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Mike Howell:
The Dirt, with me, Mike Howell, an eKonomics podcast where I present the down and dirty agronomic science to help grow crops and bottom lines. Inspired by eKonomics.com, farming’s go-to informational resource, I’m here to break down the latest crop nutrition research, news and issues, helping farmers make better business decisions through actionable insights. Let’s dig in.
Well, hello again, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of The Dirt. We’re taking a different track today, not talking about agronomy and soil fertility as much, per se, but we’ve got an issue going on and I thought we needed to put a little attention on it and talk about this is a little bit. Not really something that we really wanna talk about, but I think it’s important, and we really need to get this information out there and let everybody know what’s going on.
To help me do that today, we’ve got Mr. Tom McCall, President of Farm Bureau in Georgia with us. Mr. McCall, welcome to The Dirt.
Tom McCall:
Thank you for doing this. Good to see you.
Mike Howell:
Mr. McCall, before we really get into it, if you would, take just a minute and introduce yourself to our listeners. Let them know what you do and what’s going on there in the state of Georgia these days.
Tom McCall:
Well, the state of Georgia’s in kind of a mess right now, at least the southeastern part of it is. But I live in Elberton, Georgia, and if you don’t know where that is, all your tombstones come from Elberton. We are tombstones and granite countertops, is what Elberton is famous for. But I have been President of Georgia Farm Bureau for about 4 years, and previous to that I spent 26 years in the GA House of Representatives. In 16 of those, I was chairman of the House Ag and Consumer Affairs Committee. But all in all, I farm for a living. We grow cows, and we got a bunch of sheep, and grow small grains, and do a lot of [inaudible 00:02:00].
Anyway, that’s kind of a background on me, but right now the most important thing we’re doing is Farm Bureau and taking care of our farmers, and, on the insurance side and the federation side. Most folks think of Farm Bureau as a big old insurance company, and we are, but the whole purpose of Farm Bureau was founded in 1937 as a unified voice for Georgia farming.
Mike Howell:
Mr. McCall, before we really get into talking about the hurricane and all that damage, I’m sure we’ll have some listeners that don’t understand exactly what Farm Bureau is. So if you will, take just a minute and explain what Farm Bureau is. You mentioned it’s more than just an insurance company.
Tom McCall:
Well, like I said, in 1937 we were formed as a unified voice, and, uh, representing farmers in the legislative arena is what our purpose is. And that’s our federation side. We do Ag in the Classroom programs. We have a foundation that has a mobile ag classroom, that we haul around to all the elementary schools that we can get it to, to educate kids on agriculture.
And then in 1959, because farmers couldn’t find insurance for their equipment, and some of their building and stuff, they, we formed the insurance company. And we are the largest domicile insurance company in Georgia. Probably got more than a half a billion worth of assets out that we cover. And we have offices in 158 of the 159 counties in Georgia. The only one we don’t is Chattahoochee, and it’s all Fort Benning.
We are represented across the state. Probably have around 230 to 240,000 member families. And when you’re talking to politicians like I used to be, you can tell them it’s a half a million votes, and they start listening to you. Our whole purpose, though, is to represent farms with legislative stuff. We have a whole public policy department that does that. We have 20 commodity committees, made up of people that grow those commodities in Georgia, which is where our policy comes from. It’s a grassroots effort. Everything starts at the county-level, and works its way up through a process that’s voted on at our state convention in December by voting delegates before the policy ever gets passed… And it is thoroughly discussed, to come out to be the best thing possible for all of agriculture in Georgia.
We cover a lot of ground on the insurance and federation side.
Mike Howell:
In my younger days growing up, I always heard about Georgia, and when I think about Georgia, I think about peaches and pecans, way back then. Maybe some peanuts as well. But as I got older and started working more and traveling to Georgia more, I realized that there is a lot more to agriculture than those three commodities. You mentioned 20 commodities there, and I’m sure there may be even more than that, but if you would, take just a minute and talk about the different types of agriculture that’s represented there in the state of Georgia.
Tom McCall:
Well, we grow everything… I say all the time, from apples to zucchinis. Apples and grapes. The wine industry is a big growing, fast-growing commodity up in the mountains. We have one of the largest vineyards in the world down in Ocilla, Georgia, but there are muscadines. When you get down below a certain altitude, there’s a little bug that causes Pierce’s disease. Reason you can’t grow grapes below a certain altitude.
