With some time having passed since Hurricane Sally made landfall, those impacted have a clearer idea of the monetary cost of the damages suffered to their properties.
Often overlooked are the impacts storms like Hurricane Sally have on Alabama’s agriculture, which took a massive hit from last month’s storm.
State Sen. David Sessions (R-Grand Bay), whose district includes the southern portion of Mobile County, estimates the total loss for farmers impacted in both Mobile and Baldwin Counties to be in the billions of dollars.
“My district — actually, we fared a lot better than we thought we were, originally,” he said during an interview on Mobile radio FM Talk 106.5’s “The Jeff Poor Show.” “The pecans, all the trees took damage. You know, there was damage to the trees. It did not totally destroy our crop. We are going to be able to salvage some of our pecan crop, which is a good thing. The peanuts withstood it really well. The only issue we had with peanut production in our county was the delay in harvest. Peanuts are kind of a timing crop. When they’re mature, they need to be dug and harvested timely. We were late doing that. That kind of hurt production a little bit. The cotton crop is still out there. It has yet to be seen. It looked as though the impact of Sally had it looking really, really bad a few days after the storm. You know, we really thought it was a total loss. But it looks as though it is starting to stand back up. We’ll know when we harvest.”
“My dear friends in Baldwin County — they’re really in tough shape, especially on the coastal section of Baldwin County,” Sessions continued. “You get central, northern Baldwin County, the crop probably withstood it OK. But we did not have the torrential rain that they had. That was an added problem they had ahead of the win. They really, really took it on the chin. I would estimate the ag losses in Mobile and Baldwin County are on in the billions — not millions. I think you have that big of a loss in total revenue. The pecan crop over there is gone. Even all the peanuts that were already dug — basically, all that rain washed them away. Then, it made them difficult to harvest. The cotton crop, like I said, you get to the central, northern part of the county, the cotton crop may be fair. But the southern part, it’s a total loss.”
Sessions likened the toll on Baldwin County last month to that of Hurricane Frederic, which made landfall as a Category 4 storm in September 1979 at Dauphin Island and proceeded up into Mobile County, leaving a massive path of destruction behind. According to Sessions, the economic fallout will be felt by Baldwin County farmers for years to come.
“The pecan orchards over there are gone,” he added. “It will be years before they’re reestablished. You’re looking at a 15-year loss. Those 40-to-60-year-old trees that were basically getting into prime production are all on the ground. Not only did you lose the crop you had on the trees, you lost that crop for the lifetime of that tree, which is a long time. We have trees producing that are well over 100 years old. The potential loss is astronomical for them. My heart goes out to those guys in Baldwin County. What we had in 1979 with [Hurricane] Frederic, they had this year with [Hurricane] Sally. It is really, really a tough pill to swallow. It takes years. I remember after Frederic, we had to mortgage land that was mortgage-free, and it took us 20 years to recoup those losses — 20 years, that’s what you’re looking at.”
@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University and the University of South Alabama, the editor of Breitbart TV, a columnist for Mobile’s Lagniappe Weekly, and host of Mobile’s “The Jeff Poor Show” from 9 a.m.-12 p.m. on FM Talk 106.5.
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