Hurricane Helene was the deadliest storm in America since 2017, with over 225 lives lost and many others still missing. Danny Munch, an economist with the American Farm Bureau Federation, says agriculture is an important part of the Southeast and has a long road to recovery.
“When we overlay the counties that were impacted and had massive power losses with the Ag Census data, we see that about $14.8 billion, almost $15 billion in crop and livestock production is generated in the counties affected by Hurricane Helene. Georgia led that pack with almost $6 billion in production value, followed by Florida at $3.06 billion. If we look at some of the commodities that were most in the past of Hurricane Helene, poultry was the hardest hit.”
The impact of Helene is going to linger for a long time.
“There’s a lot of infrastructure damage. I mean, we think about the cattle industry, which is a billion dollars in those counties. The dairy industry is almost $500 million. In milk, those facilities lost power. They lost infrastructure. Miles and miles of pasture fencing has been lost, and cattle have been sporadically spread over lots of different pieces of land. They are dumping milk that no longer can be sold because there’s no refrigeration.”
There are programs available to help farmers who suffered losses.
“There’s a number of Disaster Assistance Programs authorized through the Farm Bill, one of those being the Tree Assistance Program that will help some farmers, like pecan farmers, that face some losses, apple farmers to help with rehabilitating and replanting orchards. You have the Livestock Indemnity Program, which will help compensate for livestock deaths due to weather. The Emergency Assistance for Livestock, Honeybees, and Farm-Raised Fish, which will help with transporting food that was needed to livestock.”