But our soils tight, and our climate… We have a lot of latitudes in Georgia. So we have a huge abundant water supply when you get down on what they’d call a coastal plain, which is where the ocean used to be, and there’s a lot of produce grown down in that part of the country. But if you think about the four big p’s, there’s pecans, peanuts, poultry and pulpwood. We are the largest state for private-owned forest land in the country. Grow most of the peanuts that’s grown in America. In fact, we’re number two in cotton. And then you get on down into some of the produce. We are big with the produce, at number two in a lot of those specific specialty crops.
Blueberries are a big deal in Georgia now. I know back in the mid ’70s when I went to, uh, college at ABAC down in Tifton, which is South Georgia, blueberries were just getting started. And now they have really overcome peaches in Georgia as a value of a commodity, but we are still big with peaches. We are the peach state. I think South Carolina may grow more peaches than we do, but the rule is our peaches are a whole lot better than anybody else’s in the country. They taste better, and if you like peach ice creams, then come to Georgia.
Mike Howell:
I always enjoy getting over there in the summer and bringing a bushel of peaches back home with me.
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Mr. McCall, you mentioned earlier that hurricane Helene had came in. And you know, that was an unwelcome visitor, that came in on September the 26th. We saw a lot on the news about flooding from this storm. We saw some damaged buildings, a lot about power outages and displaced families. But from my experiences growing up, my first hurricane that I lived through… I moved to Gulfport, Mississippi about 20 years ago, when I lived through Katrina. I was south of the railroad tracks when Katrina came through, and I was working as an agronomist for Mississippi State at the time. I know what kind of damage it had to agriculture.
That hurricane came in during late August, and everything wasn’t quite as vulnerable as it was when this one came in in late September. A lot of the cotton had opened up, and peanuts were ready to harvest. Just the worst time of year for these things to come in. So, I wanted to spend a little time today talking about what effects this storm had on agriculture in the state of Georgia. And I guess to start off, my first love is row crops. I work with all different types of row crops. So, let’s talk a little bit about the impact it had on row crops. Cotton, corn, peanuts, what other, uh, row crops you wanted to talk about.
Tom McCall:
It’s like when you were in Gulfport, it couldn’t hit at a worse time. This horror season is just getting started. Georgia’s agriculture contributes about $84 billion to Georgia’s economy. Biggest contributor there is to Georgia’s economy. But it hit all in all about $6.5 billion so far that we know of, with damage to ag and temp. And just riding around, from what I’ve seen being down where the hurricane hit, timber… Old pecan trees, the big ones that were producing… Not only orchards got blown over, but a lot of the green pecans got knocked off the trees, which are not usable.
But when you take timber, and pecans and chicken houses… There’s probably 800 chicken houses that have some kind of damage. Some of them’s flat on the ground, some of them’s leaning, some of them’s got tin blown off. Don’t know how many chickens got killed that were in those houses yet, but I can give you some numbers, uh, that the University came out with last week on your row crops and that kinda stuff. These are preliminaries, now. We don’t know the total yet.
We don’t know what it’s gonna do to cotton as far as harvesting. This all twisted up the green bulbs. It’s just twisted all to pieces, and I hope our folks can harvest. I saw something the other day that would open, where they had started picking, and, you know, half of it’s laying on the ground where it got blown off the stalk. Probably to cotton, it’s around $220 million, is what the estimates are. Peanuts are around $50 million. I’m hoping that the peanuts that were still in the ground can be harvested, if they can get in there and get them up before they start popping off the vines.
But tobacco has already, for the most part, been picked. You know, we just had a hurricane before this one, called Debbie… About a month or so, and it really, really hit the tobacco people, because they were in the middle of harvest. It’s probably $7 million to them. But the vegetables are probably a $120 million crop loss. Soybeans is probably $7 million.
We are now… When you get into South Georgia, we grow more citrus than Florida does. Mostly satsumas and that kinda stuff, but it’s gonna hit citrus for about $12 million. You know, and then you get into s- pecans. Probably when you figure out the damage, plus what’s lost… And then they gotta replant everything, you know, all those big trees, and that’s a lifetime investment for somebody. Somebody my age that plants a pecan tree now, probably won’t ever see any results much from it. But it’s probably $138 million, the pecans.
