Tales from Promised Land Chapter 4
After Sandy, size
matters…at least to the Small Business Administration
Sandy hit our
net pens hard and is making us miss a year of growing fish in the ocean.
The wind near our Plum Island offshore finfish aquaculture
site was clocked at just under 100 mph and the sea surge was in excess of 30
feet.
Despite our misgivings about further government
involvement, we turned to the government to see if we could get some help in
the form of disaster grants or loans. After all, there were ‘billions of
dollars’ available for businesses and homeowners. We are a farm, after all, and
what is as important as home grown food?
Well, there may be “billions of dollars” available, but
maybe it isn’t for us.
What we have found, after filling out a few libraries
worth of applications (governments always seem to be trying to fill up as many
hard drives as possible), is that size matters, at least to the U.S. Department
of Commerce Small Business Administration (SBA).
It centers around the NAICS code, which is the North American
Industry Classification System (NAICS) category number for the type of business
you have.
When you are a fish farm/fish hatchery that grows finfish,
you are classified as 112511. There are other numbers for oysters, kelp, and so
on.
Here comes the fun part: if you are spawning, rearing and
generally simply husbanding finfish, your business cannot make more than
$750,000 per year. If you gross more averaged over three years, then you are
not eligible for either grants or loans. If it costs you $700,000 to grow the
fish, it doesn’t matter. You still have $750,000 in revenues. You aren’t a
small business.
In fact, if you are raising any kind of food, from
potatoes to corn to soybeans, you are treated the same by the SBA when it comes
to eligibility for grants or disaster loans.
If you are catching fish, the only limiting factor is that
you must employ no more than 99 people.
If you are a fish wholesaler, then likewise you must
employ no more than 99 people.
Both commercial fishers and fish wholesalers are eligible
for up to $3 million in grants or loans, provided they gross no more than $29
million per year.
Now, what happens to fish that are grown on a fish farm?
Eventually, you have to sell them. Then the fish farmer becomes a fish
wholesaler, right?
According to what we hear from the SBA, you cannot change
from one classification to another, even if that is what reality is.
Heresay says that the SBA was inundated with requests for
disaster aid by farmers. Climate change has affected many farms throughout the
US. It was “too much to handle” so the SBA said they cannot provide disaster
loans to agricultural producers, farmers or ranchers with the exception of
aquaculture enterprises. One way to further make it difficult for farmers was
to set the eligibility requirements very tight so only a few would qualify.
Remember how small business was the largest job builder in
the U.S.? How farmers typified the backbone of the economy?
It appears that the U.S. no longer needs a spine. After
all, there are “billions of dollars” available for disaster relief. But maybe
not for us.
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