K
Courtesy of
Southwest Farm Press
eith Kresta stands in front
of a sagging, brown-
bottomed, stinking
cotton module and asks
Secretary of Agriculture
Sonny Perdue and House Agriculture
Committee Chariman Mike Conaway
to secure help for South Texas
farmers and ranchers who’ve been
devastated by Hurricane Harvey.
“I believe in a fiscally conservative govern-
ment,” Kresta says, “but we need help from
the federal government. We’ve had it tough
the last two years, and this cotton crop was
going to put us back on track.” His crop was
pushing three bales per acre — now, even
cotton he harvested before the storm hit is
badly damaged, possibly not salvageable. As
the tour rode by rotting modules, the stench
was powerful, reminiscent of cattle feedy-
ards.
“I saved most of my cows,” Kresta says,
“but lost all my hay. I was fortunate to get
some of the hay that folks from across the
country donated. Farmers are a resilient lot,
but we do need a safety net.”
300 acre field was flooded. “We got from 25
inches to 30 inches of rain from the storm,
and a lot of the cotton that wasn’t flooded
won’t yield as well, and the quality will be
off.”
F.D. said he and Daniel farm as FDG
Farms in Wharton and Matagorda counties.
“We had cotton that could have made three
bales,” he said. But Daniel says, “We didn’t
lose our homes — and a lot of folks did.”
Chairman Conaway raised the question of
who owns and insures a cotton module after
it has been delivered to the gin, or remains
in the field but has been reported to the
gin. “We’re trying to determine that,” Kresta
said. He used the STAX program this year
and also bought individual unit insurance
instead of enterprise unit. “That will help a
lot,” he says.
Working with bankers, Conaway says, will
be a critical element as farmers and ranchers
evaluate losses and begin planning for next
year. “It’s all about the banker. They are re-
quiring crop insurance, but maybe we need
to suggest that they recommend the best
insurance coverage.”
Kresta also mentioned the need to get cot-
ton back into the farm program as a covered
commodity, a goal Conaway has champi-
oned for months.
Kresta and the Gavronovics say their
insurance won’t come close to covering their
losses. It won’t pay based on the crop they
had in the field, but rather on historical
averages.
Jimmy Roppolo, manager of Farmers Co-
operative at El Campo, responded to a ques-
tion from Conaway about gin expectations
following Hurricane Harvey. “Our record is
157,000 bales, but we only ginned 60,000 last
year. We had 200,000 in the field this year,
but we will be lucky to gin 150,000 now.”
A lot of cotton that had been harvested
and was on the gin yard or still in the field
was destroyed or suffered water damage.
Conaway asked if any could be saved. “We
don’t know,” Roppolo says. “We will test
one field to see if we can salvage some.” He
says they can test moisture content of bales
before they go into the gin. “If we detect too
much moisture before we get it in, we leave
it out, and we save a lot of time. We want to
be as efficient as we can.”
Miller said South Texas agriculture losses
will be high, and that early loss estimates just
in cotton will be low. “And we will be some
time yet determining cattle losses — we’re
still assessing cattle numbers.”
“That’s the farmer spirit,” Perdue says of
the help from other farmers. “Their generos-
ity has been overwhelming. They have done
a good job of helping others.”
F.D. Gavronovic and his son, Daniel, farm
just over a rise from Kresta. They showed
the tour group a field of potentially three
bale cotton that had been completely cov-
ered by floodwaters. Nothing remained but
brown —
leaves, stems, bolls. Perdue held a
ruined cotton boll in his hand, a brittle piece
of dead plant material that bore no resem-
blance to cotton.
The next farm bill needs to do a better
job of sealing the cracks in the current crop
insurance programs, Perdue says. “The 2014
bill went a long way toward providing a safe-
ty net, but we’ve seen some cracks.”
Daniel Gavronovic says they had harvest-
ed about half of their 4,000 acres of cotton
when the hurricane hit. “Some of the cotton
already in modules was destroyed.” Another
KEITH KRESTA, RIGHT, EXPLAINS TO THE TEXAS COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE SID
MILLER, SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE SONNY PERDUE, AND HOUSE AG COMMITTEE
CHAIRMAN MIKE CONAWAY THAT SOUTH TEXAS FARMERS AND RANCHERS NEED
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ASSISTANCE TO RECOVER FROM HURRICANE HARVEY.