It’s been more than a week since Hurricane Helene rampaged through the Southeast, and especially in the mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina, the extent of the damage is just now coming to light. Bob Etheridge, state director of the North Carolina Farm Service Agency, spoke with WPTF’s Chris Edwards and said it’s a horrendous situation. Unlike flooding on flat land, Etheridge says the power of water in the mountains is magnified.
“One farmer said he had four and a half acres of land, and after the flood went through, he had an acre and a half left. Because he knew the bottom lands, and then, you know, and in the between those hills, that’s what he farmed, and on the slopes and lot of that’s gone.”
Etheridge has been taking call after call from farmers who hardly know where to start to rebuild. It’s unknown how much livestock was lost in the storm.
“One farmer called on Sunday. He cut his fences so his cattle could get out and still, still lost cattle in the flood. Many on this could just, I shouldn’t say all. Many of the cattle were lost in the flood.”
A dairy farmer said his operation was wiped out as well.
“I got a call yesterday from a dairy up in Haywood County. The dairy, part of the dairy washed away. You got a dairy, you got to milk those cows twice a day, and they had no way to store their stuff, and had to move them. And that’ll be another case where we’ll have to come in and try to help them. Hopefully, at some point down the road, we can restore them and get back to business.”
This year has been a tale of contrasts for Carolina agriculture, and the irony of it is not lost on Etheridge.
“You know, that’s what adds insult to injury for North Carolina. At one point this year, 99 of the 100 counties were in some form of drought. And then we had the hurricane came in Down East and devastated, and now we have a hurricane in the West. That’s, you know, it’s like an apocalyptic flood.”
Etheridge assured farmers, the FSA and all of USDA and other federal agencies are working tirelessly to help.
“We have funds to help pay for animals they’ve lost to provide feed for the animals. They just signed those expedited programs over the weekend. A lot of our folks in Washington worked over the weekend to really speed up a lot of this stuff that hadn’t been done before.”
North Carolina FSA Director Bob Etheridge.