Federal Disaster Designation Will Help Fruit Growers Affected by May Frost

By Randy Gorbman

There is some federal help on the way for fruit growers whose crops may have been damaged during an extensive frost last May.

New York’s U.S. Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand said that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has approved a request from the state for a federal Agriculture Disaster Designation after thousands of acres of crops were affected in 31 counties across upstate New York, including parts of the Finger Lakes.

Sam Filler, executive director for the New York Wine & Grape Foundation, said the crop damage affected a number of grape growers and wineries.

“They have a lot of fixed costs that go into growing the grapes, from labor to the way they need to manage the vineyard in terms of pests and disease,” Filler said. “Regardless of what they're able to harvest, those fixed costs remain the same. So if they've experienced a loss, that means there's less income from selling their grapes to cover those fixed costs.”

Hans Walter-Peterson, a viticulture extension specialist at Cornell Cooperative Extension, said it has been a tough couple of years for some are grape growers.

“There are a couple of growers that got hit with some winter injury last year; we had a couple of cold days where we got very cold during the wintertime,” said Walter-Peterson. “And that hurt yields last year for some growers, and then obviously, the spring freeze this year hit some of those same people again, and so some of them are looking at low crops two years in a row.”