The devastation caused by an act of nature last week may put apple growers and other farmers in 22 upstate counties in the same boat as recently flooded farms in Iowa. At least that's the case they'll be trying to make to federal and state officials as they assess potentially millions of dollars in crop damage caused by last week's hail.
Apples may have taken the hardest hit, but vegetable growers in several counties are also reporting shredded plants that could end up being a total loss. Only time will tell, farmers said, but already they were predicting widespread economic impact -- from the losses they'll sustain individually to the dollars that won't be spent at local stores by farm laborers who might not be hired.
Jim Palmer, a crop adviser for a farm products firm, described the damage done to young onion plants on the muck land in Genesee and Orleans counties this way: "They were just shredded like you took a machete knife to them. I've never seen hail damage on the muck like that."
On Jim Peters' Church Road Farms in Williamson, Wayne County, apple and cherry trees show obvious signs of damage. Inch-wide apples have multiple pock marks, likely meaning they'll be fit only for juice or applesauce instead of eating out of hand. Hail ripped holes in some apples' skins; they will probably rot.
About 40 growers gathered Saturday at Peters' farm to talk to Nozzolio and gather information on how to report damages. Make your best guess, several extension agents and farming experts told them, as the bruises in the apples will only get worse as the apples grow.
"We're putting together some numbers and it's pretty ugly," said James Allen, president of the New York Apple Association. He estimated that more than 6 million bushels of fresh apples were affected in the state.
If those apples are sold for processing instead of eating fresh, he said, the Wayne County loss alone would be $16 million.
Apples sold for eating fresh earn growers three or four times as much money as the apples they sell for processing. In some cases, the price difference is even more. High-demand honey crisp apples, for instance, sell for $600 to $700 a bin when they're fit for eating out of hand, said Phil Wagner, a Butler fruit grower who is also president of the Wayne County Farm Bureau. Damaged, they'll sell for one-tenth of that, he said.
Wagner estimated the tart cherry crop has suffered a 45-percent loss, although his farm was especially bad.
"I could not find one cherry that had not been hit," he said. A national shortage of processed cherries, though, could mean local growers of tart cherries still do well. But with sweet cherries, which tend to grow in clumps, one bad one can spoil an entire group, Wagner said.
Palmer said some vegetable crops, like corn, might rebound without a problem. But he worried that the onions will be susceptible to bacteria. He advised farmers to put copper on the plants to fight the bacteria that could invade the plant's bulb through its torn leaves.
"You need healthy tops to produce a healthy crop," said Palmer, who works for United Agriculture Products, a supplier of seed, fertilizer and pesticide to row-crop growers.
Acting on Palmer's suggestion, Guy Smith of Triple G Farms in Elba, Genesee County, hired an airplane to spray copper treatment on his 220 acres of onions. He wasn't sure yet of the cost, but knew the airplane alone cost $3,000.
Other costs or losses may mount as time goes by. Onions are harvested in August, so disease can become evident through the winter storage.
"At the end of winter you'll see a lot more bacterial disease and have to sort those onions out by hand," Smith said.
The losses are particularly bitter because of when they hit.
"It was starting out to be, for all farmers, one of the best seasons in 10 years," Wagner said. Add to that a burgeoning demand for local produce that growers had just started to enjoy but might not be able to meet this year.
"It's going to be a rippling effect across the board," said Gretchen Craft of Williamson, thinking not only of the field crops she grows but her day job in an apple storage facility that might have less to store this year.
"With the cost of fertilizer, fuel, you can't have such losses," she said.