In this Feed & Grain Chat, Dan Goerlich and Kevin Spurlin from Virginia Cooperative Extension spoke about Hurricane Helene’s devastating impact on Virginia’s agricultural sector and the damage to livestock feed supplies and cattle operations. The storm caused more than $159 million in total damages across 21 localities, severely impacting feed storage and availability — destroying hay supplies, washing away bagged and bulk feed, and compromising access to water systems for livestock.
There were $1.2 million in beef cattle losses and $15,000 in dairy cow losses, while hay crop damage totaled $3.3 million. Extension officials estimate that 6,000 round bales of hay will be needed to get affected farmers through the winter. Widespread power outages and flooding also forced many cattle producers to quickly relocate their herds to areas with intact fencing and accessible grazing.
For more information and to learn how to assist with relief efforts, visit the Hurricane Helene Southwest Virginia Agriculture Relief‘s website.
Transcript of Feed & Grain Chat with Dan Goerlich, associate director for economy, community, and food and Kevin Spurlin, agriculture natural resources agent and unit coordinator, Virginia Cooperative Extension
Elise Schafer, editor, Feed & Grain: Hi, everyone, and welcome to Feed & Grain Chat. I’m your host Elise Schafer, editor of Feed & Grain. This edition of Feed & Grain Chat is brought to you by WATT Global Media and FeedandGrain.com. FeedandGrain.com is your source for the latest news, product and equipment information for the grain handling and feed manufacturing industries.
Today, I’m joined by Dan Goerlich, Virginia Cooperative Extension’s associate director for economy, community, and food, and Kevin Spurlin, a Virginia Cooperative Extension agriculture and natural resources agent and unit coordinator. As part of the team that assessed the damages to Virginia’s agriculture industry in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, they’re here to reveal the disaster’s economic toll and share how recovery is coming along. Hi, Kevin and Dan, thanks for joining me today.
Dan Goerlich, associate director for economy, community, and food, Virginia Cooperative Extension: Hi Elise, thanks for having us.
Schafer: Absolutely. Now, Kevin, you and fellow Virginia Cooperative Extension agents assessed the total price tag of damage from Hurricane Helene at over $159 million. Can you describe what you witnessed on the ground, and Dan, can you break down which commodities and livestock sectors were the most impacted?
Kevin Spurlin, agriculture and natural resources agent and unit coordinator, Virginia Cooperative Extension:
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having us on, and the first thing is, when I got out to do some of the initial damage assessments there were numerous trees that were blown down, which severely limited access to parts of the county. Even in my own driveway, I had to remove several trees to get out. There were bridges and culverts that were washed out due to flooding. We had two-fold issues with this particular storm. The wind damage took down our power and communications infrastructure. It blew roofs off of barns, blew sheds over, one fairly new hay shed was just completely flipped up on its top.
The flooding was unlike anything we had experienced in Grayson County, where I work. All the streams and rivers had extreme levels of flooding, historic levels of flooding that damaged infrastructure roads. They also caused other issues.
Beef cattle industry is big in our area, so [there was] a lot of fence damage. We had debris caught up in the fences or the fences were completely washed away. A lot of debris and sediment was deposited in fields, whether that’s crop fields, hay fields, pastures. Areas that looked like pristine green hay field either looked like a mud flat or a beach with so much deposited silt or sand. I saw equipment that had floated half a mile down the river from its origin, a 175-horsepower tractor that was completely full of mud and basically not operable. Cornfields that were basically knocked down and demolished. I saw campers and kayaks sitting in the middle of these fields.
Livestock losses, thankfully, were not tremendous, but we did have some losses. Some of those were due to the flooding that actually carried some of those animals away. We also had animals that ate some toxic plants, wild cherry in particular, that those trees had blown down and we know were toxic. We also had some that the trees fell on the animals during the windstorm aspect.
We had feed supplies that were either damaged or washed away, such as hay, and even bagged and bulk feed. Things that couldn’t be accessed like the water systems that had no power to run, those water systems.
And we’ve had a lot of farmers that have participated in programs to fence off areas and limit access to surface water. This was one instance where that was a real hindrance, you know where we didn’t have those alternative water sources live and available because of the power issues. If they couldn’t access those streams readily, then there were certainly some issues with water access for the animals. Those were some of the main things that I saw just initially as I was getting out. It was certainly in our area catastrophic for the ag industry.
