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Drag racr blow up at start9/26/2023 ![]() For farmers like him across the region, it's not a total loss but a significant setback. Even after insurance payments, he estimates he'll still lose hundreds of thousands of dollars on this year's crops. SKAHILL: Back at Tony Botticello's farm, he looks out at the flooded field. Each cost more than $1 billion in losses.īOTTICELLO: See, that's the thing about farmers. Even before the flood, federal officials say the country had already seen a dozen climate disasters this year. The cost of all these events are still unclear. Then Canadian wildfires blanketed the region in smoke, making it so some farmers couldn't even go outside to work. SKAHILL: A late May frost wiped out crops of peaches, apples and strawberries. GHIMIRE: But this year, the extremes has been very problematic. He says they're used to Mother Nature being an agent of chaos. He travels around the state helping farmers. SKAHILL: Shuresh Ghimire is an extension educator and vegetable specialist at the University of Connecticut. SHURESH GHIMIRE: These are the kind of situation where farmers lose farms. He estimates 2,000 acres of farms were underwater at one point. Before you can actually start making money, a flood event like this wipes out all of that work. He says farmers all over the region have spent weeks dumping seed and sweat into the ground.īRYAN HURLBURT: All of your expenses are accruing until, you know, just a couple of weeks ago. You know, it was very stressful for the farmers.īOTTICELLO: Bryan Hurlburt is commissioner of the State Department of Agriculture. WHALEN: So on Monday, we all started - it was like a mass evacuation of farm machinery, something you never see. SKAHILL: He says when farmers heard the water was coming, they move fast to save tractors and other valuable gear. Nothing, I think, is salvageable anyhow at this point. It's about a mile inland, and the water is right at our shoes.įRANCIS WHALEN: This is going to take weeks to go down to even get in there to see how much damage is there. SKAHILL: On the other side of the river, Francis Whalen (ph) stands before a path. The bacteria in there is just disgusting. It's dirty water, and when that water touches crops, people can't eat that food.īOTTICELLO: If it touches the ears at all, it's gone. Heavy rains in Vermont sent entire trees, boulders and even vehicles flowing south through Connecticut. SKAHILL: The river began flooding on Tuesday and continued to rise during the week. Over on the other side of that tree is - that was a hay lot right there. His hands shake as we see hundreds of acres gone - orderly green rows of crops blending into brown water.īOTTICELLO: This was a field of pumpkins that's all gone. ![]() We can't get in, so he pulls up a drone video on his phone. Botticello points to a path submerged in water. It's some of the Northeast's most fertile farmland. SKAHILL: He's farmed on the banks of the Connecticut River since the 1980s. TONY BOTTICELLO: We haven't picked an ear yet, and it's gone. PATRICK SKAHILL, BYLINE: The flood came just days before Tony Botticello (ph) was going to start picking his corn. Farmers were just days away from the harvest when the floodwaters began to rise and wipe out their crops. As Connecticut Public Radio's Patrick Skahill reports, the timing couldn't have been worse. And now all that rain is making its way down the swollen and flooding Connecticut River and taking out farms along the way. Torrential rain caused massive flooding in Vermont this week.
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