When Hurricane Idalia swept through Florida in late August, it left destruction in its wake. The area most impacted? Suwannee County.
Suwanee is different from most of the state as it consists primarily of agricultural land. However, there is far less cattle, produce and poultry there now. According to Live Oak city manager Larry Sessions, an estimated five million chickens were killed during the storm and days following.
Sessions is passionate about agriculture himself. He has 120 cows of his own while many of his friends keep chickens; at least, they used to.
According to the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, Idalia caused an estimated $370 million in agricultural damage. But some loses are not easily quantifiable.
“You put your whole life into what you do,” Sessions said. He spoke of some of his fellow agricultural producers having to walk away from their farms because of their intense losses. He told of another who lost nine out of 18 chicken houses.
He explained that chickens are more susceptible to dying after hurricanes because of how farmers have to keep them. Chickens require raised houses and need to be kept cool to survive. This means hurricane-force winds alone can take down countless chicken houses and power outages can overheat them, effectively putting local farmers out of livestock and business.
Cows, on the other hand, are usually left out in pastures to weather the storm. Considering most pastures don’t sustain debris damage and the livestock aren’t fragile, they tend to do comparatively well in inclement weather.
Erin Jones, a UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences extension agent for Suwanee County, is very passionate about the hurting agriculture in the area. As a liaison between the University of Florida and local farms, she gets a personal look at the impacts of Hurricane Idalia.
She says that many of the impacts of the storm are pointing out holes in the existing agricultural industry in Florida. The first is the lack of resources for these producers during emergencies. Some farms were without energy or power for eight days.
Her other concern is that the existing pool of farmers and producers is aging, and there are not enough young people lined up to replace them. “There is one person you rely on three times a day: A farmer,” Jones said.
Jones explained the average age of farmers is 57 years old. Sessions, 68, says his appearance is representative of those in the agricultural producer industry. “I am the norm,” he said. “Most farmers have gray hair, are going bald and have got a little weight on them.”
The lack of youth, coupled with the forced retirement of those affected by the hurricane, will create issues in Suwanee’s agricultural production that are not fully understood yet.
As for ways of improving damage prevention, Jones says the only certainty about hurricanes is that they will happen. There are not many things a chicken farmer can do to weather these storms better.
Idalia was a category four hurricane, meaning winds between 130 and 156 miles per hour. That kind of wind forced some farmers to burn what was left of their chicken houses and dead livestock after the devastation.
Jonathan Crane, a professor at the University of Florida, studies how hurricanes impact agriculture, specifically how fruit trees respond to those conditions. His research is vital in helping decrease the amount of tree debris during storms and preventing loss of produce.
Crane said pruning is the most effective practice for limiting uprooted and projectile trees. Pruning is the practice of cutting a tree’s limbs and foliage into more favorable shapes, allowing wind to come through freely. He says it applies to both landscape trees and fruit crops.
“The most important thing that you can do to reduce the amount of damage and increase the chance of recovery from a hurricane is to control the size of the trees,” Crane said.
Beyond wind, he says the storm surge is also one of the most damaging elements of a hurricane. Flooding saltwater from the coast effectively harms every type of produce and plant trying to grow inland.