As Hurricane Irene passed over the borough last week, downgrading to a tropical storm, it continued on a path of destruction flooding farms and annihilating much of the produce supplied by upstate farmers to many of New York City’s Greenmarkets.
Gary Glowaczewski, a third-generation farmer from R&G Produce in Orange County who supplies a large amount of his produce to Greenmarkets in Elmhurst and Jackson Heights, was devastated. “A hundred percent of our crops were wiped out,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen in this area or to us.”
Before the tropical storm sent the Wallkill River over its banks, swelling the Pochuk Creek and consuming Glowaczewski’s 12-year-old farm in 5 feet of water, he and his brother did all they could in preparation for the storm and gathered much of their crops while storing their field equipment in warehouses.
After assessing the devastation upstate left in the wake of the storm, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that preliminary estimates left 140,000 acres of the New York’s agricultural sector suffering $45 million in damages.
While the damage was still being assessed, Cuomo feared the number of ruined agricultural acreage was still climbing.
On Saturday, Cuomo announced the creation of a $15 million Agricultural and Community Recovery Fund to help rebuild the hard hit rural industry.
But the newly announced funding may not be enough to salvage over a decade’s worth of work or maintain the livelihood of farmers and their families.
“Besides paying the bills, how do we put food on our own tables?” Glowaczewski asked. “It’s in the millions, the amount of revenue that we lost. I don’t know how we can bounce back.”
Before the storm hit, many of the farms supplying the borough’s Greenmarkets were in the process of harvesting the crops they planted as far back as April.
Although many of the borough’s Greenmarkets were still stocked last weekend, that produce was gathered before the storm hit.
“This was the worst time for a storm to hit,” said Cheryl Huber, assistant director of New York City’s Greenmarkets. “Farmers were either about to or are in the process of harvesting their summer crops.”
Reconfiguring produce after a heavy storm during the harvest is a difficult task for farmers to undertake in mid-season and will make it difficult for hard-hit farmers to become profitable again, Huber said.
In an effort to help aid upstate farmers, GrowNYC, the nonprofit organizer that runs the city’s Greenmarkets, has set up a hurricane relief fund.
Huber remains positive that farmers will weather this particular natural disaster in hopes that they will be able to continue contributing to the city’s popular greenmarkets.
But as many farmers continue to assess the damage, moving forward, Glowaczewski is not sure squeaking by each week with a selection of produce that was salvaged will be enough to carry him into next season.
“We’ve lost all our investment and everything we had,” Glowaczewski said. “I don’t know what we are going to do.”