Atlantic region farmers assess Dorian-related damage

When post-tropical storm Dorian hit the Atlantic provinces in early September, it left far more damage in its wake than flattened buildings and downed hydro lines.

It was a direct hit on the region’s agricultural sector, destroying crops from apples to corn.

The Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture is collecting data from its members to better understand the extent of the damage. To date, their estimates have already reached $10 million.

Every commodity hit

“The big thing is it affected farmers across the province and pretty much every commodity was hit,” federation president Victor Oulton told Global News recently.

It’s the second year in a row that’s been a challenge to many in the fruit industry. Last year an unusually late frost destroyed many crops.

Dorian’s hurricane-force winds snapped thousands of trees like toothpicks and pulled tonnes of fruit to the ground across the Annapolis valley. The 120-km strip of land is renowned for its microclimate that supports the province’s most productive farms. One Rockland farm, for example, lost up to 40 per cent of the gross value of its apple crop.

Farmers in PEI also didn’t escape Dorian’s wrath. There, they are tallying their losses in preparation for federal disaster assistance registration.

“Our yield was half of what it should have been, a lot of people in our area were less than half,” said Randy Drenth, a corn farmer based in Summerfield, PEI.

Drenth told CBC News farmers like him are still struggling to figure out how they can afford to put the next crop into the ground.

Another corn farmer, Patrick Dunphy, of Valley View Farming Company, estimated that 405 of his 648 hectares were flattened by Dorian.

“Yield was about 75 per cent lower than what we would normally harvest off our corn fields,” Dunphy said.

Low quality corn

To make matters worse, the low quality of the corn – harvested immature and wet – is making it difficult to sell.

CBC News reported the PEI Federation of Agriculture is working with the province to create a survey that will go out to commodity groups affected by Dorian. Federation executive director Robert Godfrey said the survey should be distributed sometime before the end of January.

“The faster, the better because we want to get this application off to Ottawa,” told Godfrey the media. “If Ottawa is able to provide the financial assistance we want them to, we want those cheques in the mail as fast as possible.”

Dorian hit Atlantic Canada on Sept. 7, causing over $105 million in insured damage across the region, said a release from Catastrophe Indices and Quantification Inc. The release states 70 per cent of this amount is for damage to personal property, 25 per cent is for damage to commercial property and the remaining amount is for damage to automobiles. Halifax, Moncton and much of Prince Edward Island suffered a large portion of the damage, though damage reports were widespread across the Atlantic region.