North Carolina’s $111 billion agricultural sector was already suffering in 2024, and then Helene hit.
A dozen industry representatives told the House Agricultural Committee Tuesday that without significant, quick investment, those impacts could reverberate through the industry for years.
“This year has been challenging. That doesn’t do it justice. It’s been awful for agriculture,” said Steve Troxler, North Carolina’s agricultural commissioner.
Before Helene, North Carolina’s agriculture industry had lost $696 million from a prolonged drought throughout the spring and summer followed by tropical storms and historic rains from an unnamed storm in Southeastern North Carolina.
“It was kind of like taking a house plant that’s been pampered and putting it out in the front yard in the sun and not being able to water it and then drowning it with a great big gulp of water. That’s what happened to agriculture in the state,” Troxler said.
Then, Troxler said, Helene caused another $907.62 million in losses, based on estimates from N.C. State University’s Blake Brown and Mike Walden.
“It’s a disaster,” Troxler sad.
Jerred Nix, an apple farmer from Henderson County’s Edneyville, described watching an orchard he’d been set to inherit from his father wash away in the course of about eight minutes. As he spoke before the committee, Nix showed an aerial photo of his property, with a field covered in dirt.
“I have beach front property in Edneyville right now because that 10 acres has about three feet of sand over top of it,” said Nix, the vice president of Flavor Full Farms.
The General Assembly has passed two Helene relief bills, with additional funds that could be sent to the relief effort via a third bill where the House is expected to take a veto override vote Wedensday. None of those packages have included targeted relief for the state’s agricultural industry.
Troxler urged legislators to custom-fit relief programs for the needs of Western North Carolina, where farmers are more prone to grow Christmas trees and nursery crops that are much less likely to be covered by crop insurance than the corn and soy beans that are more popular in the Coastal plain.
“We can’t afford to sit back and wait. I know we want to see the feds pay everything that they will pay for but having been through this with Florence and other disasters, those programs that they are going to come with are probably not going to fit,” Troxler said.
For example, Troxler said, Christmas tree farmers have lost the on-farm infrastructure like roads and culverts that they need just to be able to reach their crops, much less to bring them off of a mountain.
In one case, a Christmas tree farmer had a 12-acre pasture on a river, Rodney Buchanan, president of the N.C. Christmas Trees Association, told the committee. After floodwaters stripped a portion of the pasture down to the bedrock, that farmer has a seven-acre pasture.
“There is nothing you can do on solid rock for agriculture,” Buchanan said.
David Davis, the N.C. Cooperative Extension’s Yancey County director, said he’s barely left the county since Helene hit on Sept. 27, helping farmers with everything from logistics to arranging for them to receive fence posts to helping talk through their mental health struggles.
“The next few years we’re going to spend a lot of time trying to keep our farmers in business. That’s the task at hand,” Davis said.
In some parts of Yancey County, farms were covered with a foot to six feet of silt. Those places were lucky, Davis said, because that silt had washed off of land upstream, wiping out what he called “prime production land.”
Between 80% and 90% of the county’s best farmland is located on rivers and streams, Davis added. He showed the committee a photo of Cane River, which is typically 12 to 15 feet wide and swelled to between a mile and a mile-and-a-half on Sep. 27.
“We had many farms that have lost sand and silt, and they have nothing to grow in,” Davis said, adding that he lost topsoil in some of the most productive fields on his own 17-acre cabbage and tomato farm.
Even cleaning out rivers and streams in Western North Carolina will cost between $350 million and $500 million, Troxler said. That will likely require at least $100 million in state matching funds, Troxler added.
“If we don’t do that, the next five-inch rain or the next seven-inch rain will put us back where we are right now because the water has no place else to go,” Troxler said.
This story was produced with financial support from the Hartfield Foundation and Green South Foundation, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work. If you would like to help support local journalism, please consider signing up for a digital subscription, which you can do here.
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Adam Wagner covers climate change and other environmental issues in North Carolina. His work is produced with financial support from the Hartfield Foundation and Green South Foundation, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. Wagner’s previous work at The News & Observer included coverage of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout and North Carolina’s recovery from recent hurricanes. He previously worked at the Wilmington StarNews.