Disaster bill leaves La. farmers in dust

• By MICHELLE MILLHOLLON AND SARAH CHACKO
• Advocate Capitol News Bureau
• Published: Oct 1, 2008 - Page: 1A - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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As combines rake through Ted Glaser’s cotton fields in Pointe Coupee Parish on Tuesday, they leave behind the bolls that hardened in the rains of hurricanes Gustav and Ike.

For Glaser, it is his money that is left blowing in the wind.

Glaser and other Louisiana farmers failed to receive any federal money from a hurricane bailout package approved in Washington, D.C., late Saturday night.

“I’ve never gone through anything this bad,” said Glaser, who has been farming since the early 1980s. “Agriculture is in for a big, big hit in Louisiana.”

Glaser estimates he has lost 50 to 60 percent of this year’s cotton crop. His soybeans also took a beating, he said. He will likely get 30 to 40 bushels an acre, when he was expecting 50 to 60 bushels.

Glaser said he had to cancel an order he made for another crop planter.

“I’m going to make do with what I have,” he said.

It is not just the Baton Rouge area farmers, or even producers in the state, that are suffering, Glaser said. Farmers throughout the nation are reeling from hurricane and flood devastation, he said.

“I don’t think the market yet has recognized the severity of it,” Glaser said.

The LSU AgCenter estimates the storms caused $950 million in damage to the farming, ranching, forestry and fishing communities, mostly in crop damage.

State leaders warned the U.S. Senate that the agricultural economy is in danger of collapsing and asked for $700 million to deal with the damage from Gustav alone.

Cotton, soybean, sweet potato and pecan crops sustained heavy destruction as did the state’s fisheries.

Washington left farmers out of the recently passed $23 billion federal disaster package. The funding is for hurricane-affected areas along the Gulf Coast and Midwest flood victims.