Local farmers and shrimpers say Harvey impact has been minimal
Published 6:00 am Thursday, September 7, 2017
- Teche Area shrimpers say that the fresh water from Tropical Storm Harvey has pushed shrimp out into the Gulf of Mexico but there are still plenty to catch along the coast.
While Teche Area commercial farmers and shrimpers have felt the impact of Hurricane Harvey, that impact has largely been minimal, several fishing and agriculture professionals said.
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“We didn’t get those tremendous winds like with Rita and Ike,” said Capt. Jimmie Dupre, a commercial shrimper in Delcambre. “We got a lot of fresh water. That rain, it pushed the shrimp out into the gulf, but they’re still along the coast,” he said. “They’re out there catching a few now.”
Wendell Verret, director of the Port of Delcambre, also said the hurricane’s impact was mostly negligible there. They did have to cancel a planned Farmer’s Market on September 2, but Verret said there are no reports of major loss or damages.
“Boats had to stay in and couldn’t fish, and we had to have some corporations move trailers and equipment to higher ground, but other than that it was very minimal,” he said.
Kory Echelard, the owner of Bayou Shrimp Processors, said the diversity of their shrimp suppliers cushioned the already-minimal impacts even more for them.
“We get a lot of shrimp out of east Louisiana, as well as south, so it really didn’t affect us,” he said. The company ships shrimp out of their 40,000 square foot facility in Delcambre to grocers, distributors and wholesalers across the country. “Thank god. We didn’t have any slow-downs,” he said.
Still, some have felt the effects more acutely.
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“It’s been terrible,” said Butch Schouest, an independent commercial shrimper. “It put a lot of fresh water in Vermillion Bay and ran the shrimp out.”
On a recent trip, he says, a two-hour drag netted just 40 pounds of shrimp, followed by an hour-and-a-half drag that netted just 20. Normally, he said, a two-hour drag would bring in 150 to 200 pounds. Plus, fuel prices are up. “Now, 40 pounds ain’t gonna cut it,” he said. “If I’m burning 50 to 100 gallons a day not catching any shrimp, it makes it kind of rough. I’ve got a small boat, I can’t go way out in the gulf.”
More vulnerable were soybean farmers who, depending on harvesting schedules, may have lost significant value on their beans due to excessive moisture.
“Luckily, my soybean harvest is about 95 percent done, so I’m pretty good, but there is a lot of damage out there from the moisture of what hasn’t been harvested,” said Rob Judice, a seventh-generation sugarcane and soybean farmer. Judice said his farm typically plants soybeans early. “Sometimes that helps, and sometimes that hurts. Last year we got hit,” he said. “We’re very fortunate right now. I know there are a lot of farmers out there that will have moisture damage now.”
There are just over 5,000 acres of soybean in Iberia Parish, according to Blair Hebert, an Iberia Parish Extension Agent with the LSU Ag Center. To put that in perspective, there are just over 60,000 acres of sugarcane. Hebert estimates about 50 percent of soybeans avoided damage, and of the remaining 50 percent, between 25 and 30 suffered a complete loss. “They just got moldy, and you can’t sell them,” he said.
The sugarcane crop is far more resilient. There the main concern was over the impact of wind snapping bigger stalks, said Judice.
For Juan Segura, a sixth-generation sugarcane farmer, the main threat was flooding for crops south of Louisiana. 14.
“We had areas south of there that flooded pretty bad. We just got the water off three days ago,” he said. “About 60 percent of our crop went down. We can still harvest. We’re focused on planting now. It’ll be tough to finish, but we can do it, with a little bit of loss.”
Average annual rainfall is 60 inches, said Hebert, and three-quarters of the way through the area has already seen 58 inches. He says all that excess rain makes planting and harvesting more expensive, and also weakens previously applied weed killers, requiring more applications. “Each application is an added cost,” he said. “While we can’t put a dollar amount on it, what we do know is that it had an economic impact.”
“Farming is just a whole big gamble,” Judice said. “It’s a fight every day.”