Area growers still waiting for U.S. aid after Wilma

At TCB Farms near Immokalee there’s nothing growing.

At least, not in the ground.

For Daniel Samet, a partner in the once promising greenhouse farm, the only thing growing is his impatience. He wonders when he’ll get help with recovery from Hurricane Wilma.

It has been more than two months since U.S. Department of Agriculture Deputy Secretary Chuck Conner stood on Samet’s decimated gourmet pepper farm and promised to work hard to help Southwest Florida growers recover from the Category 3 storm that flooded vegetable fields, tore up greenhouses and blew fruit to the ground.

“We are not getting anywhere,” he said. “We haven’t seen any money yet.”

Across Southwest Florida, other growers are just as frustrated. Though the U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced $2.8 billion in hurricane disaster assistance, the agency is still developing guidelines to distribute the money. And it’s likely to be a few more months before growers get any aid.

“You’ve got a lot of people that are in dire need of help,” Samet said.

On Nov. 21, Conner toured TCB Farms with U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, a Miami Republican who represents part of Collier County, U.S. Rep. Adam Putnam, R-Bartow, a citrus grower and cattle rancher, and Florida Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson.

Diaz-Balart, who fought hard for relief money for growers, is concerned about how long it’s taking the USDA to distribute the disaster assistance.

“Obviously, a lot of those growers are in and around the district he represents,” said Diaz-Balart’s press secretary, Thomas Bean. “It is something he has been particularly engaged with ever since Hurricane Katrina hit last year. It wasn’t just Wilma. It was Katrina first and whatever Katrina left behind Wilma came in and knocked the rest of it out. That is why it’s so catastrophic for the industry right now.”

He said there’s nothing Diaz-Balart can do to speed up the distribution of the money. It all falls in the hands of the USDA.

If help doesn’t come soon there are some local growers who are so far in debt that they won’t be able to plant next year. Some fear their very survival.

“Some of the smaller guys really live from season to season and those are the ones most concerned at this point,” said Gene McAvoy, a multi-county vegetable agent based at the Hendry County Extension office in LaBelle.

It’s still unclear how much USDA assistance will come to Florida growers. Hurricane Wilma alone caused an estimated $2.2 billion in agricultural damage in the state.

Producers in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Texas, who suffered because of the 2005 hurricanes, are eligible for the new programs the USDA is developing to distribute the hurricane disaster money.

“We are looking at late spring/early summer when payments would go out,” said Stevin Westcott, a spokesman for the Farm Service Agency in Washington, D.C. “Payments will be made as they are processed.”

Before any money goes out, growers will have to sign up for the money and they can’t do that until the program guidelines are developed and published. Agricultural producers will receive $1.2 billion in assistance through a variety of programs to help with recovery. Another $1.6 billion will be used to rebuild homes and rural communities in six counties.

For Samet, the money can’t come fast enough. He’s working with other growers to try to get the money flowing sooner.

Hurricane Wilma toppled TCB Farms’ greenhouses, twisted computer wires and bent over electrical boards. The farm has $7 million in losses. There’s nothing to harvest this season. Nothing survived in either of its 10-acre greenhouses.

Samet took out a personal loan to hire a small crew to start cleaning up the mess. He’s unsure whether he’ll even qualify for help from the USDA. He fears that all the money might go to growers that had insurance. He said he wasn’t able to get insurance because his growing methods are so innovative, done under the cover instead of in the open field.

“I’m still hoping that somewhere some money is going to be found for us so we can continue growing and feeding America,” he said. “But truthfully as of today — and we’re past the three month mark from Wilma — none of us have received anything.

Frank Ochoa, farm manager for Everglades Farms Inc. in Immokalee, said without government assistance his tomato farm won’t be able to plant next year.

“We lost all of the tomatoes we had in the ground,” he said. “We did not pick not one of them. We had probably 130 acres.”

The farm did not replant tomatoes after Wilma. Ochoa hopes to know by May whether the farm will get some government help so it can start planning for next season.

“It’s hard to plan things out without really knowing where the money is going to come from,” he said.

Much of the farm has been cleaned up, which required borrowing more money from the bank, Ochoa said.

Watermelons have been planted in the same plastic as the tomatoes, like they are every year at Everglades Farms. But with the low watermelon prices Ochoa isn’t optimistic about that crop either.

“With the watermelon crop there’s no way you can make up the money we lost,” he said. “You just try to get a little closer to where you want to be.”

Ochoa fears his farm could be overlooked by the government.

“For some reason it seems like the small farm is the forgotten one,” he said. “Everybody else gets a piece of the pie, but the small farmer is the one that gets left out.”

Chuck Obern, owner of C & B Farms in Clewiston, lost 80 percent of its ethnic vegetable crops to Wilma. The farm grows specialty peppers, eggplant, herbs and a variety of other leafy vegetables.

“We have replanted,” he said. “But the bank has plenty of money.”

The farm had to borrow money for both plantings. And it can’t pay back the loans with crops it never harvested.

“Farming requires tons and tons of money,” Obern said. “Farmers traditionally are paid very poorly for production. So we don’t have a pocket full of money to invest.”

The farm’s losses from Wilma are estimated at $2 million.

The farm has started harvesting the replanted crop. But the market is bad. Prices for vegetables were up a few weeks ago when supplies were down. But Mexico has planted more vegetables this season because of the storm damage in Florida. And the crops are all coming in at the same time for Florida growers that replanted after Wilma.

“Prices are all down for tomatoes, peppers — all the crops that the Immokalee area grows,” Obern said. “Prices are cheap.”

Vegetable production began picking up two weeks ago in Southwest Florida, said McAvoy, with the Hendry County Extension office in LaBelle. And that’s when prices started to drop.

A few weeks ago, tomatoes and peppers sold for more than $20 a box. Prices have gone as low as $6 a box for tomatoes and the break even is somewhere around $8 a box, McAvoy said.

Vegetable growers aren’t the only ones eager for help from the government.

The region’s citrus growers were also hard hit by Wilma. The state’s nursery industry suffered the most, with damage estimated at $1.1 billion.

“Nursery growers are recovering,” said Ben Bolusky, executive vice president of the Florida Nursery Growers & Landscape Association. “But they need the assistance and they need it urgently.”