%1

The Canastra family, owners of New Bedford’s (Mass.) seafood auction, closed a deal to buy out groundfish giant Blue Harvest Fisheries from bankruptcy, a move finalized Wednesday with the approval of a federal judge, the New Bedford Light reported. After a short bidding war, Cassie Canastra submitted the highest bid of $12 million on Monday, beating out the second-highest bid from O’Hara Corporation, which is a part owner of New Bedford-based Eastern Fisheries, by $750,000. The sale includes “all the vessels, all the permits” that once belonged to Blue Harvest Fisheries. It includes eight vessels and 48 state and federal fishing permits, representing about 13% of all Northeast groundfish permits or about 250 million pounds of quota for the current fishing year. The sale marks the final chapter in the saga of Blue Harvest Fisheries, which was founded in 2015 by the Dutch billionaire Brenninkmeijer family, through their Manhattan-based private equity firm. The company quickly expanded to become the single-largest groundfish company on the East Coast before declaring bankruptcy in September and liquidating its assets.

The recent spate of wet weather has been nothing short of disastrous for many upstate New York apple-picking farms that make most of their annual income from tourists filling bags with Galas, McIntoshes and Granny Smiths during two months, the New York Times reported. Nearly 11 inches of rain have fallen on the region in September and October, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 33 percent above normal. But those numbers don’t capture the true extent of the bad luck: The wettest days have disproportionately fallen on weekends, when pick-your-own farms receive most of their visitors. Commercial orchard crews work rain or shine, and this year’s downpours haven’t kept them from getting the apples off the trees. The general public, though, prefers to pick apples in nice weather. Normally the apple picking season closes at the end of October, but with so much fruit left on the trees this year, some farms are planning to extend into November, hoping the weather will stay warm enough to preserve the picking for another week or two. Most, however, have resigned themselves to the idea that there’s no chance of making up for all the income they’ve lost. For some, that will mean taking on new debt, or delaying repairs, or putting off equipment purchases for another year.

A fee of a quarter-cent per bushel on initial grain sales is poised to go into effect Friday to rebuild a state fund that protects farmers from dealer and warehouse failures, the Des Moines Register reported. That fee — along with participation fees for dealers and warehouses — is projected to generate about $6 million annually for the state’s Grain Indemnity Fund. The fund has been in operation for about four decades and pays farmers for their losses if they are unable to collect payments from dealers or their grain from warehouses. It pays up to $300,000 per claim. The fee hasn’t been collected since 1989 because the fund has long had a balance in excess of a state-mandated $3 million minimum. The fee ceases after the fund surpasses $8 million. Under previous law, its reinstatement was supposed to happen in July, but state lawmakers delayed the start for two months to allow dealers to adjust their accounting procedures to collect the fee. Proceeds are paid to the state quarterly. State agriculture officials have sought in recent months to prepare licensed dealers — including farmer cooperatives — for the change. The indemnity fund’s balance is about $380,000. The balance had been declining for years, but that trend accelerated in the past two years when three grain dealers went bankrupt and couldn’t pay all their debts to farmers. The most recent was Global Processing Inc. in Kanawha, which specialized in organic and non-genetically modified soybeans. Soybean producers who dealt with Global filed claims that totaled about $3.4 million with the indemnity fund’s board, but the board rejected about $1.5 million worth of claims, mostly because they were for sales that were too old. State law requires those sales to occur within six months of a failure, and some of the claims were for sales that happened up to three years ago.

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s disaster declaration for certain salmon and crab fisheries in Washington and Alaska opens the door for financial relief as part of an omnibus spending bill being negotiated by U.S. lawmakers, the Associated Press reported. The declaration Friday covers Bristol Bay king crab harvests suspended for two years, and the snow crab harvest that will be canceled for the first time in 2023. Also covered are 2021 salmon harvests from Alaska’s Kuskokwim River and 2019 and 2020 Washington salmon fisheries, The Seattle Times reported. Washington’s and Alaska’s congressional delegations can now try to secure funds in the omnibus bill that must pass in order to fund the U.S. government through the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. The money would help fishing and crabbing fleets and the communities that depend on them. Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers is hoping for aid that could top $280 million to the crab industry and communities where the catch is processed. A Commerce Department disaster declaration, under federal law, can be made for a commercial fishery failure due to causes such as a run failure beyond the control of fishery managers. Some Washington and Alaska fisheries have been buffeted by marine heat waves that appear to have reduced survival rates for some species, such as the snow crab populations, which collapsed after temperatures spiked in the Bering Sea.