Nothing Good Expected to Come From Katrina, Specialists Give Preliminary Assessment of Hurricane
Corn and rice could take brunt of Katrina's wrath; cotton and soybeans will be affected.
Cecil H. Yancy Jr.
Published: Aug 30, 2005
"I don't see anything good coming from it.•bCrLf
That statement pretty much summed up the preliminary assessments of crop specialists in Mississippi, speaking Monday on cell phones as hurricane Katrina moved up the continent after slamming the coasts of Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, killing more than 50 people and leaving destruction in its wake.
Corn and rice, still in the field, were expected to take the hardest hits, specialists said.
Tom Barber, cotton specialist at the Mississippi State University Cooperative Extension, says the hurricane hammered growers in southern Mississippi, putting fields under water. If there's a silver lining to the destruction of the hurricane, it could be that farther north in the state, the cotton was not open. "We haven't defoliated yet,•bCrLf Barber says. "We'll lose some to rot and have lots of plants on the ground, but • it could have been a lot worse if we had had open cotton in the Delta.•bCrLf
Alan Blaine, Mississippi State University Extension soybean specialist, said, "It's not going to be good. If we're looking at downed crops, we can get them up, but if it stays wet, we have rotten crops. A lot of this crop is ready to gather, and then we're going to get into fields that are extremely wet and cause problems that we'll have to fix next year. I don't see anything good happening from it.•bCrLf
While Steve Martin, Mississippi State University Extension ag economist, says it's too early to tell the numbers from the damage, he says the main concern is rice. Martin says the cost to harvest rice could increase three-fold.
"Rice is going to go down,•bCrLf Martin says. "Very little has been harvested and the wind and rain will put it on the ground. We'll probably have some rice that rots. The second concern is corn. Wind will be a problem on corn. It's going to affect soybeans and corn and string out cotton.
"If we get hit bad we'll know on Tuesday ,•bCrLf Martin says. "If we didn't get hit hard in the Delta, we won't know until harvest.•bCrLf
At the point, Martin was speaking late Monday afternoon, it had just begun to rain in Stoneville, Miss., at the Delta Research and Extension Center. "Researchers have been checking their plots today.•bCrLf
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Tagged: Extension, cotton, Harvest, University extension, soybeans
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