Goerlich: Hi, Elise. I want to add one thing to what Kevin shared, and I learned this from Kevin, by the way. So, Kevin had spoken about how the New River flows from south to north. So, a lot of the water falling in from the tributaries in North Carolina went into the New and then, when by the time the New reached some areas of Kevin’s County, it was 22 feet, I think is the flood stage you had mentioned for the New River, being the second highest in recorded history. So that gives you a little bit of a sense of the scale of the flooding in the river, New River in particular.
With specific regard to our agricultural damage assessment estimates, Elise, I think you mentioned the figure $159.3 million. So, we will reference that as more than 159.3 million. Of that, Grayson County, where Kevin is located, accounted for $61 million of those damages, or a little over 38%. Wythe County $22.7 million, Smith County $18.4 million, Washington County just under $13 million, Carroll County $12.2 million, Tazewell County $9 million, and so on. We had 21 localities, so 20 counties and one city that reported agricultural damages relating to Helene. That includes over 3,600 farms that were impacted.
Broadly summarized, our damage assessment categories of vegetable and crop losses were $31.4 million. Livestock, aquaculture, apiary types of civil losses at $1.5 million. Total facilities land and infrastructure losses at almost $120 million. Of the vegetable and crop loss categories, the top three were timber at about $25.9 million, hay about $3.3 million, pumpkins at $2.3 million. Within that livestock, aquaculture and apiary category, you’re looking at $1.2 million in beef cattle related losses, $130,000 in trout, a little over $15,000 in dairy cows.
And within the facilities, land and infrastructure — and Kevin spoke to this a little bit — but fence was far and away the most heavily impacted category, $54.3 million, and then structural, basically load-bearing types of structures, outbuildings, barns, etc., at $27.8 million. And land damages, debris, these types of things, about $25.5 million thereabouts.
Schafer: It’s certainly catastrophic damage and we’re sorry to hear that. Now, Kevin, how is the damage to things like roads and transportation networks impacting the ability to move crops and agriculture products through the supply chain?
Spurlin: Yeah, so great question. Initially, in just the few days right after the storm, our emergency operations center in the county had a map of the entire county, and they had every road that was closed coded in red. And it was nearly every road at the beginning. And as roads opened up, which Dr. Goerlich addressed, our Department of Transportation crews, Virginia Department of Forestry, other volunteer chainsaw crews were out trying to open up roads, primarily for emergency services personnel, initially. Those roads were opened up at a tremendous rate. It was incredible how quickly they were able to get most of these roads opened back up. We did have complete loss of power, countywide loss of communications infrastructure, no internet, no phone, countywide for the first 48 hours or so.
How that impacted us as far as moving crops and transporting goods. We were nearly at the end of our crop season, so that aspect of it was not as tremendous as it could have been. Probably the crop most affected in Grayson County in particular were pumpkins. A lot of pumpkins are grown here for the holiday season. We did have losses there with flood damage, as well as not being able to get those out in a timely manner.
We also had a lot of cattle that needed to get moved in a short time frame because they didn’t have access to grass because the fences were gone over the place. We had to collect and get those cattle confined in areas where we did have adequate fencing. So, trying to get cattle moved to areas where they did have grass was a bit of a problem. As far as getting product to market, again, just the speed in recovery was phenomenal. And I don’t think that there were tremendous adverse effects of that initially.
Schafer: Do you have any estimation, Kevin, of how long the recovery might take for the affected farms and communities in Virginia?
Spurlin: I would say at least 3 to 5 years minimum for rebuilding the infrastructure. I know it’s going to be a months-long process just to get a full assessment of what they’re going to need to do. But I also want to make the point that there’s a mental trauma aspect to this event. That will be lifelong. And you know people won’t ever forget this storm. And our recovery efforts that have supported them and brought hope through donations, and the ability that we’ve had to support them through this, that aspect has been so rewarding. Understanding that it is going to take years potentially for some of the mental aspects and stress of this to be recovered from is far longer than rebuilding the actual infrastructure.
Schafer: Dan, can you tell us about the extension’s available resources for affected communities and ways that our viewers might be able to help support your relief efforts?
