A Thanksgiving staple is having trouble making it to the dinner table in south Louisiana this season. A mix of drought and rain has sweet potato farmers struggling through a late harvest, according to the Louisiana Farm Bureau.
Evangeline Parish farmer Larry Fontenot with E&L Produce says the beginning and middle part of the crop year was especially rough this year, leading to about 45 to 60 days of the prime growing season being lost.
“At the beginning of September, we were estimating about a 350-bushel yield, which is not enough for us to bring in and sustain our farm,” he says.
Fontenot says he and many other sweet potato farmers across south Louisiana are taking a gamble by holding off on harvesting most of their crop in hopes of better conditions.
“In the last two weeks we haven’t harvested anything at all,” he says.
And with about one-third of south Louisiana’s sweet potatoes still in the ground, Fontenot is getting nervous they won’t get the potatoes out in time.
“November is always a busy time at a packing shed because the Thanksgiving holiday is the biggest movement of sweet potatoes,” Fontenot says. “Everybody needs to get what they have left in the field, bring it back into the house and sell it. You can’t afford to lose a third of your crop, not with the production costs as high as they are this year.”
