Cotton farmers across the Southeast were looking for every opportunity to salvage a challenging growing season. But just as harvest was getting underway, Hurricane Isaias brought powerful winds that ripped cotton from plants before it could be picked, leaving producers across parts of Florida and Alabama facing significant losses.
For Mickey Diamond, who farms in Santa Rosa County in Florida’s western Panhandle, the storm’s impact was immediate and devastating. Located about 40 miles from the Gulf Coast, Diamond’s farm experienced winds that reached 118 mph.
“We thought we was going to just skirt by and everything would be okay,” Diamond says. “But something happened on the left-hand side of the eye wall, and it got real bad in a hurry on us.”
Diamond says he had weathered hurricanes Ivan and Dennis in 2004 and 2005, but this storm was even worse.
“We had 118-mile-an-hour winds, and it seemed like it was worse than that,” he says. “I know I went through Ivan and Dennis in ’04 and ’05, and it was worse than that.”
The storm caught the region’s cotton crop at a particularly vulnerable time. Much of the cotton was ready for defoliation, and some fields had already been defoliated in preparation for harvest.
“We had a lot of cotton in our county that was ready to defoliate, a lot was already defoliated, and it picked the cotton in our county,” Diamond says. “There’ll be a lot of cotton that we will not put a picker in.”
100 MPH+ Wind Strips Cotton From Plants
While the storm brought rain to parts of the region, Diamond says the wind caused the most catastrophic damage to cotton. In Florida’s Panhandle, Diamond estimates cotton crop losses at approximately 95%.
“It wasn’t supposed to be that bad coming in,” he says. “It hit landfall at 105 miles an hour, and we’re 40 miles from where it hit landfall and our winds was 118.”
The cotton crop took the brunt of the storm, with wind stripping cotton from plants and scattering it across the ground.
“The leaves were still on it, but it didn’t matter. Even the leaves was on it. It took the cotton off,” Diamond says. “It is a stalk without cotton there.”
The damage also extended beyond his immediate area. Diamond says rainfall on the opposite side of the hurricane’s eye from where he farms stretched toward Georgia, creating a broad area of storm damage.
The timing made the losses even more difficult to absorb. Harvest conditions had been approaching an optimal window just as the hurricane moved through the region, leaving cotton exposed in fields that were not yet ready to be picked.
Alabama Cotton Farmers Also Face Significant Harvest Losses
About 110 miles northeast of Diamond’s farm, Alabama cotton producer William Birdsong also faced substantial damage from the storm. Birdsong farms primarily in Geneva County, where he estimates cotton losses at around 30%.
“We’ve had a more devastating storm in the past eight years ago with Michael,” Birdsong says. “You know, we lost more cotton then, but the crop was better then, too. But still, 30% is significant.”
The hurricane arrived after an already difficult growing season. Birdsong says his area received 25 to 28 inches of rain during May and June, followed by a sharp change in weather. From July through October, the area received only about 7 inches of rain.
That uneven rainfall pattern left producers working with a marginal crop. Just as some of the better-looking cotton began approaching harvest, the hurricane brought another setback.
“So that was horrible,” Birdsong says of the growing season. “And then all of a sudden now, the better-looking crop, the better-looking cotton that we had, here comes a storm.”
For growers who needed every pound of cotton to improve their chances of turning a profit, losing cotton to the wind was particularly painful.
Cotton Quality and Harvest Efficiency Take a Hit
The damage extends beyond the cotton already knocked to the ground. Birdsong says wind can remove the most valuable cotton from the plant, including the seed cotton that produces higher-quality fiber.
“Unfortunately, the seed cotton that’s gonna give you the high percent length, the highest quality of fiber — you know, a lot of it, it didn’t take a lot of wind, and especially at, say, 80, 90 mile per hour winds, to be able to remove it from the plant onto the ground,” Birdsong says. “And then it’s, uh, we’re not able to retrieve it then.”
Even cotton that remains on the plants could be lost during harvest. Birdsong says the high winds twisted stalks together, making it more difficult for pickers to move through fields without knocking additional cotton to the ground.
“And there’s going to be some harvest loss, even when if you try to, uh, scrap what you do have out there because the stalks are so twisted together,” he says.
Birdsong adds that bolls can snap off and fall during the picking process, creating more harvest loss than producers would typically expect.
When the storm hit the area, only 14% of the cotton crop had been harvested. About one-third had been defoliated and was nearly ready for picking, leaving much of the crop exposed to the hurricane.
Birdsong says the combination of a marginal crop and the hurricane’s destruction makes this season especially difficult to compare with previous storms.
“In 1995, when Hurricane Opal came through, we had a fabulous crop. In 2018, it was the best crop I’ve ever seen in my career, ever, even till today,” Birdsong says. “But this year’s storm, a marginal crop to begin with, and then just insult the injury with the loss of the yield that we did have.”
Damage Extends Beyond Cotton Fields
The hurricane’s impact is not limited to lost cotton. Farmers across the affected region are also dealing with damaged equipment, destroyed barns, fallen trees and damage to homes and agricultural infrastructure.
Diamond says the facility where he takes his peanut harvest has been destroyed. Local cooperatives with fertilizer storage facilities also sustained significant damage, adding to the challenges facing farmers as they work to recover.
“[A] tremendous amount of tree damage, trees in our fields,” Diamond says. “Lots of farmers’ barns are completely gone. They’re just gone. A lot of equipment damaged, a lot of homes damaged.”
The cleanup will take months, he says, with fallen trees and debris expected to keep crews busy well into the winter.
“The tree cleanup will continue from probably now to March,” Diamond says.
For an agricultural community already dealing with a difficult production year, the destruction of infrastructure creates another hurdle. Farmers must assess not only how much of their crop remains but also the condition of the equipment, buildings and facilities they depend on to keep their operations running.
Farmers Face Another Setback After Years of Losses
For cotton producers, the hurricane arrived at a time when a strong harvest was especially important. With yields already falling short of expectations, farmers were relying on the remaining crop to help offset production costs and improve their financial outlook.
Instead, Hurricane Isaias stripped much of that opportunity away.
Diamond acknowledges how difficult it is to watch a year’s worth of work disappear in a matter of hours. Still, he says farming requires resilience and the willingness to begin again, even after a devastating loss.
“When you work all year and then something like this happens, it’s, you know, sometimes discouraging, but you have to have faith,” Diamond says. “You can not be a farmer if you don’t have faith, you got to trust in the Lord. Let him take care of you and go again.”