So when you throw all of that together, and we haven’t even got into the livestock yet. We could talk about that in a minute if you want to. The people’s lives will never be the same. Timber, like I said, it was probably 128 billion, with a B, dollars worth of timber damaged. Right at 9 million acres worth of timber. And you get down in where the hurricane hit… We talk about the bread basket where we grow produce. We call it the wood basket of the United States, ’cause you get into slashing long leafs and hollow pines down there. And they snapped off 15, 20 foot up in the air, just acres and acres of whole forests gone.
Mike Howell:
And Mr. McCall, that’s something that a lot of our listeners really wanna understand. They think those trees blew down, and well, they can go in and pick those up… And take them to the saw mill or to the pulpwood yard and be fine, but the way these trees all come down at the same time, they’ll end up rotting before anybody could get them all to the mill. And they’re twisted up, they’re not broke off clean. They’re not in the length that we need them to be in. We really lose most of that timber when a storm comes through like that.
Tom McCall:
When they’re twisted like that, it twists the whole tree, and you can’t use it for boards. The saw mills can’t. The other thing is you got a fairly short period of time, even if you can get in there… If you could find a logging crew, ’cause they’re all tied up now, and get what’s laying on the ground off, you got a short period of time that is usable… And during that period of time, the mills are full. And we make a lot of pallets in Georgia that we ship overseas, but when those pallet mills get full, they have got to export them somehow. And thank goodness the longshoreman stopped that strike they were on, because that would’ve just backed it up worse, coming out of the Savannah port.
So you throw all that into the mix, timber is gonna be a big loss to the landowners… On timber, just because they can’t get it out of the woods. And the mills, when they get full, they get full. It’s not like they can use some of these big old trees that would’ve been valuable as all timber for somebody to build a house out of two by fours, it’s not usable for that.
Mike Howell:
Right.
Well, Mr. McCall, you mentioned peanuts and trying to get them out of the ground before they turn loose from the plants there. I used to be the peanut specialist in Mississippi years ago, and I understand how peanuts are grown and harvested. And from the time that peanut plant gets mature, you’ve only got a week or 10 days to get it up out of the ground before that peanut starts turning loose. The weather has changed and it’s not raining as much now, and folks can get to the fields if they can get up and down the roads to the fields. That was one of our biggest problems during Katrina, was we had to get the roads cleared so we could get back to the field, and then get all the debris out of the field before we could get any equipment in to do any harvest operations.
Tom McCall:
Well, you’re talking about the debris in the field, there’s tin strolled all out in the field from the buildings that might’ve been close by. A lot of pivots have turned over, which they got to get them out of the way… Which is gonna tear up whatever peanuts, or cotton or whatever might be around the pivots. A lot and a lot of those have blown over and broke into.
And then we came through something yesterday, coming from down that part of the country, that… He’s talking about the roads, or where the trees are cut off at the white line. You know, that’s where they just topped them so cars could get back and forth. If you go down through there with some of this wide equipment that goes from white line to white line, it might be a little difficult to get through. And then you worry about with all the rain we got, driving that heavy stuff over some of these bridges. You don’t know whether they’re washed out.
But I will tell you, the governor suspended motor fuel tax, for us to be able to do that. He also suspended truck weights, so folks would be able to haul heavier loads and not make so many trips, especially with timber. And he also… The federal government decided that it’s okay to run red fuel in your road vehicles until October the 31st. Now, I don’t know what’s gonna happen on November the 1st if somebody got red fuel in their truck, but the inability to get fuel and gasoline in those affected areas is a big deal.
But you’re right, the roads are, are a big thing, that… With trees all over them… And I gotta say something about our farmers. They got their equipment out, and their chainsaws and their front-end loaders, and cleared a lot of government county-type roads or s- helped clear some of the state highways just so they could get in there. But a lot of our farmers don’t have power yet, if you live on a f- off-road, or on a dirt road somewhere… And we were down there there, and there’s lines laying all in the road. And you’re driving around, over in the ditch to get by lines that are hanging on the road, power poles are snapped off. I saw crews and I appreciate it, from Pennsylvania and Arkansas and all over the county, and, you know, helping restore power.
