Comment from William Schwarz

We are a commercial fresh market peach grower in Wayne County, New York. We also have an on farm nursery to produce our own peach and plum trees. The nursery was established in part to insulate ourselves from plum pox by growing trees from seed and using budwood from our own disease free trees. We use all such produced nursery stock in our orchards and do not sell any plant material to the public or other growers So far no plum pox has been found in our trees. Nevertheless several years ago our nursery was "quarantined" because plum pox was detected several miles away. We were given an ultimatum of either replanting all the nursery trees in our existing orchard or burning the same in the presence of a state inspector. the deadline gave several months to carry out this operation. we opted to move the small trees to our mature tree planting. Needless to say these unscheduled activities caused considerable disruption and added costs to our operation and consumed a significant amount of management time. Then we were informed that because we were not a "commercial nursery" as defined by the state of New York we were not eligible for any compensation. The proposed rule repeatedly makes reference to "commercial stone fruit orchards and fruit tree nurseries" without defining what constitutes a fruit tree nursery. I believe we have a valid fruit tree nursery whether or not we sell any stock to the public or not. Our nursery has certainly been impacted by the plum pox quarantine and as such should be defined as a 'stone fruit tree nursery eligible for compensation'. If the intent of this rule is to exclude on farm nurseries this needs to be spelled out explicitly along with some explanation as to why such an action has been taken.