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When Vance Hiers turned on The Weather Channel this week at his home in Dixie, the forecast he saw looked all too familiar.
Last year, about a quarter of the 20,000 pecan trees on his family’s orchard, 15 miles from the Florida-Georgia line, were knocked down by Hurricane Idalia. Then, in August, Hurricane Debby’s wind and rain toppled another 500 trees. It was only last week Hiers and his two daughters finished cleaning up that mess.
“Now, here we are right back with another one staring us in the face,” Hiers said.
Hiers’ pecan farm is one of dozens of farms in the crosshairs of Hurricane Helene. After Helene makes landfall between Florida’s Panhandle and the state’s Big Bend region on Thursday, it is expected to push into South Georgia, bringing damaging winds and rain.
Hiers and other farmers were doing what they can to brace for what could be another devastating blow to their livelihoods — and the state’s agriculture industry.
Credit: Vance Hiers
Credit: Vance Hiers
The storm couldn’t come at a worse time for crops like cotton and pecans, which rank among Georgia’s most valuable agricultural products. Helene is set to arrive just ahead of what is typically peak harvest season for the crops, so fragile cotton bolls in fields and pecans left hanging in trees will be especially vulnerable.
In 2022, the most recent year available, Georgia’s cotton crop was worth $1.3 billion, making it the state’s second-most valuable agricultural commodity, according to the University of Georgia. Georgia pecans, meanwhile, were worth more than $400 million, 10th on the list.
On Tuesday, Hiers and his daughters spent the day hustling from tree to tree with a mechanical shaker, trying to salvage what nuts they could knock loose from some of their early ripening varieties. He said they would try to get through 40 acres, leaving the other 460 “at the mercy of this storm.”
“If we get a lot of wind and it blows a bunch of them off, it’s going to be a tough situation,” Hiers said.
As Helene churned north across the Gulf of Mexico, Georgia Agriculture Commissioner Tyler Harper urged farmers to prepare for its arrival.
“To Georgia farmers and producers in the potential impact zone — now is the time to prepare and make a plan to keep your family and your farm safe,” Harper said in a statement. He added that his department is in contact with other state agencies as Helene approaches.
Credit: Vance Hiers
Credit: Vance Hiers
About an hour northeast of Hiers’ farm, Jaclyn Ford said she fears the storm will claim what’s left of the cotton crop at her family’s farm, which was already damaged by Debby. As farms like hers pay more for fertilizer and earn less for the cotton they produce, she fears the storm will only worsen the financial strain they face.
“It just seems like these storms hit us every year right here at the end (before the harvest),” said Ford, whose farm is near Tifton. “And this was not at all what we needed this year.”
Pecans and cotton aren’t the only crops that have faced weather woes in recent years.
Georgia blueberry and peach growers have sustained major losses, after exceptionally warm winters left their fragile fruit vulnerable to spring freezes.
Last year, the damage Hurricane Idalia caused in South Georgia led the federal government to declare a disaster across 27 primary counties. Hiers said he received some government assistance in the aftermath, but it only helped cover his cleanup costs.
In the time since, Hiers said he’s seen two friends driven into debt and eventually out of farming by storm damages. If Helene is as bad as he fears it could be, he said he may have no other choice but to exit the business, too.
“If this storm comes in here and lays down a few thousand trees, I’ll be done,” he said.
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