I don’t know when they’re gonna get internet service back, and a lot of them depend on the internet. Our GPS in the truck wasn’t working. You know how it is with peanuts slapped in the middle, and you don’t have GPS. It’s hard to run a peanut shaker up and down a, a long road when you can’t see the ground.
Mike Howell:
Yes, sir. It’s really hard to find those rows, and you get off of that road just a little bit and you’re gonna start losing yield really quick.
Mr. McCall, you mentioned livestock earlier when we were talking, and you said we would come back to that. Tell us a little bit about the effects that’s going on with the livestock. I remember back in Katrina, we had miles and miles of fences that were destroyed, and a lot of other issues going on with the livestock.
Tom McCall:
A lot of local people who weren’t affected have stepped up and bought fence supplies… Poles, wire, whatever, and shipped it to that part of the state. The day after, I called one of my board members down there, and they said, “Well, we okay, but I got 500 mama cows and their calves off in a swamp somewhere, and we have got to find them and get them back.” And I talked to him the other day, and he said they had them all back and the fence is kinda patched. But that’s a big deal, besides what cows might’ve got killed when… You know, trees falling on them or whatever. But they’re thinking beef cattle, is gonna be about a $100- $98 million effect on this.
And then you figure in barns that’s got either blown away or trees on them. And then you get into the dairy industry, that’s probably $100 million. And that’s the effects it’s had on the animals. Plus they didn’t have power, and the- everybody’s running off generators, and you know a generator won’t run everything like electricity does. But the effect it had on the cows and all, and the barns. And let alone, some of the silage and all that hadn’t been cut, that’s laying flat on the ground now. They’re looking at probably a $100 million loss to the dairies.
And then, you know, I talked about chickens. We are the largest roller growing state around. Not counting table eggs and breeder eggs back, it’s probably $5 to 520 million worth of a hit to our poultry growing people just in Southeast Georgia. Like I said, there’s probably… They think there’s around 800 houses with some kind of damage, whether it’s flat on the ground or the roof blown off. But you know, you get feed being blown over, all of that kind of effect. Plus, no power.
And it wasn’t at hot as normal, but it doesn’t take a lot of temperature to rise for chicken to start dying when they in the house. And all of that’s still being fixed-
Mike Howell:
Right. Get rid of all that ventilation system, and it gets really hot in those chicken houses.
Mr. McCall, we’ve talked about the infrastructure, but we haven’t mentioned things like the peanut buying points and the grain elevators. I know we have some fertilizer manufacturing facilities there in Augusta, and we lost the top off the urea storage shed there and lost a lot of urea from that, and still trying to assess all the damage that did happen at that place. But talk about the infrastructure and what kinda damages we have to that.
Tom McCall:
I live right up above Augusta, and the eye came kinda over me, but Augusta… Like you talked about, was on what they call the dirty side, and Augusta’s torn up. We came through there two days ago, and there’s a lot of damage. Matter of fact, came up… One of y’all fertilizer plants, I could see off in the distance, and there’s probably some stuff torn up there that’s gonna delay fertilizer, matter of fact. And I know there’s a lot of nitrogen made down there.
But then you get on down the infrastructure as far as power goes, it’s a big deal for that. But we’re talking about peanuts, and if they stay in the ground too long, they won’t come out of the ground on a vine like they’re supposed to… But even if they dig them and get them dug and picked, you still gotta drive. You still gotta get them to a vine farm. They still gotta be inspected by federal state inspection.
So a peanut vine farm with no power is just a place, you know? So a lot of our buying points had elevator damage, a lot of the buildings, the warehouses might’ve been damaged. But, uh, power at the peanut vine farms is a big deal to help our peanut grower be able to get them out of the ground and get them where they’re supposed to be, where they can even be sampled. And most of the sampling is done s- not by old probe like they used to do it, by hand, you know? And so all of that kinda infrastructure stuff plays back to the guy that’s on a tractor, digging peanuts or picking cotton. You think about a roller picker costs over $1 million, just to pick cotton, and the gins don’t have power. You know, thank goodness we’re not picking it on wagons like I used to do, and having to wait on a wagon. At least you can go and pick it and get it in a roll, wrapped in plastic. But still, you need to get the stuff processed and get it in a warehouse.
