Horry farmers prepare for Hurricane Dorian but are still waiting on funding from Florence

Sep. 3--Ronald Rabon knows he'll be the last member of his family to operate his fourth-generation farm in Aynor, but as yet another major storm heads for the area, he doesn't know how much longer he'll last.

"I'm about there," Rabon says of closing his 1,300-acre farm as he faces major damages to his cotton and soybean crops for the fourth time in the past five years.

He projects he's about $500,000 in debt due to all the damages, and he's not seeing the financial help state and federal legislators have told him is coming.

Hurricane Dorian, which was a Category 2 hurricane on Tuesday, is expected to move northwest along the southeast coast, bringing strong wind gusts and several inches of rain to coastal Horry County Wednesday night into Thursday.

Rabon, owner and operator of Double R Farms off Valley Forge Road, fears that the wind could decimate his cotton, which won't be ready to pick until October, while bringing the ocean's saltwater to destroy his soybeans.

He told The Sun News Tuesday that he's preparing for Dorian by securing all his equipment and making sure his sheds don't have any loose boards, but as far as preparing for impact to his crops, "there's nothing you can do."

Hurricane Florence destroyed about half of his crops last year, he said, while hurricanes Joaquin and Matthew left even bigger damages in 2015 and 2016, respectively.

Congress passed legislation to provide about $2 billion in disaster relief to farmers affected by recent natural disasters, and South Carolina appropriated about $25 million last session for the same reason, but Rabon said he hasn't seen a dime.

"I wonder if that's what they want (for us to sell our farms), ... so they can build more homes," he said. "But I don't know what they think they'll eat. ... You can't eat a house."

State Rep. Jeff Johnson, R-Horry, said the state funding was supposed to be a stopgap that would require farmers to pay it back once they got federal funding, but he's not sure why it hasn't gotten to farmers yet. He suspects at this point that the state is just waiting because the federal funds are supposed to be distributed soon.

U.S. Rep. Tom Rice said the federal funds are supposed to be handed out to qualified applicants within the next month. Congress passed the appropriation within two weeks of Hurricane Florence, he noted, but "the federal government does not move quickly."

Rabon said that even if the funding does come through soon, it won't be enough to cover most of his losses.

"It's like putting a Band-Aid where you need stitches," he said, adding that every time he makes a claim on his crop insurance, his premiums go up and his coverage goes down.

Rabon said he knows about a dozen farmers just in the Aynor area that had to sell their farms or significantly cut back production within the past year.

One of those is Reggie Johnson, who followed in his father's footsteps to operate a farm off Highway 308 since 1986. He was farming tobacco, corn and soybeans, but the financial harm caused by so many major storms has cut his production this year to just 10-20 percent of what he's farmed in years past.

"It just doesn't seem like anyone's listening," Johnson said of legislators promising to help. "A lot of money will go out of this state if there's no agriculture business."

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