The devastating flooding in the Hill Country is going to have long-term effects – not just on the people who lost loved ones, but also on those who depend on the area for their livelihood.
The Texas Department of Agriculture has been at work deploying resources aimed to help farmers, ranchers and others in the rural communities hit hardest by the storm damage.
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller spoke to the Texas Standard about disaster relief available for rural farmers and the AgriStress suicide hotline.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: The biggest loss in the recent flooding, of course, is that of human life. But I know in the weeks since the storm, there’s been a lot of talk about what the longer-term impact on agriculture might be in Texas Hill Country.
Do you have a good sense of that yet, or are you still trying to figure out what the overall impact might be?
Sid Miller: Well, it’s going to be weeks where we know the overall impact. We’re getting a few numbers in, but they’re not anywhere near final numbers.
We know in Concho Valley and in Runnels County we’ve lost over 10,000 acres of cotton – has been flooded out. We’ve lost over 5,000 acres of hay, and those numbers will go up. We’ve got reports of over 500 miles of fencing washed out.
And keep in mind that we hadn’t even got any numbers in from Kerr or Gillespie County. Those are the two hardest hits.
For folks who are maybe unfamiliar, this area affected by the floods, is that an area with a mixture of farmers and ranchers, or what could you tell us about the primary agriculture industry in this area affected so hard by the floods?
Well, it’s mostly in the Hill Country, but it’s also kind of expanded outside the Hill Country. The original disaster declaration was 21 counties in that Hill Country area, but the governor added five more counties: Hamilton and Lampasas were not really considered Hill Country; Uvalde, which is; I forget the other two right off hand.
So you take 26 counties out of 254, that’s over 10% of our state is a flood disaster area, so that’s a pretty big swath.
And those areas are cotton producing counties, you know, Hill and Gillespie, those are sheep and goat country. Of course they’re all cattle country, so they’re all major agriculture producing counties in our state.
» MORE: Complete coverage of deadly flooding in the Texas Hill Country
What immediate physical needs can the Department of Agriculture help to meet?
Well, we’ve got three things. The first thing I did was activate my STAR Fund. Now, that’s an acronym for State of Texas Agriculture Relief Fund. That’s money that we raise from individuals, private entities. It’s not taxpayer dollars. It’s not government money. That’s just come from the goodness of people’s heart.
And we use that money to help rural communities get back on their feet. [Help] farmers, ranchers pay for things that government programs don’t pay for or insurance doesn’t pay for. Mostly things like T-post and wire and burying dead animals and that kind of stuff; there’s no way to recover those costs.
People can go to our website if you want to donate or you want to apply: texasagriculture.gov.
Second thing, and almost simultaneously, I launched was our hay and feed hotline. That’s where farmers can go if they need hay or feed, or people would donate T-Post and wire to that, pet food, anything like that. We take those donations and we coordinate the delivery of those.
So, we’re always needing people with trucks and trailers to help us coordinate a delivery of that, because a lot of times we’ll have people that’ll donate a load of hay but they don’t have any way to get it shipped to the area in question. So, hay and feed hotline also at texasagriculture.gov.
And I think most importantly, about three years ago I established a mental health hotline, a suicide hotline, for agriculture people from rural areas. We have a national suicide hotline, 988, but you get somebody in New York City or India that really doesn’t know how to relate to people in the rural areas.
So, mine is called the AgriStress Helpline … you can also find it on that website, texasagriculture.gov. The number is 833-897-2474.
From an agricultural perspective, how long do you think this flooding is going to be affecting the Texas Hill Country? Can these farmers and ranchers get back up on their feet, and how long is it going to take them?
Well, like that 10,000 acres plus of cotton, it’s too late to replant, so it’s gone for this year. It’s going to be at least another year before they get to replant another crop.
What I’ve noticed in a lot of these places that– and this is kind of unusual– terraces have been washed out and gone. It’s gonna take a while just to get in there and level the fields and get the debris out of them and put the terraces back in place.
So, you know, I’d say we’re into next year’s crop for sure on that. We’ve lost a lot of hay. Even hay that was under water is not going to do us any good. It’s going to be moldy and won’t be able to be used for feed.
I guess the best thing we can do with it is fill in some washes or gullies that are washed out, and that’s about it. We got to get rid of it anyway, so maybe that’s a good use of it. We’ve got a lot of work to do. It’s going to take a couple of years to get all the fences back up and all the debris, you know, taken care of and burned or buried.
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I know that you have a very personal feeling about the welfare of folks who work in agriculture and, you know, for some families this is not just a way of life, it’s a tradition, it’s something that goes back generations.
And as you look at what happened with these floods, Texans have been through a lot over the years, but do you think that this in some way changes the face of Texas agriculture long-term?
You know, I don’t think so, and I’ll tell you why. I mean, it’s tragic. I’m not playing it down, but Texans are real resilient. I don’t know a stronger breed of people than Texans.
I mean, this is not anything new for us. We’ve faced floods before. Over a million acres burned in the Panhandle last year. We’ve had hurricanes. We have tornadoes. We have hail storms. We have freezes. We have price fluctuations. We deal with tariffs. We deal with bird flu. We’re facing the screwworm.
So, adversity faces us every day, but the thing that sets Texas apart, you won’t find Texans sitting on the curb waiting for the government to show up and help us out. You go down there to Kerrville or San Saba, any of those places, you’ll see Texans helping Texans, you’ll see neighbor helping neighbor, and we just pitch in.
And if the government never showed up to help in Texas, we’d be just fine. We’d still get it done. And because that’s just the Texan spirit.
