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Mother Nature tested the mettle of Fifth District agribusiness in 1999, as droughts and storms wreaked havoc with harvests and severely damaged livestock farms.
During the summer months, many of the region's farmers wrestled with drought. Then, in September, many animals and crops drowned in the downpours of Hurricane Floyd. Still, some areas remained parched and thirsting for rainfall.
In North Carolina, the hurricane was the state's worst agricultural disaster, destroying $432 million worth of crops in 44 counties. (Total damages were expected to reach $1 billion.) Fields of cotton, tobacco, soybeans, and peanuts were hit hard and agriculture officials called the sweet potato harvest a total loss - less than 25 percent of the crop was harvested prior to the hurricane.
Nearly 3 million of North Carolina's chickens and turkeys, and an estimated 100,000 hogs succumbed to raging floodwaters. Survivors faced starvation as feed supplies ran low, and hundreds of roads remained impassible to delivery trucks five days after the hurricane struck.
"The loss of livestock isn't a huge percentage loss for the state,...