News

Farmers’ check will come from ‘the government or a developer’

Jerred Nix stands on land that used to be a seven-acre apple orchard before Clear Creek flooding caused by Hurricane Helene swept away the trees and wrecked farm equipment. [LIGHTNING FILE PHOTO]

By Bill Moss, Published: March 19, 2025

Terry Kelley knows the numbers.

He has a two-page accounting of agriculture losses Hurricane Helene caused in Henderson County, from honeybees and livestock to apples and hay bales to tractors and sheds.

The one value that most concerns him most, though, is time.

“My fear is, in the next two to three months, that our farmers are going to get a check from somebody,” Kelley, the director of Henderson County’s Agriculture Extension Service, told county commissioners. “It’s either going to be the government or a developer.”

Two months have passed since Kelley reported to commissioners on the various disaster relief programs in the pipeline from Washington and Raleigh. Most are either too restrictive or too slow to define what they cover. He said in an interview this week that’s still true.

The federal disaster relief bill for agriculture, for instance, contained a $10 billion “market adjustment for commodity prices,” which covers crops like soybeans and peanuts.

“We don’t have that many crops like that,” he said. “It’s not going to cover apples, tomatoes and nursery crops.” An analysis by N.C. State University said the bill would deliver just $89,000 to Henderson County. The county sustained $135-150 million worth of agriculture losses from Helene, Kelley says.

The federal disaster relief bill also “is not going to have any coverage for stored products,” he added. “We lost a lot of apples and hay” in storage. A program to fund repair of farm fields had a limit of $500,000. “We’ve got several farms that have more than a half million dollars’ worth of damage,” he said. Nor does he see a category covering repairs to farm roads, which sustained $7 million worth of  damage, and barns, sheds and equipment ($4.8 million). “They don’t even mention ag tourism losses and we lost $17½ million in ag tourism,” Kelley said.

Another problem with the programs is the deadline to apply.

“It’s hard to do that in 160 days when you’re not gonna know till September how these trees were affected” from being submerged in Helene’s floodwater for hours, said Kelley, who holds a Ph.D. in plant and soil science. “You may have a tree that looks pretty decent, that tree may come out, may have a lot of blooms on it, a full crop of leaves on it. Then it starts setting fruit and all of a sudden there’s not enough root system left in the ground to support. There’s a lot of hidden losses that we can’t enumerate at this point.”

A bill in the state House that would provide $475 million to cover crop loss omits Helene damage and destruction —fields and orchards, farm equipment, barns and sheds — that account for 70 percent of the need in Henderson County.

“I know local, state and federal folks are working hard on this but we just want the language to cover things that traditionally we don’t have to worry about,” Kelley said. “Only about 30 percent of what we lost was actual crops because it was late in the season.”

DOGE yanks farm agency lease

It appeared farmers already down got gut-punched last week when news broke that President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency planned to terminate the lease of the Hendersonville office of the Farm Service Agency and other federal agriculture and land conservation programs. The news, first reported by the Citizen-Times, does not mean the FSA is going away, Kelley said.

“Their lease is expiring at the end of August. Currently they’re working on an alternative to that,” he said. “They could actually renew the lease — that’s an ongoing conversation. Another possibility is that the county could provide some space. I don’t have any concern with their leaving or anything. It’s just a matter of finding a place for them.”

Longer term, the Board of Commissioners has authorized design plans for a new umbrella facility that would put local, state and federal ag agencies under one roof.

“We’re hoping to get further funding at some point to actually build that building,” Kelley said. “That’s the long-range plan — hopefully not too long range.”

On Feb. 18 FSA Director Kelly Springs reported to the Board of Commissioners on the programs his agency offers for disaster relief:

• Emergency Conservation Program: Covers fence and field repairs, debris removal, removal of sand, silt, trees and rocks; grading and releveling the field. Farmers do repairs and get reimbursed. “That is the program we have the most activity in. To be honest, we’ve been overwhelmed with the number of applications,” Springs said. ECP is the program with a $500,000 cap.
• Tree Assistance Program: “We have had several orchards, vineyards and nurseries signing up for these programs,” he said. “It is not a program for what you have lost; it is a program for what you’re going to replant.” TAP had 20 applicants.
• Emergency Livestock Assistance Program: Despite its name, ELAP also covers honeybees, “which we have quite a bit of in Henderson County,” and trout. “A big thing that is not eligible is horses. If you have horses and not cattle unfortunately we cannot help you.”
• Crop Insurance Program: “A lot of our small fruit and vegetable farms take out coverage. All these policies have been paid for 2024.” A non-insured crop disaster program has also paid claims.
• Emergency Forestry Restoration Program: Applies to private managed forest land in timber production or conservation. Covers cost of removing dead trees and forest restoration. “It is not just a cleanup program.”