
“We’ve had the most cotton ever in storage in the history of San Patricio County when the hurricane hit,” McKamey said by phone. “It’s just the worst possible time.”
Harvey slammed ashore as a Category 4 hurricane near Rockport, Texas on Friday night. The strongest storm to hit the U.S. since 2004 has since been downgraded to a tropical storm and is threatening to drop several feet of rain. Grain elevators suspended shipments earlier this week as port facilities braced for flooding, storm surges and possible power outages. Cotton and soybean futures climbed on Thursday amid the outlook for heavy rains, which could damage crops from Texas to Mississippi.
A storage tank containing sorghum at a grain elevator in the town of Odem is completely gone and at least three other tanks containing sorghum collapsed at an elevator between Taft and Gregory, McKamey said.
The storm is also striking an area home to thousands of head of cattle. Texas A&M University’s AgriLife Extension Service is helping to set up animal sheltering sites around the state in case ranchers need to relocate cattle or other animals, said Andy Vestal, a professor and extension specialist. Some livestock owners closest to the coast have already been working to move animals to higher ground via trailers, away from low-lying areas and tributaries, he said.
Damage assessment will start as early as Sunday and teams will be available to deploy to distribute feed and portable water troughs, if necessary, Vestal said.
“We’ve never experienced 20 to 30 inches of rainfall in a 48-hour period,” Vestal said by phone from College Station, Texas.
Elsewhere in the state, agricultural producers unscathed by the worst of the storm are hoping to resume operations. Gulf Coast Cooperative, which has a grain elevator about 20 miles (32 kilometers) outside Corpus Christi, hopes to restart cotton ginning operations as early as Sunday, said general manager Chris Yaklin.
“We were spared right here,” Yaklin said Saturday by phone. “We didn’t lose power. We’re in good shape.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Jen Skerritt in Winnipeg at jskerritt1@bloomberg.net, Brian K. Sullivan in Boston at bsullivan10@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Millie Munshi at mmunshi@bloomberg.net, Tina Davis, Jeffrey Taylor
©2017 Bloomberg L.P.
Comments
Post a Comment