Several articles out this week described continuing efforts by farmers in southeast Georgia and eastern North Carolina to determine the damage caused by the wind and flooding rain from Hurricane Matthew a few weeks ago.
In North Carolina, Modern Farmer reported here that while livestock farmers are starting to compost dead chickens and deal with 3300 dead swine, crop farmers are just now beginning to get into the fields to see if sweet potatoes and other crops survived the wet conditions. About 70 percent of agricultural output in the state was affected by the floods, which killed 26 people in the state as well as 1.9 million chickens and 100,000 turkeys. Some crops appeared to survive the floods better than expected but it will be a long time before final tallies are in.
In southeast Georgia, it was wind in addition to the rain that caused a lot of the damage. Hardest hit were pecan farmers, who lost many mature trees to the strong winds. In many areas up to 30 percent of the trees were tipped over, and the trees with the most nuts fared the worst because they were the heaviest. Many green nuts were also blown down in the wind. Farmers say that it takes 10-12 years for a new tree to reach full production, so it will take years for them to recover from the losses. Cotton also suffered from the rain and wind, with many ripe bolls blown onto the ground and further damaged by the heavy rain. You can read articles from Growing Georgia here and here.
