Effort to help metro area farmers hit hard by the December freeze

Rahul Anand knows a farmer can be at the mercy of the weather.

But this time the weather showed no mercy.

“Honestly, I didn’t expect how bad it was going to be,” Anand said.

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It happened over Christmas when temperatures fell way below freezing.

His Snapfinger Farm in Newton County took a beating.

“Instead of just a few leaves getting yellow or falling off, the plants were essentially just melting to the ground,” Rahul said.

“Farmers are used to having cold nights and covering things. But this was multiple days of deep, deep freeze,” Georgia Organics CEO Alice Rolls said. Rolls heads up the nonprofit which helps the state’s organic farmers, especially when the weather turns against them.

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She said the 150 or so organic growers in the state suffered crop losses of 50 to 90 percent.

$100,000 in the nonprofit’s The Farmer Fund is available, but she said they need at least $250,000 more to help growers who have filed claims.

Rahul said he’s never seen anything like it. But he will carry on.

“You are kind of always at the behest of the weather when you’re farming. If we were to curl up because of a storm, I would have been out of this game as soon as I started,” Anand said.

To learn more about The Farmer Fund, visit https://www.thefarmerfund.org/.

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