Farmers face challenges with crop damage after Debby
BULLOCH COUNTY, Ga. (WTOC) -Farmers across Bulloch County are facing what every farmer fears, storm damage to their crops.
One field in Bulloch County was completely flooded and underwater just last week during tropical storm Debby.
Now, one farmer, David Crumley says that he is left with decisions on how to salvage his crops.
As much as farmer David Cromley of Kairos Farms prepared once he heard a storm was approaching, he says he still was not expecting that heavy rainfall.
“There is a drain at the bottom of the field that normally handles the excess amount of rainfall but whenever you are getting 12 inches of the span of just a few days, you know it’s just overwhelming,” said Cromley.
This field that is part of Kairos Farms is home to the beloved peanut crops in Brooklet. Over the span of a week, Cromley says this field received up to 19 inches of rain.
The peanut crops were completely submerged, leaving some unsalvageable. Yet, Cromley says it still could have been worse.
“A month from now, it would’ve been a different story,” Cromley explained.
The storm came a month before Cromley and his team would have started digging the peanuts up.
“When you dig them, they are just sitting on top of the soil and the nuts are facing the sunshine drying out, then if you have a huge rainfall like that they can literally wash out of the field,” said Cromley.
This farmer says his crew is thankful because they know they were some of the lucky ones despite this damage. Farmer David Cromley says that in this current farming economy...storms like Debby are tragic.
“Whenever you are looking at commodity prices across the board that are pretty low, you know those kinds of prices that are not great right now, whenever you have something like the storm that can come in and impact your yield whenever you need that yield to make up for the bad prices...that’s when it really hurts,” Cromley described.
Cromley and other farmers across the county are assessing each of their crops to see which ones they can harvest.
WTOC will continue to keep you updated on the progress of these farms as they start to repair from the storm.
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