Georgia farmers along the coast and in bordering inland counties have been clearing debris, fixing fences and assessing damage to row crops since Hurricane Matthew blasted Georgia's coast as a Category 3 storm the night of Oct. 7 and in the early morning hours of Oct. 8.
Assessing the damage
On Oct. 12, Georgia Farm Bureau President Gerald Long and Georgia Commissioner of Agriculture Gary Black toured farms in Tattnall, Evans and Screven counties that sustained damage typical of that suffered by many farms in the multi-county area impacted by Matthew.
"My heart goes out to all of the farmers affected by this storm. This is following behind low commodity prices and will impact the local economy," Long said. "This will not just be a one-year hit, but a long-term effect that will take years for our growers to overcome. We at Farm Bureau will continue to work with the department to do anything we can to assist these farmers."
Hurricane Matthew's most visible damage in the multi-county area is apparent in pecan orchards where the storm left pecan trees uprooted, leaning or broken. Many of the felled gentle giants were mature trees that were 30-years-old and older.
Fields of early cotton that farmers weren't able to finish picking before Matthew blew through were ravaged by the heavy winds and rain, which stripped a significant percentage of cotton in these fields from the burrs leaving the ground littered with white fiber or hanging by a thread in sagging strips.
Peanut damage is still yet to be determined and will vary depending on whether nuts had already been dug and were above ground where they've been able to dry out in the week since the storm. Peanuts that were still in the ground when the storm hit may experience more damage as farmers were delayed in digging them a week or more due to wet soil.
Georgia Farm Bureau 7th District Director Ben Boyd asked Long and Black to visit GFB's 7th District to get a firsthand look at the crop damage farmers in the area are contending with from Hurricane Matthew.
Long and Black spoke with about 50 farmers and agribusiness leaders from Screven and Bulloch Counties who turned out to talk about storm damage during a stop at a pecan orchard owned by Screven County pecan producer Carl Huggins. Long and Black also visited the farm of Tattnall County farmer Robert Dasher. GFB 7th District Director Gary Bell arranged a stop at the farm of Evans County farmer Del Beasley.
Black encouraged farmers with storm damage to document their damage by taking photos before beginning the cleanup process and keeping a list of the names and contact information for everyone they speak to with state or federal agencies regarding storm damage.
"After surveying the damage I think it is safe to say that it is certainly not as bad as it could have been, but it is quite a bit worse than we expected it to be. It can be hard to quantify damages in situations like these. The losses that occur are not always clear-cut," Black said. "Anytime you have a major disruption to the production cycle, you are going to have a cost associated with it as well."
Long explained how Farm Bureau helps farmers by telling their story and why it's important for farmers to support the organization as members so it can be there for them during times like this.
"If you're not a Farm Bureau member, you need to be a member for times like this," Long said. "Ben got on the phone as one of our district directors and told me about the damage and said y'all needed help. I talked to Commissioner Black and then today we're here with y'all. Georgia Farm Bureau can help by hearing your concerns and passing those along to our elected officials and to the consumers through our television and print media."
Pecan orchards decimated
Huggins estimated he had 350 mature pecan trees suffer some type of damage in his 350-acre orchard. He had planned to start harvesting his pecans on Oct. 10 before Hurricane Matthew blew through. He said some of his damaged trees would have made 400 to 500 pounds of pecans.
"It's just one of those things in life. It could have been worse. We're just going to say we were blessed and move on," Huggins said smiling. "We all got up the morning after the storm came through, and we've all got our health. You have to keep a good mindset and look at the positives."
Screven County Farm Service Agency Director Julia Sharp said she'd heard there were at least 2,000 pecan trees down in the county.
Newman Pryor and Kyle Sommer, who grow about 700 acres of pecans in Sceven, Bulloch, Chatham, Effingham and Jenkins counties for Pryor Farms, had counted 400 damaged trees as of Oct. 12 but were still counting the felled trees in their orchards.
"A good percentage of our crop will be lost. It could be as much as half," Pryor said. "The trees that had the best crop on them got destroyed because the limbs were the heaviest. The better orchards were really broken up."
While most pecan producers have crop insurance on the nuts the trees produce, crop insurance for the trees isn't available. The loss of the trees is a huge setback because it can take more than 10 years for a young tree to come into production and young trees don't produce the volume of pecans that older, mature trees do, several pecan growers said.
"It's not just this year's crop that's going to be impacted," Sommer said. "Our children are going to feel the impact of this disaster years from now."
Evans County farmer Del Beasley began growing pecans 11 years ago when he got out of tobacco.
"These trees at 30 years old were at their absolute prime," Beasley said. "They stay in their prime for about 25 years. The last, best part of their life is gone, and it will take 12 to 15 years for the new trees to start turning a profit."
