Lakeland, GA |
Take a ride through any rural community in Southeast Georgia and it’s impossible to miss the utter destruction left in the wake of Hurricane Helene. Perhaps no industry was more impacted than agriculture, as the more than one hundred mile an hour wind gusts laid waste to any and all fields in its path.
“Utter devastation, utter devastation. We’ve seen pecan growers that have lost half their trees. We’ve seen cotton growers that have lost their entire crops. We’ve seen blueberry growers that have just been decimated. We’ve seen produce growers that have been decimated and it’s just utter devastation. It’s heart breaking,” says Russ Goodman, Chairman of the Senate Ag Committee.
With the damage being so extensive on these farms, the financial ramifications are likely to be felt for many years to come.
“This farm here next year had a potential of doing 350-400 thousand pounds on this one farm. We have another fifty acres that was new plantings and those also have been wiped out. It’s sickening. Not going to cry about it but it will make you tear up. It’s just a lot of hard work that’s gone and the financial loss for next year is going to be devastating,” says Alex Cornelius, Owner of Heagan Blueberry Farm.
“You see plans they had for their children and grand children laying on the dirt and broken. You see their retirement gone with no protection. You see an opportunity that we may not can get here and salvage this,” says Chad Nimmer, Procurement Forester with Pierce Timber Company.
While the financial impact of this storm can easily be seen, the emotional damage caused by Hurricane Helene is a little harder to define.
“It’s heart breaking. You kind of go home and be inside and everything be somewhat normal and day by day, you’re out here working still and looking at it and it’s just, it’s heart breaking. It’s every day, as much time, labor, effort and heart, blood, sweat, and tears that’s been put in it, to see something like this happen, it’s just unbelievable and unbearable,” says TJ Moore with Moore Farms.
“It’s generational. I mean, especially in a perineal crop like pecans, these trees were standing in here, I was in the third grade; that was thirty-nine years ago when we planted these. So, it’s something you grew up with. So, it has a real, real strong emotional pull with it,” says Buck Paulk with Shiloh Pecan Farms.
“We need all kinds of help. We don’t need Democrats, we don’t need Republicans; we need Americans to help us and all of us come together. We have never faced it like this before. I think we’ll just have to keep on trying the best we can, but sooner or later, if it’s just year after year, we’ll just have to quit,” says Ben Strickland with Strickland Farms.
This is a legitimate concern as Helene was the second major storm in the past couple of years to make its way through the area. And with the state’s number one industry relying so heavily on Southeast Georgia to provide for a number of different sectors from produce to timber, getting these farmers back on their feet is essential for the health of not only the state, but the nation as a whole.
“When you look at agriculture in the state of Georgia, it’s one in seven jobs in the state of Georgia either indirectly or directly. Where I live, here in rural South Georgia, it’s about one in three and we’ve got to keep the American farmer in business. I mean, food security is just as a big of a part of national security as national defense is,” says Goodman.
By: Damon Jones