Disaster’s Harvest : Farmers Are Picking Up What’s Left After Hurricanes, Unseasonal Rains
From the uprooted avocado and lime trees in Florida to the blown-down sugar cane in Hawaii, from the parched hay in Wisconsin to the rain-ruined cotton in Texas, farm crops have taken a beating from disasters and quirky weather this year.
“It certainly was extraordinary because of the hurricanes, but it’s been a crazy year even without them,” said Jack King of the American Farm Bureau Federation. “It’s the kind of weather year that just perplexes farmers who have seen it all, or so they say.”
The weather, including Hurricanes Andrew and Iniki and floods in Iowa, has meant devastation for thousands of farmers throughout the United States. Estimates for crop loss and other agricultural damage already exceed $2.5 billion. The effects, especially in the hurricane-damaged areas, could be felt for years as orchards and fields are re-established. And along both of the country’s borders, farmers have been plagued by bad weather and worse pests.
Not all crops are in trouble. One area’s poor harvest is being offset by another’s record crop. This year’s grain harvests, for example, are expected to be large--if, that is, an early frost doesn’t take out the Midwest’s weather-delayed corn crop.
And yet, even where the harvests look good, farmers are not optimistic. Prices for farm commodities have been held low by cutthroat competition from abroad, as ailing foreign economies undersell their competitors to draw hard currency. In the United States, farmers’ income is expected to drop for the second straight year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Aside from temporary shortages in some products, consumers probably won’t suffer too much. Along the Eastern Seaboard, guacamole lovers may have to pay premium prices for imported or California avocados. And, though no amount of good pickings in California’s San Joaquin Valley can make up for the losses this year in Texas cotton, the world market is glutted with enough cotton to choke all the mills.
Agricultural officials do not have a complete reading on all of the damage. But among the crops and areas most affected by this year’s weather are:
* Sugar cane: In Louisiana, where more than a third of the nation’s cane is grown, Hurricane Andrew hit some fields very hard but spared others. Nearly two million tons of sugar cane has been lost, accounting for $128 million of the total $290 million in crop losses in that state. Hurricane Iniki flattened 38,000 acres of cane on the island of Kauai, which represents one-fifth of Hawaii’s sugar cane crop.
* Avocados: In Florida, about one-third of the crop was harvested before Andrew blew in and destroyed the remainder. That means the harvest was only 300,000 bushels, compared to 1.1 million bushels the year before. Additionally, so many trees were uprooted or lopped off that the damage will be felt for years to come.
* Limes: It could be another decade before Florida’s lime orchards fully recover from the damage. Although a good portion of this year’s crop had been harvested before the storm, few trees are left to supply next year’s crop. After Andrew, trees remained standing on less than a third of 6,500 acres of lime orchards.
Andrew also devastated Florida’s nursery business--destroying $171 million in plants; the hurricane and subsequent rains damaged rice, cotton, soybean and corn crops in Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. Hurricane Iniki damaged macadamia and some tropical fruit trees in Hawaii as well.
* Cotton: Growers in Baja, Mexico, have lost at least $10 million to the strain B whitefly--a pest that is reducing cotton yields throughout the Southwest. However, in Texas, the whitefly is only a minor irritant compared to the weather. Darrell Williams, coordinator for cotton programs for the Texas Department of Agriculture, said heavy rains throughout the spring forced growers to replant cotton fields--some at least twice--and still it rained, and root rot set in.
“We had too much rainfall at the wrong times,” Williams said, adding, “It was a disastrous year for cotton production, period, in Texas.” Nearly two million acres out of 5.65 million acres were destroyed, and estimates of the losses to Texas’ cotton growers already exceed $1 billion.
* Corn: Rains and flooding devastated bottom land in several southern Iowa counties two weeks ago, destroying corn and soybean fields representing about 8% of crops in that vital corn-producing state. “We’re keeping our fingers crossed” that frost doesn’t come early and ruin remaining crops, said Bill Brewer of Iowa’s Department of Agriculture.
Throughout the upper Midwest, hundreds of thousands of acres of corn fields are threatened. Harvest has been delayed and if the first frost comes early--or in many cases, on schedule--it could mean disaster.
Already, crops the northern reaches of the Corn Belt have been lost to an early first frost and in some parts of Canada’s bread basket, the wheat harvest has been jeopardized by an early snowfall.
Fluky planting-season weather is to blame for the late harvests and frost worries. In the spring, crop growth was stunted because of drought, and farmers feared a repeat of 1988, when drought severely reduced yields. However, the weather turned in July; rains and cool temperatures helped keep the fields alive.
Corn, soybeans, wheat, hay and other crops were affected. In Wisconsin, wheat and alfalfa suffered, ironically, from a mild winter--not enough snow cover to protect the nascent plants. Then came a spring drought, and, finally, when farmers were ready to harvest the alfalfa, heavy rains kept them from their fields or spoiled what had already been harvested.
Finger-crossing didn’t help corn growers in Wisconsin, where an early frost wiped out some fields that weren’t yet ripe enough to harvest. By mid-month, when 40% of the corn should have been ready for harvesting, only 10% was mature enough, according to Heidi Furseth, crop statistician for the Wisconsin Agricultural Statistics Service. “It’s been a very strange year,” she said, “and weather has been the big factor.”
And while the crop losses haven’t been as bad as farmers were fearing at spring time, the weather has kept them on their toes. “Every one has been amazed,” said King of the Farm Bureau Federation. “No one would have bet that we would have as large a soybean and corn crop as we will.”
King said the cool, wet summer “spared the crop from drought damage. It just sort of held the crop in place with slow growth rate. Farmers have never seen a crop spared that way. Now that was quirky.”
1992 Crops in Trouble
Bad--or just plain quirky--weather has caused varying degrees of problems for many farm products throughout the country. Map shows areas and crops most affected by this year’s extraordinary weather
* Heavy spring rains wiped out more than 2 million acres of cotton in Texas--a third of the harvest--for an estimated $1-billion loss.
* A freak hailstorm in June damaged wheat, corn and other crops in parts of Kansas, causing an estimated $10-million in losses.
* First drought, then cool, wet summer weather has delayed corn crops throughout the upper midwest; early frosts have already damaged or destroyed some fields.
* Hurrican Andrew and Iniki flattened sugar can in Louisiana and Hawaii, and avocados and limes in Florida, among other products. Preliminary damage estimates put the losses to agriculture from the two hurricanes at $1.4 billion.
* September floods destroyed some corn and soybean crops in Iowa; damage estimates have not yet been made.
