DEADLINE TO APPLY IS JANUARY 8, 2025
The Marketing Assistance for Specialty Crops (MASC) program provides financial assistance to specialty crop producers to help them expand domestic markets or develop new markets for their crops.
MASC helps specialty crop producers offset higher marketing costs related to:
- Tenderness and perishability of specialty crops like fruits, vegetables, floriculture, nursery crops and herbs;
- Specialized handling and transport equipment with temperature and humidity control;
- Packaging to prevent damage;
- Moving perishables to market quickly; and
- Higher labor costs.
MASC covers the following commercially marketed specialty crops grown in the US:
- Fruits (fresh, dried);
- Vegetables (including dry edible beans and peas, mushrooms, and vegetable seed);
- Tree nuts;
- Nursery crops, Christmas trees, and floriculture;
- Culinary and medicinal herbs and spices; and
- Honey, hops, maple sap, tea, turfgrass, and grass seed.
Eligible producers or legal entities must:
- Have an average adjusted gross income (AGI) of less than $900,000 for tax years 2021, 2022, and 2023, unless the producer or legal entity’s average adjusted gross farm income is at least 75 percent of their average AGI;
- Be in the business of producing a specialty crop at the time of application and be entitled to an ownership share and share in the risk of producing a specialty crop that will be sold in calendar year 2025;
- Be a U.S. citizen, resident alien, partnership, corporation, limited liability company, or other organizational structure organized under state law, Indian Tribe or Tribal Organization, or a foreign person or foreign entity who meets certain eligibility requirements;
- Comply with the provisions of the “Highly Erodible Land and Wetland Conservation” regulations, often called the conservation compliance provisions; and
- Not have a controlled substance violation.
More info can be found here: Marketing Assistance for Specialty Crops Program Fact Sheet
