USDA on Nov. 19 announced the Marketing Assistance for Specialty Crops Initiative, which will provide $2 billion to help growers maintain a strong domestic supply and expand market opportunities.

Applications are expected to open in December.

The program aims to help producers who typically have higher marketing costs related to tenderness and perishability; specialized handling and transport equipment with temperature and humidity control; packaging; moving perishables to market quickly; and higher labor costs.

The U.S. specialty crop sector, including potatoes, “has faced a series of unforeseen challenges over the last four years,” National Potato Council president Bob Mattive, a Colorado grower, said in a council release. USDA’s initiative “recognizes these ongoing pressures and offers the opportunity for economic relief to impacted family farms.” In making these farms eligible, USDA’s action “also acknowledges the importance of the potato industry to the U.S. economy.”

Recent challenges include increased production costs and competition, according to the council.

The new relief “also highlights the need for the certainty offered by a fully reauthorized five-year farm bill, providing long term investments in research, trade, pest and disease exclusion, crop insurance and other vital programs,” Mattive said. Congress is yet to pass a replacement for the 2018 Farm Bill.

The Specialty Crop Farm Bill Alliance issued a statement in support of the USDA marketing initiative as well as passage of a new bipartisan farm bill.

The last four years have been turbulent for the specialty crop industry “due to skyrocketing costs of production inputs, especially labor, as well as competition from imports with lower labor costs,” according to the alliance. As for the farm bill, “the status quo is not sustainable, and the comparatively modest investments we’ve requested would be transformational to the specialty crop industry.”

USDA also announced creation of the Commodity Storage Assistance Program, to provide $140 million to help producers gain access to a packing house, grain elevator or other facility necessary for marketing.

The new specialty crop marketing and commodity storage programs “will be important to every corner of the United States, but they come at an especially critical time for southeastern farmers, who will face a difficult and long recovery after this season’s devastating hurricanes,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said.