photo Courtesy of CSPAN

Testimony of Mr. Ryan Talley

House Committee on Agriculture Hearing

February 11, 2025, 10:00 a.m. ET

Thank you, Chairman Thompson, Ranking Member Craig, and members of the Committee.

Although not directly under the jurisdiction of the Agriculture Committee, I cannot testify before Congress without first emphasizing how vital it is to the security of our nation’s food supply, and the future of specialty crop production in the United States, for Congress to enact a bipartisan solution to the workforce crisis in agriculture. Labor represents more than half the cost of producing many specialty crops, and this continually escalating expense is untenable.

I am testifying today, however, on behalf of the Specialty Crop Farm Bill Alliance. A coalition of nearly two-hundred organizations representing the entirety of the specialty crop industry in the United States. We have come together to promote common sense initiatives that Congress should include in the next farm bill.

Let me begin by telling you all a little about myself and my family farm.  My grandfather started our family farm in 1948, and it has been in the family ever since.  I began working on the family farm during the summers at age 12 and have worked on the farm ever since.  Recently we welcomed the fourth generation to full-time positions working on the family farm.  Our farm is located on the Central Coast of California.  While we are not the largest family farm in our area, we are certainly not the smallest.  We produce a wide range of fruits and vegetables on nearly 1,800 conventional acres, including more than 30 different items on 75 acres of certified organic soil.

Members of this Committee, if I leave with you with one thing today, it’s that investing in specialty crops is a good value for the taxpayer’s money that will benefit all Americans. On behalf of the Farm Bill Alliance, thank you Chairman Thompson, the bipartisan committee staff, and members from both sides of the aisle who contributed to so many of our priorities being added to the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2024.

Our products account for nearly half the farm gate value in the United States, and the Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend that fruits and vegetables should comprise at least half of American’s diet. Yet under current law, specialty crops receive a small fraction of their proportional share of farm bill resources. In fact, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, the Horticulture title of the 2018 farm bill accounted for only one-half of one percent of its funding.

The investments we’re proposing are modest when compared to programs for other commodities, but they could be transformative for our growers. When you invest more in specialty crops – which include nutrient dense fruits, vegetables, and tree nuts – you are also investing in the long-term health and security of the American people. All of us who work in agriculture know that food security is national security.

Specialty crops is a term that consists of different commodities and types of operations that are grown in different seasons and regions in all fifty states. Despite the diversity of our operations, the industry is confronted with common challenges that hinder our ability to compete.

As with other commodities, our input costs are rising at an alarming rate, and our greatest input cost is human labor. For most specialty crops, human labor is a necessary component of nearly every aspect of our operations. According to data from the Department of Agriculture, the cost of labor has risen more than forty percent during the last four years and is projected to continue to climb.

We have increasingly limited access to crop protection tools and there are few replacements for them currently under development.

For those who export, we face great uncertainty in foreign markets. In our domestic markets, competition is rising from imports with significantly lower production-costs. The trade deficit is real and is particularly acute for many specialty crops.

Our growers struggle to adjust to drought, hurricanes, wildfires, and other natural disasters, and that’s all on top of market disruptions, such as those to our supply chains during the pandemic.

Because specialty crops are different than other commodities, USDA has at times struggled to deliver direct economic assistance to our growers when the need has arisen, but that’s been changing in recent years.

The Trump Administration worked with the specialty crop industry during COVID to understand why prior efforts, including CFAP, weren’t working for our growers. This ultimately resulted in the highly successful implementation of CFAP-2 and recently was the basis for the latest round of economic aid when Congress extended the current farm bill at the end of the year.

Although we are grateful for these payments, what we need is a comprehensive, bipartisan farm bill that invests in the long-term competitiveness of our domestic specialty crop industry.

The Alliance is proposing targeted new investments and a suite of innovative tools to support the entire specialty crop industry, including: new funding for research and development, incentives for technologies to supplement and enhance human labor, technical assistance and resources to help our operations become more resilient to extreme weather, and common sense changes to crop insurance that would provide the majority of our growers with a functional safety net for the very first time. We are also proposing needed reforms to federal procurement rules that would increase the availability of the nutritious foods our growers produce and Americans should be consuming in greater quantities.

I don’t have time to walk through each of these detailed proposals, but we have submitted written testimony for the record, which includes a copy of our 2023 recommendations. The Alliance is updating these recommendations for 2025, and we plan to provide those to you in the coming weeks.

We need Congress to enact a comprehensive bipartisan farm bill as soon as possible. The Alliance stands ready to work with each of you on the next farm bill.  Thank you and I look forward to answering your questions.