While much of the focus in Texas currently is on rescuing storm victims, the agricultural industry is bracing for major difficulties, even though there hasn’t been much time to calculate the losses.

Texas Department of Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller told Fox News that in the 21-county area affected by the floods, hundreds of miles of fencing was lost, along with countless barns, outbuildings and other farm structures.

“To put this in perspective, in a 24-hour period enough water went down the river through Kerrville that would equal that amount of water that goes through Niagara Falls in a month and a half,” Miller told Fox News on Monday. “It was a 26-foot wall of water at 3 a.m. in the morning, and it caught everybody off guard.”

“We’ve lost farm-to-market roads, bridges and utilities, irrigation systems were wiped out, crops are under water, missing livestock, tractors under water, implements washed away.”

We also checked in with Shoppa’s Farm Supply, whose stores are well outside the flood area, but has suffered hurricane damage in the past, for some perspective. General Manager Eric Burrow told us the recovery is going to take a long time and right now all of the debris needs to be cleared manually while they continue the search for victims. 

Media reports said yield losses of up to 40% in lowland areas of the affected counties, and there will be more problems with waterlogged pastures and contaminated feed supplies that will stress cattle, poultry and swine operations. 

The Equipment Dealers Foundation (EDF), the charitable arm of the North American Equipment Dealers Assn. is prepared to assist dealership employees who may have been impacted by the recent disastrous flooding in Texas. NAEDA’s foundation created the disaster relief program following the devastation from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

For more on donating to the fund or requesting assistance, visit equipmentdealersfoundation.org. 

Watch the full version of this episode of On The Record