Tropical Storm Debby is exiting North Carolina. State Commissioner of Agriculture Steve Troxler says the biggest impact so far has been from tornados.
“We do have reports of a turkey farm in Green County and a broiler farm in Green County being hit by tornados. And the extent of the damage is not completely known yet, but we do know that there are some turkeys that got loose out of one of the houses that was damaged, and we’re trying to help the company round them up and get them back under cover, and unfortunately, we’ve had a lot of experience with situations like this, and preparedness is the key, and I think we’re as prepared as we can be.”
Troxler says this summer provides just another example of the extreme weather to impact North Carolina in the past several years. And agriculture doesn’t like extremes.
“It has run the gamut from being in very, very bad drought conditions to having too much water. I just came back from the black lands of North Carolina up in the Northeast, and there are places there that saw 20 inches of water around about a 10 day period. So they’ve had too much water on top of the drought that had already damaged the major portion of the corn crop. So you know, we’re hanging on and hoping for the best, but when you get this much water on crops that are not yet harvested. It’s never a good thing, and you throw wind. It makes it tough.”
While federal disaster loans will help some farmers to recover, Troxler says often after a storm like Debby, much more help is needed.
“After Hurricane Florence, there were the damage was so expensive, the state did allocate two, $40 million to the Department of Ag, and we put out a disaster program. And I think that that was the bridge that got farmers from an almost impossible situation to one that they could farm again. So you know, we’ll see how bad the damage is and what our legislature decides that we can do. And in the meantime, my emergency programs, the division is working with companies, farmers, individuals. We stand ready to help any situation that arises.”