Tart Cherries Grown in the States of Michigan, et al.; Free and Restricted Percentages for the 2024-25 Crop Year

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE <SUBAGY>Agricultural Marketing Service</SUBAGY> <CFR>7 CFR Part 930</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Doc. No. AMS-SC-24-0061]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Tart Cherries Grown in the States of Michigan, et al.; Free and Restricted Percentages for the 2024-25 Crop Year</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Agricultural Marketing Service, Department of Agriculture (USDA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This proposed rule would implement a recommendation from the Cherry Industry Administrative Board (Board) to establish free market tonnage percentages (free percentages) and restricted percentages for the 2024-25 crop year under the Federal marketing order for tart cherries grown in the states of Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin. This action would establish the proportion of tart cherries from the 2024-25 crop which may be handled in commercial outlets. This action should stabilize marketing conditions by adjusting supply to meet market demand and help improve grower returns. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received by December 18, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Interested persons are invited to submit written comments concerning this proposed rule. Comments can be sent to the Docket Clerk, Market Development Division, Specialty Crops Program, AMS, USDA, 1400 Independence Avenue SW, STOP 0237, Washington, DC 20250-0237. Comments can also be sent to the Docket Clerk electronically by email: <E T="03">MarketingOrderComment@usda.gov</E> or via the internet at: <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Comments should reference the document number, the date, and the page number of this issue of the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . Comments submitted in response to this proposed rule will be included in the record, will be made available to the public, and can be viewed at: <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Please be advised that the identity of the individuals or entities submitting the comments will be made public on the internet at the address provided above. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Steven W. Kauffman, Marketing Specialist, or Christian D. Nissen, Chief, Southeast Region Branch, Market Development Division, Specialty Crops Program, AMS, USDA; telephone: (863) 324-3375; or email: <E T="03">Steven.Kauffman@usda.gov</E> or <E T="03">Christian.Nissen@usda.gov.</E> Small businesses may request information on complying with this regulation by contacting Antoinette Carter, Market Development Division, Specialty Crops Program, AMS, USDA, 1400 Independence Avenue SW, STOP 0237, Washington, DC 20250-0237; telephone: (202) 720-8085; or email: <E T="03">Antoinette.Carter@usda.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> This action, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 553, proposes to amend regulations issued to carry out a marketing order as defined in 7 CFR 900.2(j). This proposed rule is issued under Marketing Order No. 930, as amended (7 CFR part 930), regulating the handling of tart cherries produced in the states of Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin. Part 930 (referred to as the “Order”) is effective under the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937, as amended (7 U.S.C. 601-674), hereinafter referred to as the “Act.” The Board locally administers the Order and is comprised of growers and handlers of tart cherries operating within the production area, and a public member. The Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) is issuing this proposed rule in conformance with Executive Order 12866, as amended by Executive Order 13563. Executive Orders 12866 and 13563 direct agencies to assess all costs and benefits of available regulatory alternatives and, if regulation is necessary, to select regulatory approaches that maximize net benefits (including potential economic, environmental, public health and safety effects, distributive impacts, and equity). Executive Order 13563 emphasizes the importance of quantifying both costs and benefits, reducing costs, harmonizing rules, and promoting flexibility. This action falls within a category of regulatory actions that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) exempted from Executive Order 12866 review. This proposed rule has been reviewed under Executive Order 13175, “Consultation and Coordination with Indian Tribal Governments,” which requires Federal agencies to consider whether their rulemaking actions would have Tribal implications. AMS has determined that this proposed rule is unlikely to have substantial direct effects on one or more Indian Tribes, on the relationship between the Federal Government and Indian Tribes, or on the distribution of power and responsibilities between the Federal Government and Indian Tribes. This proposed rule has been reviewed under Executive Order 12988, “Civil Justice Reform.” Under the Order provisions now in effect, free and restricted percentages may be established for tart cherries for the 2024-25 crop year. This proposed rule would establish free and restricted percentages for the 2024-2025 crop year, beginning July 1, 2024, through June 30, 2025. The Act provides that administrative proceedings must be exhausted before parties may file suit in court. Under section 608c(15)(A) of the Act, any handler subject to an order may file with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) a petition stating that the order, any provision of the order, or any obligation imposed in connection with the order is not in accordance with law and request a modification of the order or to be exempted therefrom. Such handler is afforded the opportunity for a hearing on the petition. After the hearing, USDA would rule on the petition. The Act provides that the district court of the United States in any district in which the handler is an inhabitant, or has his or her principal place of business, has jurisdiction to review USDA's ruling on the petition, provided an action is filed not later than 20 days after the date of the entry of the ruling. This proposed rule would establish the proportion of tart cherries from the 2024-25 crop year which may be handled at 81 percent free and 19 percent restricted. The Secretary of Agriculture (Secretary) has determined that designating free and restricted percentages of tart cherries for the 2024-25 crop year would effectuate the declared policy of the Act to stabilize marketing conditions by adjusting supply to meet market demand and help improve grower returns. These recommendations were made by the Board at a meeting on September 12, 2024. Section 930.51(a) of the Order provides the Secretary authority to regulate volume by designating free and restricted percentages for any tart cherries acquired by handlers in a given crop year. Section 930.50 prescribes procedures for computing an optimum supply based on sales history and for calculating these free and restricted percentages. Free percentage volume may be shipped to any market, while restricted percentage volume must be held by handlers in a primary or secondary reserve, be diverted, or used for exempt purposes as prescribed in §§ 930.159 and 930.162. Exempt purposes include, in part, the development of new products, sales into new markets, the development of export markets, and charitable contributions. Sections 930.55 through 930.57 prescribe procedures for inventory reserves. For tart cherries held in reserve, handlers would be responsible for storage and would retain title of the tart cherries. Under § 930.52, only districts in which the average annual production of cherries over the prior three years has exceeded six million pounds are subject to volume regulation, and any district producing a crop that is less than 50 percent of its annual average processed production in the previous five years would be exempt from any volume regulation. The regulated districts for the 2024-25 crop year would be: District 1—Northern Michigan; District 2—Central Michigan; District 3—Southern Michigan; District 4—New York; District 7—Utah; District 8—Washington; and District 9—Wisconsin. Districts 5 and 6 (Oregon and Pennsylvania, respectively) would not be regulated for the 2024-25 season. Demand for tart cherries and tart cherry products tends to be relatively stable despite the variance in production volume that the industry may experience from year to year. Additionally, once processed, tart cherries can be stored and carried over from crop year to crop year, further impacting supply. The Board is aware of this economic relationship and focuses on using the volume control provisions in the marketing order to balance supply and demand to stabilize industry returns. Pursuant to § 930.50, the Board meets on or about July 1 of each crop year to review sales data, inventory data, current crop forecasts, and market conditions for the upcoming season and, if necessary, to recommend preliminary free and restricted percentages if anticipated supply would exceed demand. After harvest is complete, but no later than September 15 of each crop year, the Board meets again to update its calculations using actual production data, consider any necessary adjustments to the preliminary percentages, and determine if final free and restricted percentages should be recommended to the Secretary. The Board uses sales history, inventory, and production data to determine whether a surplus exists and how much volume should be restricted to maintain optimum supply. The optimum supply represents the desirable volume of tart cherries that should be available for sale in the coming crop year. The optimum supply value is calculated by determining the average free sales of the prior three years, reduced by average sales that represent dispositions of exempt cherries and rest ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 37k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━