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Farmers picking up the pieces
Four weeks after flooding brought on by Hurricane Gustav, Franklin Parish farmers are picking up the pieces of a broken year — a year that had promised above-average yields across the board.
LSU AgCenter's Carol Pinnell-Alison said virtually every crop and every producer have seen some impact.
"Some producers were hit harder than others," said Pinnell-Alison. "The cotton is turning out pretty poorly — not only yields but quality of the lint."
Pinnell-Alison said the cotton crop represents a double hit for those producers.
"They lost equal amounts of yield and quality," Pinnell-Alison said.
Franklin corn producers seemed to fair well, but like cotton, some producers did take a hit.
Pinnell-Alison said it could have been a lot worse for corn producers.
"Most producers got the corn out," Pinnell-Alison said. "We'll end up, over all, with a fair parish average, but again, some producers were hit harder than others."
For soybean producers, it is still too early to tell how badly that crop was damaged because soybeans are still coming into the grain elevators.
"Soybeans are really a case by case basis," Pinnell-Alison said.
Sweet potato researcher Tara Smith said there will be a sweet potato crop this year, but farmers are having to be more cautious than usual.
"Producers across the state are harvesting and they're getting what they can out of the crops," Smith said.
Smith cautioned that producers were having to be more careful to make sure produce damaged by the rains was sorted out in the fields and not taken to storage.
Overall, however, there will be a sweet potato harvest.
"It's a mixed bag," Smith said. "There's a lot of loss in some areas but in others, it's not so bad."
Four weeks out from the floods, Pinnell-Alison said farmers are moving on.
"It's going to be tough on some producers to make ends meet," Pinnell-Alison said. "A lot of these guys may not get enough out of this to pay their basic overhead costs, much less make a profit." |
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