Then you look at all the trash that got blown around, or the leaf qualities. The leaves are blown off and that gets mixed in with the wind, the quality’s gonna be bad, as far as the grade on cotton goes.
You throw all of that stuff in the mix just because there’s no electricity or maybe no road to get it somewhere, then it really goes back and affects the guy driving the picker, or the peanut combine or… It all plays into bad effects on agriculture.
Mike Howell:
And you’re kinda leading me right to where I wanted to get to next. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of our podcast before today or not, but we spent several episodes back early in the year talking about mental health in the farming community and what kinda major problem that is these days. And I can just imagine, these farmers that have lost basically everything trying to get a crop out… And they’ve got nothing to do but sit on that tractor or sit in that cotton picker and, and try to get this crop out this year, and you just keep thinking over and over and over about this stuff. It’s gotta be having a toll on the mental health of our farmers and our farm families going through all of this.
Tom McCall:
That’s one of the biggest concerns I have. Our foundation did a, probably the largest survey of anybody in Georgia as far as farmer mental health goes, and the results were scary. They kinda surprised me, as just to how many people think about really committing suicide once a week or once a month. And then you throw in high input costs, that they’ve already had to deal with… And just, uh, for instance, I was selling cotton in the 1970s for what it’s bringing today, but I was paying $60 [inaudible 00:21:39] nitrate, and not $400.
So you know, s- you throw all that in the mix of it, and then the storm comes by and it just changes people’s lives with what they have to deal with. Mental health is a big deal, big concern to me. I don’t want our people giving up. It would be easy. Uh, it would be real easy, just to take care of your family. I sit on the board of a life insurance company that the 10 southern states owns, and I don’t want them sending checks to Georgia. But it’s a real concern.
Mike Howell:
Yes, sir. We wanna remind everybody that there is help out there, if, if anybody’s having problems like that. There’s numerous places you can call. The suicide prevention hotline, or call a friend or a neighbor. A lot of people are going through the same things.
Tom McCall:
That’s right. It’s okay, it’s okay to talk to somebody. It’s okay to just… Call me. You know, I’m not a psychiatrist, but I’d be glad to talk to you, you know? It’s that kinda stuff that may help somebody not do what they don’t need… You know. I don’t wanna say it’s dangerous, but it… I’m worried about some on my farm.
Mike Howell:
Yes, sir. And, uh, you know, farmers were already going through a tough time. You mentioned that the prices are low, and… The prices that they’re selling crops for is low, and input prices are high. It’s just a tough time, but we can all work together and get through this.
Tom McCall:
One good thing about this hurricane being named Helene, it has taught us to lean on each other. And that’s what everybody’s doing, is leaning on each other… And leaning on their friends, and other farmers that, who understand what you’re going through.
Maybe the name fits, I don’t know, but it’s just kinda… Oh, a thought, you know? And we have to depend on people that understand what we do.
Mike Howell:
Well, Mr. McCall, we’ve talked a lot about how much was lost, and a lot about the mental health and everything of our farmers. There’s problems everywhere that everybody’s dealing with. We know that there’s not a silver bullet that’s gonna fix all of these problems at one time. We can’t flip a switch and make all of this go away, but we’ve got a lot of listeners out there that I’m sure are more than willing to help out. What can listeners do if they wanna help out some of our farmers here in the state of Georgia?
Tom McCall:
I’m glad you said that, because I was gonna try to hit on it if you would let me. Farm Bureau, the Department of Ag and about 40 other ag organizations… Associations, or commodity commissions or whatever, have come together and created what we call Weathered but Strong, and it is a way for folks to donate monitory. Our goal is $1 million. I hope we get way more than that. And we’re well on the way, because folks have stepped up. Different organizations, different companies.
And we ran it through our foundation, which is a 501c3. It’s all tax-deductible. 100% of the donations will go back to farmers. We’re just gonna eat the administrative costs, which is fine. But it has really kicked off in about a week. We’ve probably got… Oh, 350 or so thousand dollars already. But folks are really taking an interest.
