Twisted equipment and snapped tree limbs still litter Chris Hopkins’ Georgia farm more than two months after Hurricane Helene made its deadly march across the South.
An irrigation sprinkler system about 300 feet (92 meters) long lay overturned in a field, its steel pipes bent and welded joints broken. The mangled remains of a grain bin sat crumpled by a road. On a Friday in early December, Hopkins dragged burly limbs from the path of the tractor-like machine that picks his cotton crop six rows at a time.
“I have wrestled with lots of emotions the past two months,” said Hopkins, who also grows corn and peanuts in rural Toombs County, about 75 miles (120 kilometers) west of Savannah. “Do we just get through this one and quit? Do we build back? It is emotionally draining.”
Hopkins is among farmers across the South who are still reeling from Helene’s devastation. The storm made landfall in Florida on Sept. 26 as a major Category 4 storm and then raced north across Georgia and neighboring states.
Experts estimate the cost to farmers, timber growers and other agribusinesses from Florida to Virginia will reach more than $10 billion. The toll includes ravaged crops, uprooted timber, wrecked farm equipment and mangled chicken houses, as well as indirect costs such as lost productivity at cotton gins and poultry processing plants.
For cotton growers like Hopkins, Helene hit just as the fall harvest was starting. Many put most cleanup on hold to try to salvage what remained of their crops.
Georgia farmers suffered storm losses of at........