GA loses over $5.5 billion in agriculture and timber after Hurricane Helene, report says
Hurricane Helene will cost the Georgia economy at least $5.5 billion in agricultural and timber losses, according to a recent report from the University of Georgia Cooperative Extension, giving more clarity to just how impactful the storm was.
The estimate accounts for direct crop losses, losses to businesses that support agriculture and forestry, losses to workers in those and related industries, as well as likely recovery and restoration costs that businesses in these industries will face. Earlier estimates attempting to calculate money lost for the entire Southeast had been wide-ranging.
UGA’s estimate includes opportunity cost lost for farmers having to replant and nurture a whole new harvest and any storage and selling infrastructure, too, according to Pam Knox, agricultural climatologist and director of the UGA Weather Network.
“Hurricane Helene affected every crop that Georgia farmers produce,” the report said.
The crops most greatly affected were poultry, nursery crops, cotton, beef cattle and pecans. Peanuts, dairy and pine and hardwood timber were also affected.
Why climate change made Helene worse
Scientists are “pretty certain” that climate change is an inseparable factor in many of today’s extreme weather events, whether it be heat waves, aspects of flooding, hurricanes or drought, according to Dr. Marshall Shepherd, UGA’s director of the Atmospheric Sciences Program and the former president of the American Meteorological Society.
Being a southern coastal state, hurricanes are Georgia’s most likely damaging weather event. This year, the state saw effects from Hurricanes Debbie and Helene and Tropical Storm Raphael.
“What the best science is telling us about hurricanes is that climate warming is likely leading to a sort of a stronger or more intense generation of storms,” Shepherd said.
Hurricane Helene is “typical” of what we should expect going forward — a rapidly intensifying hurricane that quickly went from category one to category four in a day or so, according to Shepherd.
Storms like Helene are fueled by warmer waters off the Gulf of Mexico or in the Atlantic, according to Shepherd.
“We’ve known for many decades that the fuel supply for hurricanes is warm water or warm ocean heat content,” Shepherd said. “That’s the first condition necessary for hurricane form.”
Water temperatures have to be around 80 degrees for a hurricane to form, and the oceans are reaching that threshold much earlier in the year now compared to decades prior, according to Shepherd.
“A fact that many people don’t realize about climate warming is over roughly 90 or more percent of the climate warming is in the ocean,” Shepherd said. “It used to be that it would take until August or September, but now we’re seeing some tropical storms form much earlier in the season.”
Another concern regarding this new generation of storms as the climate warms is that there’s more water vapor in the atmosphere. This leads to much more prolific rainfall, which can lead to more flooding, Shepherd said.
“Increasingly hurricanes are no longer just threats to coastal communities,” Shepherd said. “Hurricanes are also threats further inland, particularly as they’re maintaining their strength and are producing excessive amounts of rainfall further inland, which is what we saw with Helene.”
Shepherd noted that not all hurricanes are going to be a Helene. “What I’m talking about is on average,” Shepherd said.
Climate change is hurting crops
A lot of the agricultural damage in Georgia came from flooding and wind, which leads to over-saturated soil and a lot of fallen trees, according to Shepherd.
The Atlantic hurricane season is typically is June 1 through Nov. 30, while the peak of the season is typically considered to be late August through mid-October, according to Knox.
The worst of it this year in Georgia was in the late fall, which is when farmers are usually harvesting, according to Knox.
The flooding from Helene suffocated the roots of crops and ultimately killed them. It also eroded peanut, cotton and vegetable fields, washing crops away and making it nearly impossible to harvest the plants that remained, according to Knox.
The wind and fallen trees result in power outages, which is a big issue for dairy, Knox said.
More losses came from ready-to-pick vegetables that sat in flood waters, according to Knox.
“You can’t pick them because the flood water is assumed to be contaminated with agricultural chemicals or diesel fuel or manure or something like that,” Knox said.
Intensified natural disasters aren’t the only affects climate change has on Georgia’s agriculture industry, according to Knox.
The seasons are getting warmer, with winter warming quicker than the rest.
“Warmer winters has a big impact on fruit crops,” Knox said.
Both blueberries and peaches, Georgia’s biggest fruit crops, require cold weather in the winter to be able to set a good set of blossoms in the spring, which eventually do produce the fruit, according to Knox.
“What we’ve seen is that it’s been getting just enough cold weather that most of the varieties get their required amount of chill, but as soon as it gets warm, those things bloom, and they might bloom a month early,” Knox said.
For example, in 2023, the state had a “tremendous bloom” of peaches early, and then there was a frost that occurred in mid March that froze 95% of the peaches in the commercial center part of the state, according to Knox.
“It wasn’t really late, climatologically, but it was late compared to where the peaches were in their growth pattern, Knox said. “We lost almost all our peach harvest for the year in 2023 because of that combination of warmer than usual winter conditions.”
Knox said farmers adapt by planting varieties that require less chill and reducing risk by planting more than one variety.
This story was originally published December 13, 2024 at 7:00 AM.
