Farmers in the Rio Grande Valley are hurting financially because of Hurricane Hanna. Economists said the hurricane caused four hundred million dollars in damage to crops. Farmers have various insurances that can help with damage recovery, but they might not recover everything. “For us, we’re small so every penny counts,” said Owner of Yahweh Farms Diana Garcia. “For us to replace those high tunnels that’s about twenty to thirty thousand dollars.” The water from Hurricane Hanna soaked their farms ground and the wind tossed their high tunnel over. “The farmers took most of the loss,” said Dr. Samuel Zapata an AgriLife Extension Economist. “The big damage was caused by the strong winds in the flood.” Dr. Zapata said the hurricane wiped out several crops. “All the cotton crop was lost due to the hurricane. We also experienced about thirty percent of the citrus production was also lost, fifty percent of sugar cane as well fifty percent of sesame,” said Dr. Zapata. In situations like these, Diana and her husband have limited resources. “There’s so many different types of insurance that when something happens when you call an agent you hope that one of the things, the damage that you had, is some way covered,” said Garcia. “If we get a lot of water, we lose it all and the insurance doesn’t cover it because we don’t have an agency that likes to do whole farm insurance,” said Garcia. “We almost live to pay insurance.” Garcia and her husband are hoping to recover most of the damage left by the hurricane and are continuing to be hopeful. Source - https://www.valleycentral.com