And if you go to Georgia Farm Bureau, there’s a link. But it’ll pop up a little QR code, and all you have to do is shine your phone on the QR code or just punch in Weathered but Strong, but all of that is going to help farmers fill the gaps where maybe crop insurance, or hurricane insurance or whatever might not cover. But 100% of it is going back to farmers that are affected. There’s roughly 50 counties or so that really are affected badly by Helene, and that’s our target, is to those people.
We did it when Michael hit Southwest Georgia back in ’18, and we still had all the spreadsheets and everything already set up from that. So it’s not a Farm Bureau-specific donation site, it’s… Like I said, it’s like 40 different ag organizations, and the commissioner is pushing it, the governor is pushing it. So we hope it catches on, and lets us distribute the money all back out to farmers.
Mike Howell:
And Mr. McCall, the website that I found here is www.GFB, for Georgia Farm Bureau, .org, and a backslash hurricane-relief. And that’ll get you to the Georgia Farm Bureau website, and you can go from there if you’re interested in helping out with this.
Tom McCall:
And we just updated whatever a URL is, and it’ll take you straighter to it. And it’s got frequently asked questions on there, how it’s gonna be operate, so all of that stuff’s covered on that website.
Mike Howell:
And for our listeners, we’re gonna put a link to that on our website as well. You can visit our website, that’s Nutrien-eKonomics, with a K, .com, and we’ll have a link to that on there as well, if you wanna help out.
Tom McCall:
Thank you, sir. I appreciate that. We all do.
Mike Howell:
Well, Mr. McCall, I’ve lived through these situations. I know what everybody’s facing down there. And it doesn’t matter what happened, it’s not gonna come to an end really quickly. But we wanted to let everybody be aware of what’s going on. We’ve really appreciated you taking time to visit with us today. Uh, before we sign off today, is there anything else that we may have failed to mention that you wanted to get out there?
Tom McCall:
I don’t want you to think I’m [inaudible 00:26:46]. It’s a bad situation, but we’re gonna come through this thing. We’re gonna all work together. Everybody’s gonna work together. Our insurance company is gonna be strong. We are not in any danger of going under at all. Our admin team and our insurance administration have managed this company, learned a lot from Michael, to where we could take care of our insured. That’s what we are there for. We are there no matter the stall, and we have already written over $40 million worth of checks to affected people. And I’m not saying it that we’re the only ones, but we’re gonna be okay. Everybody’s gonna be okay. It’s just gonna take a little while. Just one of those things you have to work through.
But I appreciate you getting this information out and paying attention to how bad this hurricane was. It’s probably the worst hurricane that has hit, they say the United States, since Katrina now… As far as affecting Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, uh, some in Kentucky. And when you get up that whole eastern seaboard, it really hit a lot of states.
Mike Howell:
Yes, sir, it did. And you know, I wish I could say hurricane season was over, but we had our meteorologist on a few weeks ago and he said this thing could go all the way to the end of November. And I was looking at the weather this morning. We know that Milton came in through Florida last week, and there’s another area of interest they’re looking at this week, and it looks like it’s headed straight to the Gulf. So, we hope that thing gets broke up before it, it turns into anything.
Tom McCall:
They told me this morning there’s another one swirling out there. We hope it dies. And I also hope this ain’t a weather pattern we’re gonna have to start getting used to and dealing with. I hope this year’s an anomaly. First of the year [inaudible 00:28:26] real good. It doesn’t take but one overnight, is what it did to us.
Mike Howell:
Yes, sir.
We just wanted everybody in Georgia to know that we’re thinking about them. You’re in our thoughts and prayers. And wanted our listeners out there on The Dirt to be aware of what’s going on, and again, visit our website and see the relief efforts and what you can do to help out.
Uh, Mr. McCall-
Tom McCall:
And thank you at Nutrien for taking an interest in taking care of… We feed, clothe and shelter the world.
Mike Howell:
Well, uh, we’re in the same business, and we do a lot of business there in the state of Georgia. We couldn’t be where we are without all of our help down there in Georgia.
Well, Mr. McCall, once again, thanks for joining us today. Listeners, we appreciate you tuning in. And if you need any more information on anything we’ve talked about today, you can always visit our website. That’s Nutrien-eKonomics, with a K, .com.
Until next time, this has been Mike Howell, with The Dirt.
