Other marketing orders are structured to include the entire industry and not just for a selected group to be a part of. It would seem appropriate to be as inclusive as possible.

Camron, do you mean including retail outlets, like grocery stores, florists, etc? Not sure what you’re thinking on “the entire industry”?

There is a provision in the Draft Order that would allow for a re-allocation of board seats after adoption to align with assessments being paid. Wouldn't this allow for increased boards for importers thus re-aligning the oversight and minimizing domestic board?

Who selects the board members?

@Val, I mean going below the de minimus level so that all farms would be included. I have run mandatory assessment marketing orders that include everyone and then provide an option for applying for an "opt out" instead of simply setting an arbitrary threshold.

Cameron, the reallocating of board seats is very concerning. it seems like the domestic share of seats could disappear in a few years.

One of the other challenges with the threshold is that USDA does not have nationwide data and so how would the oversight be handled, unless all are under the provisions of the Marketing Order?

2 or 3% for domestic marketing right now, but importers will control the board. how long is that going to last for?

The domestic promotion is not mandatory and is discretionary for board allocation on an annual basis

Is there a plan to hire a marketing firm or hire a staff of your own?

the Christmas tree promotion board assesses a MUCH smaller % of sales than this proposal would. in addition, it assesses all farms over 500 trees. in addition, all members of the board are domestic growers

the majority of the industry is imported flowers. every single domestic grower could be against this and it could still get pushed through

The draft order does not have provisions for a vote for board members, but rather calls for nominees to simply be put forward to the Secretary

How will collection be enforced?

It would have been great to have industry wide town halls with everyone who would fall under the Marketing Order - both Domestic and Importers together, since the thoughts would be that this is industry wide the webinars would be nice to hear from the importers as well - keeping constituents separate doesn't seem very inclusive of the whole industry

Why are you starting with such a high assessment of 1% compared to the other examples provided. As we all know this is a much more significant % of margins, especially for domestic producers.

dues for my Christmas tree farm are around .0012% of sales to put things in perspective

The California Cutflower Commision had an assessment of 0.45% of sales and was decisively voted down by the California flower farmers!

How is the feedback from surveys going to be released and will there be entire industrywide town hall meetings to discuss and provide collective feedback?

dues for our tree farm are .125% rather*

we need to be as inclusive as possible - the challenges of keeping the industry separate seems counter to what the spirit of the Marketing Order is proposing

I love the idea, im worried of the %, 19MIL is a whole lot of marketing..... lots of talented marketing staff in this industry, now more than ever,

You should start with a much smaller assessment and budget to prove value first like the Christmas tree example.

Thank you very much!