The North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services is on the ground in the western part of the state, supporting farmers and rural communities there recovering from Hurricane Helene. Kaleb Rathbone is the department assistant commissioner for the western part of North Carolina, and told the Commstock Channel he lives and works there too.

“Fortunately, my home was spared. We’re on high ground, and my family’s homes were spared. We farm here, too. We’ve got some issues on the farm, but that’s minor compared to what a lot of the damage that we’re seeing.”

Rathbone says agriculture in the highlands is actually a lot like that of Illinois.

“With the elevation that we have in this part of the state. You we’ve got some the river bottoms, very fertile soils in a lot of the areas. And you have those cooler temperatures, particularly for, you know, normal production, those nighttime temperatures will still get low, even through the summer. And so that leads to very productive farmland, very productive crops in this region on corn, and we’ve got a high concentration of specialty crops, and also livestock production, beef cattle and dairy in this area as well.”

While much of the media has been on Helene’s impact on the towns, Rathbone says the impact on rural areas and ag should not be downplayed.

“A good portion of the corn production in this region is for there’s a lot of grain production, but also for corn silage, for the beef cattle and dairy. So there was a lot of corn, a lot of crops, in general, still left in the field. I can’t really put a percentage on what was harvested before the storm, but there was significant damage to crops still standing in the field that had not yet been harvested.”

It may surprise many how diverse agriculture is in the mountains.

“You’ve got that livestock cattle production on the mountains, use the lower lying areas for feeding in the farm bases and the farm sites, as well as feed production in the lower areas. So tremendous amount of hay has been lost, harvested hay barns washed away, and that kind of thing. We’ve got a long road to recovery, all making sure that our producers are able to have the seed they need to get through the through the winter.”

Rathbone says NCDA is responding to the disaster in many ways.

“We’ve had teams out there from the beginning, a lot of them from our research station system, working with Cooperative Extension to make sure that supply sites are set up on the ground, helping farmers move bags of all stock feed in just to keep be able to keep those animals where they should be until a larger recovery can take place.”