Katrina Will Cost Farmers $900 Million

[WhiteTara]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050920/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/farm_losses

As if everything else wasn't killing the economy, here's some more bad news.

WASHINGTON - Farm losses from Hurricane Katrina will approach $900 million this year, and the persistent summer drought that plagued the Midwest will cost those farmers about $1.3 billion, the Agriculture Department said Tuesday.
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"Given the severity of the hurricane, the agricultural losses could have been much greater," Agriculture Secretary
Mike Johanns said in releasing the department's preliminary estimate.

The estimate doesn't account for long-term losses from the hurricane, such as damage to barns, equipment buildings, fences and machinery, he said. Neither does it include the cost of degraded farm fields, livestock carcass disposal, power losses and fuel shortages.

snip
The department said cotton production will drop about 4 percent this year in Alabama and Mississippi, which are important cotton states, and sugarcane production will drop about 9 percent in Louisiana, a state that would have accounted for about 1.5 percent of U.S. sugar production.

The estimate includes $30 million in losses to short-term livestock production and $3 million in milk losses to dairy producers, who lost electricity on farms and in dairy plants. About 10,000 cattle were lost, and millions of chickens were killed, the department said.
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look for higher food prices. sigh

[pitohui]

1. i would have liked to know the effect on catfish production

i knew it was going to be ugly for chicken

would like to know how hard the farmed catfish industry

[WhiteTara]

2. good question

bet the shrimping industry is going to take a real hit also.

[Angry Girl]

5. The shrimp and fish industries are in RUINS

Watch the price of shrimp climb in the next few months. That Gulf shrimp is gone! Also, all the polluted New Orleans water drains into the ocean, affecting the ecosystem. There was already a big problem with the dead zones of oxygen-deprived water. It's going to get worse.

[prairierose]

3. These are only some of the immediate losses....

wait until harvest time in the midwest and there is no way to ship grain out through the now non-existent Port of New Orleans.

[GayCanuck]

4. The family farm

will be ruined even further thanks to the twirp.

[baby_mouse]

6. Ooooh, dear.

That's not going to go down terribly well.