ENC farmer contemplates life after Hurricane Florence

Sept. 28--In Dale Dawson's earliest memories the farm is always there, a blur of green leaves, brown earth, and blue firmament racing past as he sits between his grandfather's knees, his small hands wrapped around the wheel of a tractor.

As a fifth generation farmer who began navigating field equipment at age five, Dawson has experienced every indignity visited upon family run agriculture businesses, from droughts and floods to the fickle nature of commodity prices and, lately, tariffs on the very crops he depends on to earn a living.

But through all those years, Dawson says he's never seen anything quite like the destruction left by Hurricane Florence.

Surveying a field of tobacco Wednesday at the 1,400-acre, family-owned HMH Farms near Cove City, Dawson says the storm has cost him nearly his entire unharvested crop, including 35 acres at HMH and another 76 acres in Jones County that came through the storm intact but was wiped out by subsequent flooding after the Trent River crested. Dawson says within a few days after the storm he knew most of his tobacco was lost, the leaves gone brown and wilted, dry and brittle as parchment.

According to Dawson, who sits on the Craven County Agricultural Advisory Board, the hurricane was merely the violent climax to what had already been a disastrously wet summer.

"We didn't have a tobacco crop for nothing, wasn't any weight in it or anything before the storm ever got here. Tobacco don't like wet weather, and that's all we've had all year," he explains.

Florence wasn't Dawson's first go around with hurricane damage. After Hurricane Irene in 2011 he was forced to borrow money, which he only managed to paid off last year. But this time, he says, is different.

"We've seen right many hurricanes, but I've never had a crop of tobacco go away like this, as fast. This storm I guess just brought in so much salt air...I've just never had a crop do that," he says.

According to the NC Dept.of Agriculture and Consumer Services, initial estimates for crop damage and livestock losses to North Carolina's agriculture industry following Hurricane Florence are expected to top $1.1 billion. That number easily surpasses the $400 million in losses suffered following Hurricane Matthew in 2016.

Locally, Craven County Cooperative Extension has estimated approximately $10 million in damages from the storm to area corn, soybean, peanut, tobacco and cotton crops.

Dawson estimates he lost at least $300,000 worth of tobacco to the storm, which would normally have grossed around $700,000.

"Our crop insurance will make up some of that but it won't make up all of it," he says.

The farm's corn and soybean crops also suffered heavy losses, says Dawson.

"Some of the beans we had in Jones County are under the river, flooded, they're gone. The ones we have here (at HMH), it didn't affect them too bad."

The corn is another matter, he explains.

"A lot of it was blown over and can't be harvested. The weeds have also grown up more because of the rain," he notes. "We'll go out there and try to get up what we can."

Dawson says his corn crop was already severely damaged before Hurricane Florence ever arrived.

"The bottom half of the stalk drowned before the storm ever got here because we had so much rain already. It finally dried off right before the hurricane got here. If we had had three or four more days we could have (harvested) over here and then we could have gotten to Jones County. But then the hurricane..."

Weeks after it passed, Dawson says the storm is still causing damage to area crops.

"With corn, all that rain can cause problems with mold. It also causes insect problems too, as you can tell by the mosquitos."

Though farming is an inherently risky venture under the best of conditions, Dawson says 2018 has been the type of year he hopes to never see again.

"There ain't going to be any profit. I don't know, somebody's going to have to forgive some debt for another year or something so you can try to get a loan," he says. "Any kind of money coming from the government we probably won't see until next year, unless they really push it because of the storm."

As much as Hurricane Florence has cost him and other local farmers, Dawson says he's well aware that, had the storm arrived several weeks earlier, the damage would have been even greater.

"The last time it rained here it rained seven inches in two days and after that it didn't rain for about three weeks before the storm got here. If it had come in right behind that rain it would have been three times as bad," he points out.

Dawson says HMH Farms was also lucky to not receive any significant structural damage during the storm.Workers at the farm managed to save 23 sheds filled with tobacco picked before Hurricane Florence hit, the leathery leaves filling the air around the farm's dirt paths with their rich, elemental aroma.

With summers in Eastern North Carolina growing increasingly wet, and the frequency of 100 year weather events becoming more and more common, Dawson said young farmers just entering the business already have a number of factors working against them.

"This is a lot of the reason people don't want to farm anymore, because of the struggles with the weather and also the commodity prices are down because of the tariffs. Like they say, you've got to have it in your blood or your not going to do it."

With six children, five girls and a boy, ranging in age from seven to 20, Dawson says he's unsure what the future holds for his own farming business.

"Ain't none of them took a lot of interest in farming yet, not like I did. You've got to have it you right from the beginning, or you won't ever last."

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