Texas Farmers Suffer Extensive Crop Losses In Wake Of Harvey

In south Texas, this was going to be one of the best years farmers had seen in a while. The cotton crop was projected to bring in record prices and even clear out many families' debts. But the massive rainfall, winds and a slow drying-out process from Harvey have left many farmers overwhelmed and worried. It will take months, maybe even a full year, to get final figures on Texas' agricultural losses to Harvey. But Gene Hall of the Texas Farm Bureau says he's done some back-of-the-envelope calculations. Roughly, Hall says just looking at cotton, Texas's No. 2 product, farmers lost at least a fifth of the crop."We think that it could be as much as $135 million" in cotton losses, he says.And Hall says for rice farmers, 20 percent of their crops are still stuck in the ground.