Ice storm shows nurseries a poor fit for crop insurance

Staehely is president of the Oregon Association of Nurseries, which has been raising awareness of the problem for years.

As fate would have it, January's ice storm caused considerable damage to her nursery.

"Now I'm the poster child for how this can affect a business," she said.

A massive shade structure's retractable roof collapsed under the weight of ice at Columbia Nursery.

Staehely estimated the structure damage at more than $125,000, but it won't be clear for months or even years how much nursery stock has been killed or harmed by the collapse or while exposed to freezing weather.

The shade building contained stock that needed extra protection from the elements, plus two years of "babies" - propagated plants that won't be sold for six to eight years.

While that's a small fraction of the nursery's total stock, it's a high percentage of sales for 2030-2032.

"We lost a lot of that material," Staehely said. And that can't be replaced because new shrubs and trees won't mature on schedule.

Farm bill lobbying

Jeff Stone, Oregon Association of Nurseries executive director, estimated $1 million in structure damage at 12 businesses during the ice storm - far less than anticipated.

Greenhouses and similar structures such as shade buildings aren't eligible for insurance except at exorbitant prices, experts said.

Determining plant losses from cold exposure is more difficult. Some damaged nursery stock can rebound with extra nurturing and time, while others that appear healthy now won't be market quality.

Despite heavy losses to the "harvest" years from now, nursery plants generally aren't covered by USDA crop insurance, Stone said.

He'll lobby for changes to the new farm bill in Washington, D.C., in March, and said the ice storm will be "exhibit A" to show how disaster relief doesn't work for nurseries.

The OAN also will meet directly with the USDA Farm Service Agency to request changes.

"You can't treat a nursery operation like a corn operation, where you need to have 90% to 100% loss," Stone said.

A policy isn't set up to recognize losses years in the future or to deal with a complicated industry with many crops.

While nurseries are the top ag commodity in Oregon with earnings of $1.3 billion in 2021, they're a minnow on the national scale compared to other crops, Stone said.

The 2008 ice storm

Many nurseries are small businesses that can't absorb heavy losses easily.

But the impact of the January ice storm won't be as significant as 2008, Stone said.

Jerry Simnitt, owner of Simnitt Nursery and Staehely's father, said he lost 10 hoop houses in that storm.

"It was a horrible feeling," Simnitt said.

It took about six years to get all the greenhouses back up and filled with stock, but Simnitt felt fortunate because his business survived.

Other nurseries hit by the 2008 ice storm were then hammered by the recession that followed and closed down.