Barns and roads collapsed. Miles of fencing and acres of corn lay flattened. Tobacco and soybean fields flooded. On Sunday, July 6, Tropical Depression Chantal left a scar on what was shaping up to be a banner season for Central North Carolina farms.
The system dropped more than 10 inches of rain on some Piedmont farm fields in a matter of hours. Some are calling it a 100-year flood event.
The level of damage varies significantly from farm to farm, and many operations went unscathed. But for those farmers who did see flooded fields and broken fencing, the economic impact is substantial.
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In the estimate of Orange County extension agent Alex Kissinger, the damage he’s surveyed so far will cost at least $50,000. He expects that number will grow.
In Person County, 10% of all crop acreage in the county flooded, and for fields in the southwestern corner of the county, that number is more like 30%. Multiple farmers in Person County have reported that nearly half of their tobacco, soybean and corn crops are destroyed.
“Row crops took it on the chin,” Person County extension agent Johnny Coley told Carolina Public Press. “But farmers are resilient people. They will bounce back.”
Infrastructure damage
The storm crippled some of the basic systems that keep farms running.
At Benor Farms in Orange County, the main concern is less fields and more the broken roadways surrounding the dairy farm. Because customers won’t be able to drive up and pick up milk using the main road, owner Rob Benor fears sales will drop.
“On the road to get to our farm there is just a chunk of land that’s gone,” Benor said. “It just really hurts the flow of customers to the farm. As someone who is selling something, I want to remove all friction between me and my customer. This adds a lot of friction.”
Benor estimates that it will be two or three months before the road is fixed. That guess is based on what he knows about the speed of repairing back roads.
More than 40 roads in the region remained closed Monday, July 14, due to Tropical Depression Chantal, according to DriveNC.
Similar problems plague farms across the region.
At Wooden Nickel Farms, right down the road from Benor, the main road crumbled. There, in addition to the severe road damage, an old tobacco shed collapsed.
In Moore County, the main concern after Chantal is infrastructure damage, said Moore County extension director Ginger Cunningham. Farmers will need to find different routes to transport supplies, spend time fixing fences, removing downed trees and taking stock of damage to equipment. Several farms are dealing with erosion issues and breached ponds, which can also damage fields and roads.
“A lot of people don’t think about how this affects farms,” said Ian McGibney, owner of McGibney Family Farms in Person County. “But it absolutely does.”
Crop loss in fields
While infrastructure can be rebuilt, the damage to crops in fields presents a different challenge.
Floods drowned acres of soybean, corn and tobacco crops in fields across the region. On one Person County farm, flooding submerged an entire 50-acre soybean field.
Some plants did make it. But farmers will have a hard time harvesting those because of how waterlogged the fields have become. Heavy equipment in soggy fields is often a recipe for disaster.
But it's better to get out there sooner rather than later.
Root rot and certain fungal diseases flourish in these high-moisture conditions, according to Alamance County extension agent Rhiannon Goodwin, which will take even more plants out of the running. As a result, some Piedmont farmers will have lower yields come harvest time, when the money is made.
The storm hit at a particularly sensitive time for wheat. A lot of wheat was so badly damaged that it will not be harvested at all.
“We missed the window of opportunity to cut and bale our hay because of this weather pattern,” said Terry Phillips, owner of Phillips Farms in Chatham County.
“That will affect our bottom line, because we won’t have enough time to plant a second round to harvest in the fall.”
Floodwaters also washed away fertilizer, meaning that farmers will have to refertilize fields, incurring a significant expense.
Despite the setbacks, for farmers impacted by Chantal, the only direction to look is forward. It’s a speciality for folks in this line of work.
“They know going into each season that weather is an issue, that it is a variable that they cannot control,” Coley said.
“They’ll overcome this like they have other disasters.”
This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.