Texas farmers assess losses caused by historic winter storm
Constant Ngouala pulled carrots from the ground on his farm, a Plant It Forward site in Southwest Houston, and held up the intact bunch victoriously for his team to see. Carrots are among the few vegetables that survived Texas’ winter freeze last week. Ngouala lost 80 percent of his crop.
In the raised beds around him, vegetation was wilted to the ground, some slimy and still wet from the snow and freezing rain, others dried and a lifeless shade of brown.
This is a familiar scene on farms across Texas after the historic Winter Storm Uri. The state was plunged into darkness as temperatures dropped into the teens, leaving millions without power, heat or water for days. On farms and ranches, the freeze decimated crops and killed or hurt livestock.
The Plant It Forward team had prepared for the storm, harvesting everything they could the weekend before. Some crops were ready, others weren’t quite but could still be sold. What remained in the ground was protected by frost cloth or mulch for insulation.
Ngouala and his teammate, Guy Mouelet, lifted a tarp on Saturday to assess the damage. It wasn’t long enough to cover the bed’s whole length. Small, justemerging heads of romaine lettuce were still bright green under the cloth, but browning around the edges outside it. Ngouala thinks the onions, radishes and other root vegetables that were underground during the freeze will be fine, but he has to wait for them to sprout up to confirm.
Liz Vallette, president of Plant
“The vast amounts of gaps that have been caused in the food supply chain are pretty amazing.”
Mark Loeffler, Texas Department of Agriculture
It Forward, said even though the farm lost a lot, she had expected it would be even more dire. The damage is worse than Hurricane Harvey, but the 2017 storm prepared them well for this.
They were in good spirits that day, but there was work to do. Ngouala has to clean his beds and replant with spring crops as soon as possible in order to have cash flow 30, 40, 50 days from now.
Thomas Garcia-Prats, who runs Finca Tres Robles in Second Ward, says disasters often hit farms in the Houston area. He’s lost his entire crop before. The urban farm relies on its community supported agriculture — CSA — customers to eat their losses to keep going, he says. They will have smaller shares in the coming weeks — just like they have larger ones after a bumper crop.
“There’s very little support system or network for farms of sizes like my own,” said GarciaPrats, who grows on three-quarters of an acre. “USDA doesn’t have crop insurance for farms of our size. According to the TDA and our appraisal district, I’m not even considered an agricultural operation.”
Within the larger food system, shoppers will feel the freeze’s effects at the grocery store in the weeks to come.
“Prices for consumers are going to go up, there’s no question,” said Texas Department of Agriculture communications director Mark Loeffler. “The vast amounts of gaps that have been caused in the food supply chain are pretty amazing.”
Loeffler said significant impacts could last between six to eight weeks, depending on the industry. Some sectors’ long-term recovery could take months or years.
The TDA runs the State of Texas Agriculture Relief Fund in times of disaster. It’s currently raising money for the winter storm’s aftermath. The STAR fund relies solely on private donations, not state dollars, Loeffler said.
“We’re accepting donations into that fund primarily for farmers and ranchers getting back on their feet in terms of infrastructure,” he said. “If they’ve lost water tanks or fencing or they need to repair the barn, the STAR fund will help reimburse those costs.”
The STAR fund has raised $120,000. It’s not designed for crop or animal loss. “Part of it may be covered by the STAR fund, but those are pretty significant losses, so I think they’d probably have to find aid elsewhere,” Loeffler said.
At Three Sisters Farm in Needville, Jennifer Plihal and Peg Turrentine harvested everything they could from their quarteracre plot, even tiny carrots and tiny beets. It was better than nothing; their customers bought all they had. They gave leftover leaves and plant material from harvested vegetables to a farmer friend to use as animal feed. As for the rest, they cut their losses.
“With the extended forecast of below 20 degrees, we knew there was nothing we could do to save it,” said Plihal. “We didn’t even cover anything.”
They lost about 99 percent of their crop, and 25 percent of the 600 plants they moved from their greenhouse to a bedroom due to lack of heat when their power went out. Carrots that are underground may still be edible, but won’t grow anymore. They have enough spinach left to make a salad.
On Sunday, the couple was running errands, buying fertilizer and seed. Turrentine says that while there is no good time for such a weather event, this was actually the best time: They lost about six weeks of produce sales, but the season was soon coming to an end anyway.
Goats, cattle mostly survive
The winter storm also affected farmers with livestock. At All We Need in Needville, Stacey Roussel’s goats had six babies during frigid temperatures and power outages.
On Monday evening, Roussel was doing checks on a goat that had just given birth. The animal was shivering, so she asked her husband to fetch a heater. Within minutes, another goat went into labor. Then the heater went out; all the lights went out. The power wouldn’t return for three days.
Roussel’s week was a comedy of errors. She was running low on goat feed and no stores were open. She has her own water well, but it runs on electricity. She has a generator, but had the wrong cord. An electrician was able to make an adapter at the last minute, but not before her pipes froze.
Helping her goats kid, doing pelvic exams and other checks with a headlamp and limited visual cues was the biggest challenge. “It being dark and not being able to see what we were doing, having to clean those babies by candlelight,” Roussel said.
Despite the ordeal, all the goats and kids are healthy. The popsicles she makes from the goat milk are intact: Her outdoor walk-in freezer lost power, but it was so cold the product didn’t spoil. Sadly, Roussel’s 14-year-old sow, Mamma Pig, didn’t survive the cold.
Circle J Meat, a 1,000-acre ranch in Hempstead, only had one casualty in its 300-head cattle herd — a heifer froze to death. Owner Jacob Voncannon said he gave the cows about four times as much hay as he usually does, a method that keeps animals warm. The cows lost weight, which he estimates sets him back about a month. He planned for his pregnant heifers to give birth in the spring, but he’s worried the stress of the freeze will make them deliver early, which is not good for them or the calves.
After the storm, Voncannon brought extra ground beef to the Memorial Villages Farmers Market and sold out in an hour and a half. Vendors around him were selling out fast. He said shoppers seemed “a little bit panicky,” likely because of depleted grocery store shelves. Some people told him they had come to the market to support local producers.
Ngouala, at Plant It Forward, says this is the worst freeze he’s experienced in his 22 years of farming. He’s seen farmers quit over events like this.
There are silver linings. Ngouala will throw his destroyed crops onto the compost pile, going back into the life cycle of the farm. And he believes the freeze killed bugs that often infest farms in the later, warmer seasons. Perhaps a better spring is to come.