Katrina aftermath lingers a year later
By James D. Ritchie

A year ago, on the morning of Aug. 29, Katrina, the costliest hurricane in U.S. history, slammed into the New Orleans area, causing an estimated $75 billion worth of damage. The human toll was catastrophic.

The tab doesn’t include losses suffered by crop growers when Katrina devastated the nation’s major grain exporting port. About 55 percent of grain exports—two-thirds of corn and soybeans bound overseas—pass through Gulf Coast terminals. In the storm’s aftermath, debris clogged the channel, navigation aids were swept away and electrical power was out over a wide area. The effect on the export market was critical.

For example, corn and bean growers in southeast Missouri and northeastern Arkansas usually earn some of the higher prices of the season; their crops are harvested several weeks before Midwest farmers get combines into the fields. Katrina changed that. With the Mississippi River seriously crippled, grain prices plummeted.

Actually, the 10 big grain terminals around New Orleans weathered the storm pretty much intact. The problem was getting grain to them and finding workers to unload river barges and load ships.

“Grain transportation is close to normal in the New Orleans area,” said Bill Dunn, MFA transportation director. “Barge movement went back to near normal within 3 months after the hurricane hit. Shippers picked up some of the slack by loading ships in mid-stream, rather than at elevators.

“But there are still post-Katrina challenges,” Dunn added. “While barge movement is back to normal, we’re still suffering from damage to rail lines and other infrastructure.”

All major railroads that serve the Gulf area are struggling to get lines and facilities back. Lack of rail puts more pressure on barges, driving transporation rates for grain.

“And the infrastructure from New Orleans south is still in shambles,” he went on. “That’s where most of the barge and ship fleeting [staging] is done, and electrical power is just now being brought back to some of that area. Another problem is a shortage of labor to load and unload ships and barges; many workers left the area after the hurricane hit and others who might want to work have no place to live. There are still big problems that can be tied to Katrina and its aftermath.”

Like export terminals, most fertilizer manufacturing plants, located several miles up-river of New Orleans, escaped direct damage. But the transportation troubles that hamper the downstream movement of grain also slow the upstream movement of fertilizer and other manufactured goods.

Hurricane Katrina and her tag-along little sister, Rita (which hit southwestern Louisiana only weeks after Katrina struck New Orleans) shut down virtually all of the Gulf’s oil and natural gas facilities, halted oil imports and damaged many refineries. Off-shore drilling rigs were uprooted and swept ashore; deep-water pipeline terminals were carried away. While damaged refineries were re-started within a couple of months, the loss of electricity to several pipelines interrupted the flow of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. Gasoline prices virtually doubled and diesel and natural gas prices jumped by nearly 30 percent in the wake of the two storms.

As rough as Katrina and Rita made things for farmers elsewhere, the hurricanes decimated agriculture along the Gulf Coast. USDA put production losses throughout the region at $882 million. The region is a large producer of fruits, vegetables, sugarcane, rice and cotton, and 80 percent of the lost income is from losses to those crops.

The hurricanes also caused losses in the livestock industry of Gulf Coast states. Many dairy operations lost cattle directly to the storms, others were left without electricity or transportation and were forced to dump milk.

“We lost more than 5,000 head of cattle directly in Cameron Parish from Hurricane Rita,” said Kirk Smith, director of USDA’s Farm Service Agency at DeQueen, La. “This is a low-lying area and Rita’s storm surge took out pastures, fences and barns.”

Individuals and organizations from around the country sent hay and feed to help get surviving animals through winter. MFA dispatched truckloads of livestock feed to Smith’s part of Louisiana. But livestock producers in the region still aren’t out of trouble.

“Rita’s storm surge covered pastures and fields with salt water,” said Smith. “We don’t know how long it will take to get some of that land back into production.”

Across timber-rich southern Mississippi, Katrina blew down 1.3 million acres of hardwood and pine forests, wiping out the wealth of thousands of forest landowners.

Hurricane Katrina’s wrath was felt by a lot of people over a wide area. For farmers, foresters and fishermen along the Gulf Coast, recovery will take years rather than months.

There will not be another Hurricane Katrina. The World Meteorological Organization has officially retired that name from the naming list for Atlantic storms. In the future, when a hurricane gets that deep on the alphabetical list, it will be called “Katia.”