“We’ve lost the crops we had, and we can’t do planting for the fall, which we usually would have been doing right around now,” said Burkett, who has been farming for 32 years and grows vegetables on his farm near this small southeastern Mississippi city. Burkett is also Mississippi state coordinator for the FSC, which assists Black farmers in the Southeast in the fight to keep their land and market their crops.

“The vast majority of our members don’t have insurance, even for their houses. We are going to try to contact FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] tomorrow to help our members apply for federal assistance,” Burkett said. “I was told by one FEMA representative that the application is ‘on the web.’ But many of the farmers here still don’t have electricity, and others don’t have computers.”

Burkett said he spoke with one chicken farmer from nearby Mt. Olive who was spending $100 a day on diesel fuel for generators to cool three buildings, each housing 12,000 chickens. The price of fuel has jumped from $1.95 a gallon in August, to over $3 a gallon, he said. The farmer has a contract with a Tyson chicken processing plant, and is fighting to keep his chickens cool enough so they won’t die.

There is an acute fuel shortage in Mississippi right now. Many gas stations are closed, others are operating for reduced hours. Many farmers are spending hours each day trying to find diesel fuel to power generators. The situation will grow worse as farmers prepare to bring in their harvests. Of the 14 poultry processing plants in Mississippi, ten have been shut since the hurricane, throwing thousands out of work. At the James Street apartments in Hattiesburg, Militant reporters spoke September 4 with workers from the nearby Marshall Durbin chicken plant, which has been closed since the storm. Many are from Mexico, and had to survive the storm with little or no information about what to do or where to seek help. None of the advisories or public service announcements are in Spanish. “I don’t know when we will go back to work because the bosses have told us nothing,” said Katalina Hernandez, who has worked in the plant for three years.

In addition to the farmers impacted directly by the hurricane, the flow of agricultural shipments from the Midwest that normally travel down the Mississippi River and out of Gulf ports has been disrupted. Half of all U.S. grain exports are shipped through this route. Corn, soybeans, sugar cane, and cotton are among the commodities shipped through the Gulf.

Ports and waterways from Texas to Florida, closed by the hurricane and flooding, have now been opened for limited tug and barge traffic to aid in the cleanup.

Even farmers further north in Mississippi were affected by the hurricane. “Farmers around here lost some of their corn crop due to wind damage,” said Roy Brown, 47, from the Mileston Co-op near Tchula, about an hour north of Jackson. “I think there should be a moratorium on all farm foreclosures,” said Burkett, “not just in the disaster areas, but for the farmers all over the country, and we need to demand more federal assistance directed to agricultural producers.”  
 
 
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