Senators seek fed aid to cover crop losses

Provision would help state’s peach, blueberry farmers.

WASHINGTON — Things weren’t so peachy for Georgia produce farmers last summer.

An overly warm winter, paired with a late-coming hard freeze, decimated the region’s peach and blueberry crops, costing the state’s farmers some $300 million and upwards of 70 percent of their output, the Georgia Department of Agriculture estimated at the time.

Now Georgia’s two U.S. senators are looking to get the feds to cover some of those losses.

A provision added to the Senate farm bill by Republicans David Perdue and Johnny Isakson would make Georgia’s blueberry and peach farmers eligible for a special $2.36 billion pot of federal funding set aside for agricultural producers harmed by hurricanes and wildfires in 2017.

The legislation cruised through the Senate on an 86-11 vote Thursday.

The language, however, was not included in the House version of the farm bill that lawmakers passed last week. It will be up to members of a House-Senate conference committee to determine whether the provision makes it into the final version of the mustpass agriculture legislation.

Agriculture is Georgia’s largest industry, accounting for more than $75 billion in business and roughly 411,000 jobs in the state, according to the University of Georgia’s Center for Agribusiness and Economic Development, and specialty crops are a growing slice of that. Georgia now leads the country in blueberry production.