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Hurricane Dennis

State's cotton crop in tatters after Dennis

Hurricane Dennis blasted the cotton fields of the Panhandle, mangling the plants and crippling livelihoods.

By BRADY DENNIS
Published July 16, 2005

JAY - Crops blanket the countryside along the two-lane blacktop that leads to this small town near the Alabama border.

Out the car window, the fields look flawlessly green with the beginnings of cotton and peanut plants. They are fields full of sweat and frustration, owned by men whose grandfathers farmed this land before them. They work these fields lovingly, only to be repaid too often with worry and heartache.

Hurricane Ivan brought heartache by the bale last year to cotton farmers in Santa Rosa and Escambia counties, and Dennis has threatened to do the same. In fact, many farmers say, they have struggled since 1995 with hurricanes, tropical storms and drought.

"It can't get no worse," said 37-year-old Preston Blackmon, who owns 1,200 acres of cotton and peanut fields off State Road 4.

Last fall, Ivan blew through and left him with only about 250 pounds an acre of cotton. On a good year, he said, he could gather 800 or 1,000 pounds per acre.

Now, after Dennis, the cotton crops that already should stand waist high barely grow above his ankles. Some of the plants snapped like twigs. The wind and sand blew the leaves off others, leaving the stalks black and barren and hopeless. The storm also demolished two of his barns, along with dozens of others in the county.

It means another year in the quicksand of debt.

"You just borrow money as long as they'll let you and go at it again," he said.

Blackmon isn't alone.

State Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson this week estimated that up to 50 percent of the cotton crop in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties has been damaged by sand intrusion and wind and water. Only when the cotton is harvested in autumn will the crops reveal the extent of Dennis' damage.

Up State Road 89, at the Burkhead Cotton Gin, 71-year-old Buddy Burkhead already knows the farmers in this part of Florida must spend another season suffering.

"I hope everybody can just break even, and that won't happen," he said. "It's working on the nerves, no doubt about it. It's definitely working on the pocketbooks. It's just a matter of how much more we can take."

He should know.

Burkhead's grandfather started the gin in 1907. His father farmed this land, and now his two sons have continued to sweat out a living. He said Ivan was "a hoss," the worst he has seen, but Dennis "wasn't no play-purty, either. It didn't fizzle out here."

A hefty chunk of the state's cotton comes from Escambia and Santa Rosa counties, both hit hard by Ivan and Dennis. More than 22,000 acres of cotton were planted in Santa Rosa County alone in 2003, the last year for which statistics are available. That year, the county's cotton crop grossed nearly $14-million, with another $1.6-million coming from cotton seed.

The stress that comes with cotton was enough to make Bruce Holland switch 20 years ago to growing mostly produce - peas, butterbeans and watermelon, to name a few. But the onslaught of Mother Nature in recent years has created fears for him, too, of lost crops and barns to repair.

"It's been a lot of stress," Holland said. "You think, "How can I make it?' You make it. You do what you can do."

Burkhead has the blessing of perspective to help him sleep easier at night. The old man has spent a lifetime here and farmed through a biblical list of disasters - hurricanes, floods, droughts.

He has seen the good years and the bad. But in farming, there are no easy years.

"If a man ain't got no faith," he said, "he don't need to farm."

Brady Dennis can be reached at 813 226-3386 or dennis@sptimes.com

[Last modified July 16, 2005, 00:25:11]