Hurricane Helene shuts down bird plants, damages cotton crops

Hurricane Helene shut down chicken processing plants and caused severe damage to flocks, while felling pecan trees and flattening cotton crops, while floods inundated the southern US.

Every commodity was affected, with cotton, pecans, poultry and lumber the most affected, according to Matthew Agvest, director of communications for the Georgia Department of Agriculture. Although still in the early stages of assessment, the state expects Helene to be more costly than Hurricane Michael in 2018, which caused $2.5 billion in agricultural damage.

“The future of hundreds of agricultural operations in Georgia is uncertain,” Tyler Harper, the state’s agriculture commissioner, said in a letter to the Georgia Congressional Delegation. The storm “could not have come at a worse time for our farmers and producers, who are already facing record declines in net farm income caused by inflation, high input costs, labor shortages, global competition and low prices of the goods”.

Related: AccuWeather puts total damage and economic losses from Helene at $145 billion to $160 billion

Helene made landfall on the Florida coast as a Category 4 hurricane before moving inland. The massive storm with winds of 140 miles per hour killed more than 90 people, knocked out power for millions and drenched states including Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina.

Wayne-Sanderson Farms’ poultry processing facility in Moultrie, Ga., will not operate any shifts Monday, according to a post on the company’s Instagram account. Operations at two chicken plants run by Pilgrim’s Pride Corp. were suspended on Saturday due to power outages, owner JBS SA said in a statement to Bloomberg.

Damage from the severe storm has the potential to further limit growth in U.S. poultry production at a time when demand is growing. Georgia and North Carolina are among the largest chicken producing states in the US.

Related: Helene triggers flooding, knocks out power to millions

On Saturday, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said at a press conference that 107 poultry facilities were “destroyed or completely destroyed by the storm.”

Nikki Richardson, a spokeswoman for JBS, said the company was still examining the extent of the impact on growers. “We know that many birds have been lost in some areas and the damage to some farms has been severe,” she said.

Cotton producers were also affected, with affected growers reporting production losses ranging from 35 percent to a total crop loss, the Georgia Cotton Commission said on its Facebook page. “The losses will extend far beyond the farm, as cotton gins, other agricultural businesses and rural communities will feel the effects of Hurricane Helene’s aftermath for years to come,” the group said.

Related: Hurricane Helene to become Cat 3, initial estimates put $3-6 billion in insured losses

Cotton futures gained as much as 1.4 percent, the only soft commodity higher, by 10:50 a.m. in New York on Monday.

Most of the damage from the hurricane occurred in eastern Georgia, sparing higher-producing counties in southwest Georgia and southeast Alabama, said Walter Kunisch, a senior commodities strategist at Hilltop Securities. Cotton production in the state will decline, but the extent of this loss is still unclear, he added.

“The path of the storm saved the cotton in those regions, but where the cotton losses occurred, the damage was severe and resulted in total losses,” Kunisch said.

Top photo: Damage after Hurricane Helene made landfall on Horseshoe Beach, Florida on September 28. Photographer: Chandan Khanna/AFP/Getty Images.

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