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From Drew Gruenburg at SAF:
SAF’s efforts to retain funding for two important floriculture reports paid off in mid-November when Congress directed the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) to reconsider its earlier decision to cut the reports, clearing the way for the industry to work further with the agency.
The legislation, which is awaiting the president’s signature, states:
“On October 4, 2011, the National Agricultural Statistics Service announced it was eliminating or reducing the frequency of 14 reports. . . . The conferees direct NASS to reconsider its decision . . . and to reinstate as many reports as possible . . . [and to] prioritize the reports that do not have similar information captured by other NASS surveys and reports or would be otherwise infrequently published. The conferees remind the agency that reducing or eliminating any survey or report is further subject to the reprogramming requirements in this Act.”
The newly-passed USDA budget reflects the hard work of SAF and other groups to overturn the agency’s earlier decision and “paves the way for SAF to meet with NASS to urge continuation” of the Floriculture Crops Summary and the Nursery Crops survey, said Lin Schmale, SAF’s senior director of government relations.
Although down $391 million from last year, the new USDA 2012 budget avoids the cuts made earlier this year in the House-passed version, Schmale said, and keeps other programs beneficial to floriculture intact. For example, funding for the Floriculture and Nursery Research Initiative was untouched, and pest and disease management programs under the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) declined slightly from last year, “but remain strong,” according to Schmale.
Another area in which SAF helped retain funding important to the floral industry, Schmale said, is the IR-4, a “strong, often unsung,” program that helps fund research on new chemicals for greenhouse and nursery use. The House-passed bill had lumped IR-4 funding into another line item, leaving it unclear that the program would be continued at or near its current level. SAF met with House and Senate appropriations staff this summer, as well as with USDA top officials, to urge that IR-4 be retained as a separate line item in the USDA budget, to avoid future internal administrative decisions that might reduce it, Schmale said. As a result, the final budget reinstated IR-4 as a distinct program, keeping it safe for another year.