Hurricane Helene is likely to damage tracts of farmland, just as the fall harvest is underway in Southern states like Georgialuck9, sending farmers on a mission to salvage as much of their crops as possible before the storm lashes the region, they said.
The pecan crop is particularly vulnerable. Georgia produces 88 million pounds of pecans a year, more than any other state, according to the University of Georgia. The $400 million crop is mostly in the southern part of the state, which places it in the direct path of the storm.
Farmers who are just starting to harvest nuts in anticipation of the holiday baking season are worried. The big concern is wind, which can both blow nuts off branches before they are harvested and knock down trees. The earliest varieties were already being harvested, but most of the crop is usually gathered in October. Unlike an almond tree, which can start bearing nuts in three to five years, some varieties of pecan trees can take up to 25 years to mature.
Sunnyland Farms is in Albany, Ga., a city in the southwestern part of the state that calls itself the pecan capital of America.
“Unfortunately, this isn’t our first go-around,” said Alex Willson, the company’s president.
In 2018, Hurricane Michael took out 17 percent of the farm’s 1,700 trees and ruined the entire crop that season.
Cotton harvest in Georgia is just about at its peak, and farmers are trying to pull in as much of the $1.3 billion crop before wind and rain damage the fragile cotton bolls this season.
Peanut farmers are also in the fields scrambling to dig up as many of the legumes as they can. Georgia grows more peanuts than any other state, and harvest is well underway. The Plains Peanut Festival in President Jimmy Carter’s hometown, Plains, Ga., is scheduled for this weekend Sept. 28. As of Thursday, organizers planned to go ahead with the event.
Florida farmers are preparing, too. It’s avocado season there, and high winds could knock fruit from the trees. Citrus farmers were tying down equipment and draining fields as much as possible in anticipation of several inches of rain.
“The preparation is not complicated. It’s just time-consuming and disruptive to what we need to be doing,” Steven B. Callahamluck9, the chief executive of Dundee Citrus Growers Association, told the trade publication FreshPlaza.