U.S. agricultural producers suffered almost $900 million in production losses from Hurricane Katrina in the mid-South and an estimated $1.3 billion from drought in the eastern Corn Belt, the Department of Agriculture said.
The storm destroyed about 4 percent of the cotton crop in Mississippi and Alabama and 9 percent of Louisiana’s sugarcane production – or 1.5 percent of the U.S. total for the fiscal year starting in October, the USDA said Tuesday in a statement. Short-term livestock losses were pegged at $30 million.
“Given the severity of the hurricane, the agricultural losses could have been much greater,” Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said in the statement.
The USDA also said drought in the eastern Corn Belt had caused an estimated $1.3 billion in corn and soybean losses in Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio and Wisconsin.
Corn and soybeans are the biggest U.S. crops. The corn harvest last year was valued at $23 billion and soybean production at $16.1 billion.
