Ag & Foresty head Mike Strain addresses Chamber

Commissioner of the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry Dr. Mike Strain gave his annual statewide update to St. Mary Parish residents on Oct. 14 during a St. Mary Parish Chamber of Commerce luncheon at the Forest Restaurant in Franklin.
While last year, the distinguishing point of Strain’s address was the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement and the need to pass it into law, this year’s address was about damage and loss, and the remnants of the myriad hurricanes Louisiana has seen so far in 2020.
He prefaced the damage reports with, “There are a lot of positive things going on (in the state).”
“In St. Mary Parish, Agriculture is $76,475,000. Agriculture is the largest industry in Louisiana, and the largest industry in America and it is sitting at $13 billion (nationwide),” Strain reported. “There are a lot of things going on. If you look at where we are headed, we are moving in a positive direction. Wealth begins with the earth. If we look at St. Mary Parish and our sugar cane, I think you are going to see it is very stable.”
Strain went on to discuss the brawny states of other markets in the parish, to include: fisheries, bait, hunting leases, crawfish, and livestock.
“All of these things,” he continued, “after being protected and enhanced, are adding secondary and tertiary value to them.”
After touting the state of those industries, Strain pivoted focus to industry losses in 2020.
“What happened with COVID and all these agricultural commodities?” he asked. “There were disruptions in supply chains,” was the answer. “Delivery, ships, production, stabilization— we’ve seen one of the highest rates of broken costs in food products this country has ever seen in a short period of time.”
He further reported the worldwide sugar cane ending stocks-to-use ratio at 14 percent as a “small number.” However, loss figures for Louisiana following Hurricane Laura, but before Hurricane Delta, showed a grimmer outlook.
Strain reported $1.6 billion in agricultural damage statewide and another $400 million to “clean up,” bringing the total to $2 billion.
He set state rice losses, due to dryer lids being blown off driers, at $6 million, and due to power loss at chicken farms, $440,000 in dead chickens, even after negotiations with FEMA.
With Delta having struck so recently, concrete figures on losses were not yet available, but Delta qualifying as more of a rain event than was Laura, Strain said expectations for loss are geared more toward rot and water damage.
Yet, Strain said his “official word to Washington is that ‘cane is just fine,’” due to the parish being well within its ordinance of tolerance to keep from prices being affected.
After having flown over storm-battered areas the day after the winds of Delta died down, Strain put his statewide figure for loss estimated at $1.1 billion, with the Department of Forestry estimating $1.2 billion.
He reported the possible utilization of government and federally-funded programs as a lifeline for farmers and ranchers in need of post-hurricane assistance, yet in the same breath expressed trepidation saying, “We will be using government programs, but I am worried about the federal government (programs), because what we’ve seen in the last few years is a decrease in the number of people that are farm services aides. So now, here we are with this massive program, we need to administer billions of dollars, and we don’t have the personnel. So, what we are going to do is we are going to utilize the farm and forestry personnel. We are going to use foresters, we are going to use federal personnel, we are going to be creative, and if we have to administer money from the agriculture finance department—whatever it takes to get it done.”
He went on to also discuss a $150 billion dredging project of 100 miles of the Mississippi River, a project which he said has been years in the making, in the throes of initiation, which will allow bigger ships with more cargo to navigate the river, translating to more profits at Louisiana ports and elsewhere.
He also brought up briefly the strange phenomenon of unlabeled seeds being mailed by foreign entities to random Americans this year, chalking it up to a massive breakdown in biosecurity.
According to Strain, over 16,000 packs of seeds were sent, purportedly to disrupt our crops, and in so doing, disrupt our economy.
Strain assured attendees that the channels through which the seed packets had shipped: Amazon, Ebay and Etsy have committed to much more stringent preventative measures on shipments of all seeds.
As for hemp, Strain said last year in Louisiana, the first year legally growing the crop for medicinal purposes only, 2,600 acres were approved, 822 acres were planted, 134 acres were harvested, and 531 acres failed, which Strain chalked-up to Louisiana having not seen hemp grown here in so long that the conditions must be reconstructed for success.