Farmers regroup after Hurricane Michael

Oct 15, 2018

The storm damaged parts of Florida, Georgia and Alabama

By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com

Producers caught in the path of a major storm are beginning to assess damages and making plans to move forward.

Hurricane Michael brought reported winds of 130 mph (209 km/h) and flash flooding in communities in Florida, Georgia and Alabama since Friday. Flooding also occurred in the Carolinas only about a month after Hurricane Florence made landfall there.

Farmers realize that rebuilding will take time.

“The damage is worse than what we thought the worst could be,” Terry Hollifield, executive director of the Georgia/Florida Soybean Association, told Farms.com today. “We still don’t have good pictures of the whole situation because it’s difficult for people to get into some of the affected areas to make reports.”

Crop producers may be able to continue harvesting but will be faced with storage challenges.

“They’ll probably be able to harvest some early planted soybeans and some peanuts,” Hollifield said. “But once they do, storing them is going to be tough. Grain bins were damaged, virtually all of the elevators are shut down and peanut warehouses are going to be limited on what they can take in.”

Livestock producers are tasked with repairing and rebuilding some of their operations.

But roaming cattle and infrastructure damage will make herding difficult, Hollifield said.

“Fences are down, barns are gone and there’s hundreds of cattle roaming,” he said. “Even if you’re able to corral the animals, there’s no guarantee right now that you can keep them from escaping again.”

But if any group of people can come out of a situation like this, it’s farmers, Hollifield said.

Farmers in Alabama are also faced with an uphill battle.

Hurricane Michael wiped out about US$100-million worth of the state’s cotton crop, ABC3340 reported on Friday.

Cotton accounted for more than US$265-million worth of Alabama’s ag production in 2017.

One producer estimates his losses are about US$1 million.

“It makes me sick to even be out here standing in it to see the devastation of (the crop),” Jeff McCallister, who grows about 1,000 acres of cotton in Houston County, Ala., told ABC3340. “The dollar figure for us is just gone. What started out as being a crop that was going to be one of the best crops we have ever had, has been torn down to just nothing.”

View of Hurricane Michael from space/NOAA photo

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