Flood waters drown South Carolina's farm crops

COLUMBIA — Farmer Walter Dantzler of Santee knew the rains would be bad.

But he said he didn't know how bad they would be until last weekend, when 20 inches of rain fell on his 4,000 acre farm in eastern Orangeburg County, drowning his crops of peanuts, soybeans and cotton.

"This has been a year for the ages," he said. "We've never seen anything like this."

State Agriculture Commissioner Hugh Weathers on Thursday estimated the crop losses from the floods at $300 million.

He said he took an aerial tour of the state earlier this week and was shocked at the devastation he saw.

Farmlands, he said, "looked like 1,000-acre lakes."

He saw farm buildings "standing as islands" and farm roads washed away.

Low lying farmland adjacent to river systems and creeks was most severely impacted, he said.  The crops affected include peanuts, cotton, fall vegetables, soybeans and some timber.

Crops close to harvest are at their most vulnerable point, Weathers said. And crops left in the fields past their time of harvest will deteriorate.

Logging roads and roads to poultry farms are washed out and need to be rebuilt, he said.

"It will slow down the timber harvest," he said.

The flooding may also damage trees and orchards standing in water.

"A lot of crops, including trees, don't like wet feet," he said.

Weathers said he thinks the losses amount to about a third of the fall harvest and about 20 percent of the state's overall crops.  A little less than half of the state's annual $3 billion in agriculture revenue comes from crops, he said, with the rest coming from livestock.

Larry McKenzie, the assistant to the president of the South Carolina Farm Bureau, said he has spent several days receiving photos from farmers of their drowned crops.

"I've asked people to send me photos of fields," he said. "When I get them, they look like ponds."

In some fields, he said, cotton bolls are sprouting seeds, ruining the crop.

Some soybean fields are underwater, while some peanuts are rotting in the ground or were dug up to dry before the floods and are now missing.

"One of our farmers in the Calhoun area said, 'We've dug peanuts. We don't know where they are at now,'" McKenzie said. "They said they are probably in the ocean now."

Weathers and McKenzie said the floods amounted to the second devastating blow to the state's farmers this year, coming after a severe drought.

Dantzler said he normally gets at least 140 bushels or corn per acre.  This year it was about 20.

He said many farms have drainage systems but they have been overwhelmed by the water and it will take weeks before the soil will dry out.

In his region, he said, farmers have seen between 18 and 24 inches of rain.  He said he must wait for the water to drain before he will know the extent of damage to his crops.

He worries, though, about other farmers, those who do not carry crop insurance.

"A lot of farmers won't get over this," he said.

He said he also is concerned about some farmers trying to move their big, heavy machines into the fields before they dry out, getting the machines stuck and causing dangerous situations to remove them.

He said in his own case, the crop insurance will help, but there still will be a loss.

Federal assistance may come in the form of loans, he said, but farmers already borrow a lot.

"We don't need more loans," he said.

Weathers said the state has asked the U.S. agriculture secretary to declare a disaster to trigger federal assistance.  And he said he also has asked the state's congressional delegation to look for possible assistance.

He said he hopes the vast majority of farmers have crop insurance, but he doesn't know what that percentage is.

Dantzler said farmers, a generally resilient group used to the fickle whims of weather, must now be patient.

"We'll be OK," he said. "This will be gone and we'll try it again next year."