Farming after Helene: experts gather to share what they know

LIMESTONE — On Wednesday, about 175 people stood somewhere that was completely underwater less than a year ago. Some were sharing and some were learning what could be done with the farmland that was fundamentally changed by those floodwaters. They were all gathered for a free Flood Recovery Initiative Field Day hosted by the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture at The Bent, a cattle and hay farm along the Nolichucky River that was devastated by Helene. The event started at 8:30 a.m. and ran through the late afternoon with presentations from UTIA researchers on what they've learned about agriculture in East Tennessee after Helene. "I hope you will learn a thing or two today. I can guarantee you we don't have all the answers. That's what the research is for, right?" said Dean of UTIA Agriculture Research Hongwei Xin. "Who knows if this is going to take five or 10 years to restore the beautiful farms back to their production state. But we're going to do our best to help our producers." The day was funded by UTIA, the U.S Department of Agriculture, Tennessee Department of Agriculture and the Governor's Response and Recovery Fund. That's an allotment of money from the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency for Helene-affected communities. After the flood, The Bent owner Will Runion made a call to Bruno Pedreira, director of the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture. Runion told Pedreira they were hit by a flood and needed some guidance on how to move forward. Pedreira was already running through ideas of where to start with recovery. Then Runion sent him drone footage of the farm. "I remember sitting and saying, 'What am I going to tell this guy?'" Pedreira said. Almost a year later, Pedreira and his colleagues were at Runion's farm sharing what they've learned about what Helene's floodwaters brought in and took away, and the challenges that came with that. There were slideshows and visual demonstrations about soil health and restoration, forage system recovery, replanting vegetable crops and riparian zone restoration. About 220 acres of Runion's forage, hayground and pasture fields flooded. He said when he contacted UTIA for help, it evolved into them coming out to his farm and setting up test plots to see what can and can't grow in the soil. That led up to hosting the field day at his farm. "Since the flood, we've come a long way of just getting structure back to the soils. With some of the things that we're finding out through their test plots, and the results there, I think it's all promising there in a way," said Runion. "It's given us an idea of what to do, I think, and probably not what to do." Runion said he started out with an aggressive plan trying to restore his lands back in a couple of years. After understanding the level of devastation to the soil caused him to amend that plan to be more long-term. UTIA scientists and ecologists spent months trying to learn more about Helene's effects on the 45,000 acres of land along the Nolichucky watershed that was damaged. That's about 30,000 football fields. Aaron Smith, professor of agricultural and resource economics at UTIA, said they were collecting data on recovery efforts across nine counties in East Tennessee: Carter, Cocke, Grainger, Greene, Hambien, Hawkins, Johnson, Unicoi and Washington. "What we want to do is get kind of an overarching picture so that we can help inform those that make policy decisions and distributions," said Smith. About 20 people, Smith said, are working on developing a Flood Impact Analysis System. The system would give people access to online data about recovery over time in counties across Tennessee. "It's really, truly an interdisciplinary approach to how we're looking at developing an automated platform, not just to end up tracking the recovery here [in East Tennessee], but for any future disasters of a bunch of different areas in Tennessee," he shared. The team developing the platform includes geographic information system modelers, economists, soil and plant scientists, engineers and more. When the system is finished, Smith hopes it can be used for other disasters like tornadoes or burn events too. "Our ultimate goal is to monitor and have downloadable reports that people can access," Smith said.According to their current estimates, the economic impact of the storm on agricultural and forestry industries totals about $865 million. The total structural losses from the storm, including residential and non-residential damage, range from $191.8 to $364.1 million. "This is not like your annual appointment with your doctor. This is more like an ICU [intensive care unit] thing," Pedreira said about farms recovering from Helene's flooding. "We need an ambulance. We go there, someone is going to bring us back to life. It's going to cost more, it's going to be different." Through the Flood Recovery Initiative, UTIA hopes to continue their research and share their findings with other farmers throughout East Tennessee. "The main goal of this field day is to give farmers a little bit of hope. I know they are all people of faith, but they have been fighting this fight for almost a year now and we still have places where we don't have anything growing," Pedreira said. "We'll need to find out what to do in these areas." UTIA will also assist farmers who are interested in having their soil tested. Runion said many in the community came together after Helene, whether it was cleaning up his house or the fields. He also said state and local governments have been helpful in trying to find a path forward. "It's been tremendous and gave us a lot of hope, too, because these things are just a huge financial burden when you have that much acreage, you know, to try to restore it," said Runion. "It's just been enormous."