As Gordon Trowbridge reports in The Detroit News notes this morning, Michigan's important fruit and vegetable sector has heard the farm bill wake up call.

Food Fight: State vegetable, fruit growers want bigger piece of the pie, as the article is aptly titled, starts like this:

After decades of watching corn, wheat and soybean growers rake in big-money payments from the federal government, fruit and vegetable growers in Michigan and other states are hoping for a bigger slice of the multibillion-dollar farm bill Congress will take up this year.

The issue holds special importance for Michigan, which is unique among Midwestern states in its dependence on so-called "specialty crops" -- those other than commodities such as wheat, corn, soybeans and rice. Michigan's $5 billion-a-year farm industry is at or near the top nationally for crops such as cherries, berries, edible beans and asparagus. But any changes threaten to roil decades of federal farm policy, which has focused almost exclusively on those big commodity crops.

It won't be easy. But Michigan's producers have a powerful ally as the 2007 farm bill debate gets underway: Debbie Stabenow, a resourceful, dogged politician who's taken up their cause. Trowbridge again:

U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Lansing., who sits on the Senate Agriculture Committee, says one of her top priorities this year is to add new specialty-crop provisions to the multiyear farm bill before Congress...

If Stanbenow has anything to do with it--and she will--Michigan's producers will come out of this round anything but a...