New York state is seeking a disaster declaration after officials say frost conditions in April led to losses of more than $30 million for growers.<\/p>\n
Gov. Kathy Hochul\u2019s office said Friday that many fruit operations, including apple, peach, plum, cherry, grape and strawberry growers, were impacted after an early bloom due to warmer-than-normal temperatures was followed by freezing temperatures that dipped below 23 degrees last month.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Officials say the disaster declaration request was made to the United States Department of Agriculture on May 20, which would allow affected farmers to apply for USDA low-interest emergency loans. Farmers in eligible counties would then have eight months from the date of the disaster declaration to apply for relief programs.<\/p>\n
Hochul\u2019s office says a survey conducted by the state Department of Agriculture and Markets estimates that growers are facing anywhere from 15% to 100% losses to date.<\/p>\n
\u201cNew York\u2019s growers are second to none and many have taken a significant hit, with some reporting upwards of a 100 percent loss of their crop and millions in economic loss,\u201d Hochul said in a statement. \u201cThis hardship follows a trend we are becoming all too familiar with \u2014 temperature swings that are indicative of our changing climate. This time, our fruit growers are taking the brunt of frost conditions that damaged already blooming buds and shoots. I urge the USDA to take swift action to declare a disaster designation for the impacted counties and help our growers get the assistance they need to recover and move forward. I also encourage New Yorkers to continue to support their local growers, whether it\u2019s by buying fresh local products from the farm or purchasing the many products made from New York fruit.\u201d<\/p>\n
The state lists Albany, Columbia, Dutchess, Erie, Greene, Niagara, Chautauqua, Onondaga, Orange, Putnam, Schuyler, Sullivan, Ulster, Westchester and Yates as impacted counties. Contiguous counties include Cayuga, Chemung, Cortland, Delaware, Erie, Madison, Monroe, Ontario, Orleans, Oswego, Rensselaer, Rockland, Saratoga, Schenectady, Schoharie, Seneca, Steuben, Tompkins and Wayne.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York state is seeking a disaster declaration after officials say frost conditions in April led to losses…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249670,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[10511,8254,8253,109,116,9,11,10,49,51,50,12,112,87],"class_list":["post-249669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-adam-penale","tag-agriculture","tag-app-agriculture","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-app-ny-state-of-politics","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-news","tag-ny-state-of-politics","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}