Hurricane Isaias cost Conecuh County cotton growers a crop that was a week from being picked, and on Thursday it brought U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Auburn) to their field with a promise: The farm bill he has pushed for six years is finally headed to the Senate floor.
“The farmers work 12 months a year to get a crop, but there’s two things they can’t control,” Tuberville said. “They can’t control the price, nor can they control the weather, and that’s the reason it’s very, very hard on our people that grow crops.”
The Alabama Farmers Federation hosted the tour at Chris and Will Booker’s farm, which Ricky and Russell Wiggins leased for the first time this year and planted in cotton. Tuberville was joined by Federation President Jimmy Parnell, Agriculture Commissioner Rick Pate, Republican commissioner nominee Corey Hills and USDA Farm Service Agency State Executive Director Monica Carroll.
As Senator, I’ve fought for Alabama’s farmers, foresters, and producers against Socialist Democrats who don’t know the difference between a turnip and a watermelon.
As Governor, I’ll continue to be a strong fighter for Alabama’s farmers and rural communities. pic.twitter.com/GACVe8N3qb
— Tommy Tuberville (@CoachForGov) October 15, 2026
Isaias came ashore on the Gulf Coast last week and cut what Tuberville described as a 200-mile path of damage from south Alabama into the central part of the state. The Alabama Forestry Commission estimates more than $30 million in timber losses in Conecuh, Escambia and Monroe counties, and the Federation puts crop losses in those counties at 20% to 50%.
Parnell introduced Tuberville with a rundown of what the senator has delivered for Alabama agriculture in six years on the Senate Agriculture Committee: roughly $50 billion in disaster relief for production agriculture, the tax relief and farm program provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill, hurricane crop insurance and a years-long push on an overdue farm bill.
“Coach has truly been a friend to the Alabama farmers and foresters, and we appreciate him,” Parnell said.
Tuberville said the field behind him was “almost devastated” and “just a week or so away from being harvested,” and he used it to make the case for the farm bill the Agriculture Committee passed out last month after a 10-10 deadlock. U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell supplied the deciding vote on his return to the committee, Tuberville said, and the bill is expected on the Senate floor around the first of December.
“We fought for six years to get a farm bill that helps our farmers, producers, and our foresters,” Tuberville said. “Unfortunately, we can’t get one Democrat to vote for it.”
“2018 was the last farm bill, and since then they have fought against President Trump. They have fought against the Ag Committee. They have fought against the farmers and producers and the foresters across the country, and again, not one Democrat has voted for it in almost 10 years.”
Tuberville, the Republican nominee for governor, also took aim at Democrat nominee Doug Jones for criticizing his farm bill record.
“Guy I’m running for governor, he doesn’t know the difference between a cotton plant and a watermelon plant,” Tuberville said. “He just wants to talk bad. ‘Coach hadn’t got a farm bill done.’ Well, no kidding. We finally got it passed out of committee a few weeks ago.”
Asked what Washington can do for Alabama growers while the Senate is out, Tuberville said the answer runs through the farm bill and its crop insurance improvements.
RELATED: Tuberville: Alabama’s farmers, seniors big winners in ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’
“Our farmers don’t want a handout, they want a hand up when things like this happen,” he said. “They can’t do it on their own because you’re going to have situations like this happen.”
He tied the pressure on farmers to input costs and energy policy, pointing to diesel prices and the Biden administration’s record on refineries, permitting and drilling in the Gulf of America.
“The farmers and producers and the foresters of this country, they care more about the land and the environment than any one of these greenies that you’ll ever talk to,” Tuberville said. “So let’s turn our land back over to the farmers. Let them do what they need to be productive, and let’s make our food in this country and not some other country.”
Pate said Tuberville’s attention to farmers predates the campaign, recalling the farm bill listening sessions the two held across the state several years ago.
“This is not some new thing in the last year, him showing the interest he has in the farming community,” Pate said. “It wasn’t really him or I or his staff talking. It was us trying to hear what farmers wanted to see in that farm bill.”
Pate said Alabama’s alignment between the Farmers Federation, the Department of Agriculture and Industries, USDA and Auburn Extension is unusual nationally and is speeding the damage assessment needed for a federal disaster declaration. He said he met with the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture in Georgia Wednesday night and invited her to Alabama.
Carroll thanked Tuberville “for being the voice that fights for our farmers in D.C.” and urged producers with losses to contact their local Farm Service Agency office, which she said are all reopened and fully staffed. She listed emergency conservation, forest restoration, livestock indemnity, tree assistance and low-interest emergency loan programs, and said one piece of documentation matters most.
“That is a date-stamped photograph,” Carroll said. “Behind every damaged field is a family farm whose livelihood depends on this harvest.”
Parnell, a seventh-generation timber man, said the storm hit a forestry sector already in the worst shape he has seen.
“The paper industry particularly is hurting in the state,” he said. “We have lost a tremendous portion of our market to South America. South American pulp is coming into the U.S. and we got to do something about that to build markets back for our wood.”
“70% of the state of Alabama has trees growing on it. We have more trees today than we’ve had in the history of the state standing in the forest. We have to have a good market for our timber.”
Tuberville said the people in the field Thursday would recover, and that the stakes in November go beyond one crop.
“Our farmers will bounce back,” he said. “If the Democrats take control, you won’t see a farm bill ever again.”
Grayson Everett is the editor in chief of Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on X @Grayson270.
