Thirteen months after Hurricane Helene, Georgia's farm belt is still rebuilding, with pecans, cotton, timber and livestock losses straining families and rural economies.
00:00Georgia farmers know hurricanes, but not since Michael in 2018 has anything hit harder than Helene.
00:09If you drew a line across the state from Valdosta to Augusta, that entire line was really devastated.
00:16Helene carried an additional gut punch. It hit right at harvest time.
00:20Hurricanes hit in the fall, and that's when a lot of our big row crops that's at harvest.
00:26And so there's a lot of money out in the fields when these hurricanes hit.
00:31And if you have a couple of hurricanes in a row, you're on the hook for a tremendous amount of capital investment that you don't get a return on.
00:39According to the University of Georgia, nearly 40 percent of the U.S. pecan production comes from Georgia, but Helene destroyed decades of growth.
00:47Most trees take close to seven to ten years to mature, leaving many farmers with no harvest for years.
00:54Cotton took one of the hardest hits, more than a half a billion dollars in losses, wiping out much of last year's income.
01:01Hurricane force winds stripped forest bare, snapping thousands of trees at the roots.
01:07Many won't be profitable again for 20 years.
01:11We're really good at doing more with less. That's somewhat of the unofficial motto for farmers over the last 40 years.
01:18Not magicians, though. So it does take some kind of help, and we're going to continue to try and do more with less.
01:23But when it comes to something that's this catastrophic, you know, we've seen disasters in the past. We've never had a Helene.
01:30Recovery is long and expensive. Rebuilding takes more than grit. It takes time, faith, and a little luck.
01:37It's a lot of hoping and praying that the market's going to be conducive to building back and that your prices are going to be good when it's time to harvest.
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