Following Helene, officials working to avert agricultural disaster
North Carolina executive director for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency Bob Etheridge (left) chats with Canton Mayor Zeb Smathers at the WNC Regional Livestock Center on Oct. 31. Cory Vaillancourt photo
A trio of high-ranking state and federal agriculture officials is warning that if farmers affected by Hurricane Helene don’t get help soon, next year could be a bleak one for both producers and consumers.
Their visit comes days after U.S. Agriculture Secretary and former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack visited Asheville for the same reason.
“We’ve got a lot of farmers that’s seen tremendous damage on their farm operations that’s going to really limit their ability to be able to produce next year if we don’t get some support to be able to help them get back on their feet, so that’s what we’re all working on together,” said Kaleb Rathbone, assistant commissioner of agriculture for Western North Carolina and a Haywood County native.
Rathbone was joined at the WNC Regional Livestock Center outside Canton on Oct. 31 by Canton Mayor Zeb Smathers, North Carolina Executive Director for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency Bob Etheridge and Robert Bonnie, undersecretary for farm production and conservation at the USDA.
“We want to assess what our programs can do in the short term to help folks,” Bonnie said. “We want to make sure we’re reducing barriers, making it easier for folks to get into our programs. Second thing is that Congress is looking at a larger package of relief. We want to be talking to farmers, talking to folks on the ground, to make sure that that the right things are in there, and that we do everything we can to help folks.”
Bonnie explained that the FSA’s emergency conservation program and natural resources conservation service can help producers with clean up and debris removal, and that there’s also help available for feed and costs as well as water-hauling. Some $250 million in crop insurance payments have already been made to farmers, and longer-term programs aim to help producers regain stability.
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North Carolina is one of the nation’s top agricultural producers, leading the way in production of eggs, poultry, sweet potatoes and tobacco, and ranks second in Christmas trees, trout and turkey. In 2023, the state notched a record-setting $111 billion impact from its agricultural sector.
“We recognize we’re going to need to be here for the long term and that a lot of these farmers have taken a serious hit,” said Bonnie. “We want to provide the technical assistance, the assistance through our programs, financing and other things, to help them get back on their feet.”
Etheridge is something of a living legend in North Carolina politics — farmer, Army veteran, representative in the General Assembly, state superintendent of public instruction for eight years and Congressman for 14, where he served on the House Agriculture Committee and as the chair of the General Farm Commodity and Risk Management Subcommittee.
“Many farmers, certainly in Western North Carolina, are small farmers,” Etheridge said. “There may be some extra money, state and federal. We don’t know yet, but we’re hoping there is. Let me just encourage every farmer to come in and get a farm number and sign up, because if you don’t sign up and we don’t know about you, you don’t have an opportunity to participate.”
Local storm damage was “tremendous” said Etheridge, who added that he’d seen a lot of storms in his day and that the harm to farms is a major concern, especially with spring planting season right around the corner. The ongoing ripple effect could be just as tremendous as the initial damage itself.
“A small farmer helps a small businessperson. A small businessperson helps big businesses. This helps communities grow and prosper,” he said.
There’s also major concern over a longstanding problem that’s affected the nation, the state and Western North Carolina — the loss of agricultural land.
In a study released last year, the American Farmland Trust called North Carolina the second most at-risk state for loss of farmland between now and 2040, behind only Texas. In April, President of the Haywood County Farm Bureau Don Smart said that 40 years ago, Haywood County had nearly 80,000 acres of farmland. Now, it’s down to less than 50,000.
Last year, there were more than 110 applications by farmers for permanent farmland preservation easements that would have cost the state $55 million, however, that program was only funded by the General Assembly with $18 million.
North Carolina Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler, Rathbone’s boss, recently called the loss of farmland the number one issue — not the number one issue in agriculture, but the number one issue overall — facing the state in the coming decades. While Troxler’s General Election opponent, Sarah Taber, opined that the losses were coming as farming becomes less profitable, others point to residential development in a fast-growing state.
Now, farmers have to contend not only with a lack of profitability and a surge in development gobbling up prime agricultural land, but also natural disasters like Helene.
“It’s accelerating the issue in a couple different ways. One, obviously, is the physical loss of land that we have seen. You look at the Pigeon River here in Haywood County, there are fields that are a third the size that they were before the storm. It’s simply gone. It’s been washed away,” Rathbone said. “The other piece is production value. A lot of top soil has been washed away, and it’s going to take years to be able to rebuild the fertility of that ground.”
Another component is the temporary disruption of market activity, which puts land at risk for small farmers who were barely making a living before the storm hit. Even the incredible losses in Asheville’s River Arts District — usually thought of as a beery stronghold for artists and musicians but in reality also an important regional retail market for agricultural products — complicates the situation for farmers.
“Some may be forced into a situation where they have to sell their land to build cash flow. We don’t want to see that happen,” he said. “We don’t want farmers to be forced into a decision based on circumstances that were completely outside of their control. That’s where these programs to provide relief for farms are really going to play an important role in what the future of agriculture in Western North Carolina looks like.”
Rathbone was optimistic that the General Assembly would step in to augment USDA recovery efforts, but forthcoming assistance from Congress may just be the shot in the arm that producers in Western North Carolina need to avert disaster. Former congressman Etheridge, who said his appearance in Haywood County “is not just a visit, but a commitment,” knows what that will take.
“Every member of Congress, in one way or another, has got a constituent that’s hurting,” he said. “If all of them push together, it’s still going to take a lot of money and a long time.”