Many of Beasley's trees weren't completely uprooted but were pushed to the ground with the trunks still in the soil. Beasley said he's talked to a pecan specialist and a veteran pecan producer who both advised against trying to salvage the trees. They told him attempts to do so by other producers after past storms didn't yield good results.
Beasley had already spent time and money prepping his orchard to begin harvest when Hurricane Matthew struck. He's hoping the trees that weren't completely uprooted will mature out their nuts, and he'll be able to harvest those.
Picking up the pieces
Sharp said pecan producers can apply for assistance through the Emergency Conservation Program to help clean up their orchards and possibly replant new trees.
"The main thing farmers need to do before they do any cleanup is come see us [local FSA office]," Sharp said. "It wouldn't hurt for the producer to take their own pictures but someone from the FSA office needs to visit the farm and take official pictures. After that we'll process their paper work and they'll be able to do their cleanup and then they'll come back in and submit their cleanup bills and we'll process the paper work to get them reimbursed."
Sharp said farmers should contact their crop insurance agents to file claims on losses with their row crops.
Huggins said he plans to methodically clean up his orchard.
"We've got a plan to go through the grove line by line," Huggins said. "We're cleaning up all the limbs and picking up all the pecans we can. As we pick the limbs up we're going to shake them to get what nuts we can off. It's just going to be a slow methodical process."
Low cotton
You won't hear any cotton farmers who were growing the crop in Hurricane Matthew's path say they're living in high cotton this
year.
Cotton damage is more readily apparent in fields that were defoliated just before the storm struck, but there's also considerable damage to fields that had yet to be defoliated and to fields defoliated earlier this fall that had experienced regrowth due to residual fertilizer in the fields and rain from Tropical Storm Hermine in early September.
Four days after the storm on Oct. 12, Bulloch County farmer Lee Cromley estimated one of his fields had suffered damage that will cost him 20 percent of his crop yield for that 300-acare field and additional quality damage that could cost him an additional 20 percent price reduction.
"We had about seven inches of rain with constant wind about 50 miles per hour for about 12 hours," Cromley said. "It really was just too much. It beat a lot of the cotton out [of the burrs]. The storm hit at the most vulnerable time it could hit for this crop because the cotton was fluffed out ready to be picked."
Cromley said he should defoliate his crop again before trying to harvest it but won't because that would be another production cost he can't afford. He was hoping to resume harvesting his crop the week of Oct. 17.
"One positive thing is the sun came out the day after the storm and has shone every day since," Cromley said. "This will hopefully help dry out the cotton and help the quality of the cotton."
Cromley's cousin, David, who also farms in the Bulloch County community of Brooklet, said he had defoliated some of his cotton fields the last week of September. His crop loss was more visually apparent because there were no leaves to block the view of white cotton lying on the ground and hanging in soggy strips from burrs.
While defoliating other fields on Oct. 14, David Cromley told the GFB News he was noticing "a good bit of cotton [fiber] on the ground in fields that still had all the leaves on it [the plants]."
In Evans County Del Beasley showed the GFB News a 50-acre field of dryland cotton where Hurricane Matthew left cotton stalks leaning southwest. Like Lee and David Cromley's cotton fields, this field was littered with cotton blown out of its burrs.
Beasley estimated he suffered a 25-30 percent yield loss on the 50-acre field of dryland cotton due to rain and wind damage from Hurricane Matthew. He estimated the field would have yielded 600 pounds of cotton per acre before the storm hit.
Beasley, who said he got between 11 and 12 inches of rain from Hurricane Matthew, had already defoliated the field two times before Hurricane Matthew blew through. He defoliated the first time before Tropical Storm Hermine dumped seven to eight inches of rain on the crop. The rain combined with residual fertilizer in the soil caused the cotton to grow new leaves. He will defoliate for a third time, which will add another $25 per acre to his crop production costs.
Other crops hurt, too
Bulloch County Satsuma grower Joe Franklin said he had to straighten and stake about 200 of his young trees that were pushed over by Hurricane Matthew. Franklin, who was about three weeks away from beginning his harvest when Matthew struck, estimates he lost about two percent of his orange crop due to damage from broken limbs and fallen fruit. The storm also left some of the younger trees leaning to one side.
Franklin says he'll have plenty of satsumas to sell at farmers markets and stores in Statesboro, Savannah and Augusta beginning in late October and early November. He expects the harvest to run to the first of December.
Glynn County Farm Bureau President Betty Anne Lewis experienced a variety of storm damage at her family's Sapelo Farm located just east of I-95 where they grow vegetables and raise goats and beef cows sold directly to the public and local restaurants.
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