“Specialty Crops” Refer to Weird Things Like…Fruits and Vegetables
When you think of a farm, do you think of farmers growing things you can eat? Those are the minority.
A news tidbit from The Produce News (tagline: “Covering Fresh Produce Around the Globe since 1897.” Good sell!) caught our eye: it reports that U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced a hefty amount of money for “specialty crops.” But what even are those?
Vilsack’s announcement was for $100 million for various food programs, of which $63 million would go to specialty crops producers. The other $37 million will go to a variety of programs – some nutrition programs, some education, that kind of thing. But the grants are meant to encourage farmers to switch to growing these specialty crops, a phrase which brings to mind, I don’t know, acai, or quinoa, or even Carolina Gold rice. While all of those would technically be included, the focus isn’t “specialty” in the way we think about the word.
The USDA says: “Specialty crops are defined in law as ‘fruits and vegetables, tree nuts, dried fruits and horticulture and nursery crops, including floriculture.'” That is crazy! Fruits, vegetables, and nuts shouldn’t be considered special; they should be considered normal, which is what the new bill will try to address.
So what doesn’t the USDA’s definition include? The top four crops in the country, orders of magnitude more popular than anything like, say, apples, are corn, soybeans, hay and wheat. And when we talk about corn and soybeans especially, we’re not talking about sweet Jersey corn-on-the-cob or edamame. 27 percent of corn production in the U.S. goes to ethanol production, with most of the remaining going to animal feed and high-fructose corn syrup. Compared with corn, apples are a specialty food.
Anyway, this $63 million in grants will be going to convince farmers to stop growing these non-nutritious crops and switch to nutrition-based agriculture, a switch we’d all be happy to see. Whether that’s enough remains to be seen.
Image via Flickr user Nick Saltmarsh
Subscribe
0 Comments
Most Voted
Newest
Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Follow us
Republish!
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Want to republish a Modern Farmer story?
We are happy for Modern Farmer stories to be shared, and encourage you to republish our articles for your audience. When doing so, we ask that you follow these guidelines:
Please credit us and our writers
For the author byline, please use “Author Name, Modern Farmer.” At the top of our stories, if on the web, please include this text and link: “This story was originally published by Modern Farmer.”
Please make sure to include a link back to either our home page or the article URL.
At the bottom of the story, please include the following text:
“Modern Farmer is a nonprofit initiative dedicated to raising awareness and catalyzing action at the intersection of food, agriculture, and society. Read more at <link>Modern Farmer</link>.”
Use our widget
We’d like to be able to track our stories, so we ask that if you republish our content, you do so using our widget (located on the left hand side of the article). The HTML code has a built-in tracker that tells us the data and domain where the story was published, as well as view counts.
Check the image requirements
It’s your responsibility to confirm you're licensed to republish images in our articles. Some images, such as those from commercial providers, don't allow their images to be republished without permission or payment. Copyright terms are generally listed in the image caption and attribution. You are welcome to omit our images or substitute with your own. Charts and interactive graphics follow the same rules.
Don’t change too much. Or, ask us first.
Articles must be republished in their entirety. It’s okay to change references to time (“today” to “yesterday”) or location (“Iowa City, IA” to “here”). But please keep everything else the same.
If you feel strongly that a more material edit needs to be made, get in touch with us at [email protected]. We’re happy to discuss it with the original author, but we must have prior approval for changes before publication.
Special cases
-
Extracts. You may run the first few lines or paragraphs of the article and then say: “Read the full article at Modern Farmer” with a link back to the original article.
-
Quotes. You may quote authors provided you include a link back to the article URL.
-
Translations. These require writer approval. To inquire about translation of a Modern Farmer article, contact us at [email protected]
-
Signed consent / copyright release forms. These are not required, provided you are following these guidelines.
-
Print. Articles can be republished in print under these same rules, with the exception that you do not need to include the links.
Tag us
When sharing the story on social media, please tag us using the following: - Twitter (@ModFarm) - Facebook (@ModernFarmerMedia) - Instagram (@modfarm)
Use our content respectfully
Modern Farmer is a nonprofit and as such we share our content for free and in good faith in order to reach new audiences. Respectfully,
-
No selling ads against our stories. It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads.
-
Don’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. We understand that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarize or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
Keep in touch
We want to hear from you if you love Modern Farmer content, have a collaboration idea, or anything else to share. As a nonprofit outlet, we work in service of our community and are always open to comments, feedback, and ideas. Contact us at [email protected].“Specialty Crops” Refer to Weird Things Like…Fruits and Vegetables
by Dan Nosowitz, Modern Farmer
March 26, 2015
Modern Farmer Weekly
Solutions Hub
Innovations, ideas and inspiration. Actionable solutions for a resilient food system.
ExploreExplore other topics
Share With Us
We want to hear from Modern Farmer readers who have thoughtful commentary, actionable solutions, or helpful ideas to share.
Submit