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NC Ag Commissioner on Hurricane Matthew damages

The agricultural damage from Hurricane Matthew along North Carolina’s east coast is still being assessed but that state’s ag commissioner calls it, overall, “catastrophic.”

Steve Troxler tells Brownfield Ag News a lot of sweet potatoes, peanuts, cotton and soybeans were adversely affected but livestock losses could have been worse, “We lost about 1-point-8 million chickens and turkeys and maybe about three-thousand hogs but considering the number of hogs and chickens we have in North Carolina this is very, very light.”

Troxler says his state learned from 1999’s Hurricane Floyd and pork producers have since moved their operations to higher ground, “When I flew (over) – in many cases – the hog houses and the lagoon would be the only thing on the farm that wasn’t under water.” Troxler says no livestock lagoons were breached in Hurricane Matthew. He tells Brownfield the area of North Carolina that was hit represents 70% of agriculture cash receipts in his state.

Troxler says this is the second year in a row for weather related damage for these farmers and it’ll be hard to overcome their losses.

Troxler was the keynote speaker at the 2016 Syngenta Media Summit on Friday in Raleigh, North Carolina.

North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services