Goerlich: Sure, I’d be happy to. Thank you. So, in Virginia Cooperative Extension, we have programs in agriculture and natural resources, family consumer science, 4-H youth development, and there are family and financial and youth impacts from the hurricane, in addition to the agriculture and natural resources components that we’ve been talking about. So, I just wanted to let folks know that we do have all of those other resources available to them to support youth, to support families, to support communities through those broader programs.
With specific regard to agriculture, very shortly after Hurricane Helene passed through, our agriculture agents started the Southwest Virginia Agriculture Relief Program. Essentially, this effort has a needs assessment component and it has a donor assessment component. And there is a form for each that we’ll hope to link to where impacted individuals can fill out the need assessment form or if they’re too humble to do that, an agent can fill out the form on their behalf as they travel throughout their localities and see the needs that that individuals are facing. And we ask our donors to fill out the donor assessment form and that enables the agents to then track and to match donations to farmers in need. We do have nine to 10 collection and distribution sites throughout the region. These are not so much operated in a manner where things are just stockpiled, for example, these are very much pass-through sites.
There are a lot of cases, because we’re aware of the needs, that the donations are able to go straight from the donor to the recipient without having to stop at a distribution site. There are also numerous cases where we do receive a truckload of hay, for example, a semi-trailer of hay at a site like Kevin has in Galax, where it is then unloaded. But then in fairly short order, it is distributed to the agricultural producers, the recipients. I should mention that there are short-term, medium-term, and long-term needs associated with this event.
Kevin spoke earlier a little bit to the idea that the immediate needs in the hours immediately following Hurricane Helene were looking at life-saving activities, property-saving activities. At that point in time, maybe hay wasn’t first and foremost on everyone’s minds, for example. Now, as we’re, and had been for the last few weeks, looking at needs that farmers have and looking ahead to the winter, we know that, for example, donations of hay are going to be very helpful or very important to help our folks get through the winter. Our agent who’s coordinating the Southwest Virginia Agricultural Relief Program has estimated 6,000 round bales of hay will be necessary to meet the need just to get through this through this winter. And then I guess I would encourage folks if they’re in a situation where they can assist with donations to take a look at the donor form to help us get a sense of what they might be able to share. Lots of cases of farmers helping each other, community members helping each other, Virginians helping Virginians.
And you know, a disaster like this, it really brings out the best in people, the humanity in people. It’s been very, very heartwarming to see how folks have helped their neighbors and helped each other. The one last thing I think that I’ll mention is the Virginia Cooperative Extension Hurricane Helene Resources webpage. It does include information from Virginia Cooperative Extension to assist people with recovering from flood. That may be flooded hay. It may be mold in the home, maybe mental health resources as Kevin was alluding to.
It also has links to partner organization resources provided by Virginia Farm Bureau, for example. Also our Secretary of Ag and Forestry’s office has resources on there. I do want to mention in terms of the overall partnership and the relief effort the Virginia Cattlemen’s Association and Virginia Farm Bureau. They are able to take financial donations that will be dedicated to assisting with Hurricane Helene recovery efforts. So, Virginia Cooperative Extension is leading the effort for in-kind donations. Partners like Cattlemen’s Association and Virginia Farm Bureau are taking the financial donations through their organization, and both of their foundations are also linked to that web page that I mentioned previously, which you can simply use your search engine of choice to look up Virginia Cooperative Extension Hurricane Helene resources and that should take you to that site.
And then as far as preparing for these things in the future to get in that mindset and go through that process, Virginia Cooperative Extension does have a publication Managing Climate Risks and Extreme Weather in Agriculture by Dr. Julie Shortridge and Mitchell Payletti that has some important considerations for farmers that are looking to prepare in advance should something happen to them.
Schafer: Thank you both for your time today and for joining me.
Spurlin: Thank you, Elise, for having us.
Goerlich: Yes, thank you, Elise, for taking an interest in our story.
Schafer: Of course. That’s all for today’s Feed & Grain Chat! If you’d like to see more videos like this, subscribe to our YouTube channel, sign up for the Industry Watch Daily eNewsletter, or go to FeedandGrain.com and search for videos. Thank you again for watching and we hope to see you next time!