LANCASTER COUNTY, Pa. \u2014 At an orchard in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro walked through rows of damaged trees.<\/p>\n
Trees that should be blooming are now showing the impact of the late-April freeze.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe pretty much have a total loss across the state,\u201d said Corey McCleaf of Cherry Hill Orchards.<\/p>\n
And it is not just in Lancaster County. Farms in Berks County are also feeling it. Weaver\u2019s Orchard shared video online showing visible damage to crops.<\/p>\n
Farmers say the freeze hit at the worst possible time, right as crops were starting to grow.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe loss here is staggering. It is serious and unparalleled compared to previous losses,\u201d said Pennsylvania Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding.<\/p>\n
The governor is now asking for a federal disaster declaration to bring in help. But he says the state is not waiting.<\/p>\n
Officials are also looking at ways to redirect funding, including tapping into a roughly $75 million avian influenza fund.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to be able to flex some of those dollars to help those fruit farmers who have been impacted by this freeze,\u201d Shapiro said.<\/p>\n
State leaders say that funding could provide short-term help while they continue pushing for federal support.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LANCASTER COUNTY, Pa. \u2014 At an orchard in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro walked through rows of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":187598,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[41192,349,33,3685,28,128,130,129,10674],"class_list":["post-187597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-agriculture-secretary","tag-berks-county","tag-josh-shapiro","tag-lancaster-county","tag-pennsylvania","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-russell-redding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}