Tornadoes ripped through the southeast last week, with stormchasers following a few touchdowns in farmers' fields in the area. Those fields saw emergence a while ago and are now in the growing stage, meaning these plants are vulnerable to the heavy winds, hail, and more that come from a tornado.
Local Agrologist Edgar Hammermeister says that, as far as he's heard, damage to any farmyard thanks to the tornadoes has been limited.
"The tornado went south of Frobisher here down toward Northgate, but it was out in fields to the best of my knowledge. There was no yard damage. There was a little bit of high winds in relative proximity to the tornado. So a little bit of tree damage, but the tornado itself was out in, in the middle of fields."
Hammermeister says he did hear of one oil field battery that saw the tornado up close, but from what he understands, there was no loss of production or fluid spillage, with only a few outbuildings being damaged.
For a farmer, a tornado landing on their property can be extremely rare, so there's no real specific form of insurance for any damages.
"To the best of my knowledge, and I stand to be corrected, but I don't think there's, for crop damage, anything that we can insure against a tornado. Where a farmer can be covered is if they have other forms of insurance, such as crop insurance, or some of the income insurances."
"But that starts incorporating the average yields and average income of the farm. The tornado would have only taken a small percentage of any individual farm. So I think the averages will end up working out okay, so farmers won't have any coverage for that type of loss."
If a tornado does impact your field, Hammermeister recommends taking a look to see just how that damage might impact your bottom line.
With intense winds and potentially hail damaging crops, they may be put into a vulnerable state for other factors, such as damaging pests, disease, and fungi.
"If it's out in the middle of the field, again, there's nothing that you can do insurance-wise, but from an agronomic perspective, and this is setting aside if there was no hail, see what kind of plant damage was had. Something that could be considered is in the literature, it can suggest fungicide application to help limit disease establishment in the crop. If the crop is smaller, it'll rebound. There won't be any real issues that way."
"It's more of the debris impact, impacting the plants and causing ruptures in the integrity of the plant leaves. That's where disease could be introduced."
Hammermeister says that aside from the recent tornado, the southeast has actually had a good growing season with moisture in decent supply.