming into the country have raised the cost of production for both growers and processors.

Wisconsin growers have already been warned by the state’s largest processor, Houlihan said, that they’ll likely be cutting their volume again this year. And initial prices offered for this year’s crop are down between 10 and 20 percent.

He said the same is true for the state’s vegetable industry, which mainly grows crops like green beans and sweet corn for the canned and frozen market. Houlihan said margins in that industry were already thin before the current downturn.

“There are a lot of scared growers as we head into this planting season,” Houlihan said. “With some of these contracts, the growers don’t even know how much to plant, and so they haven’t firmed up their seed purchases. But they know it’s probably going to be less than last year, and they know the price is going to be lower than last year, so it’s not a happy picture.”

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