How gov shutdown affects $531 million in Helene agriculture relief for GA farmers
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- USDA approved $531,236,000 in Helene relief for Georgia farmers; disbursement paused.
- Block grant ties to American Relief Act allocate funds after four months of talks.
- Shutdown halts USDA operations; GDA readies reviews to approve farmer claims.
Georgia farmers lost generations’ worth of crops and timber in a matter of hours last year from Hurricane Helene. Last Tuesday, they got the news the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Georgia agreed on a $531 million grant of federal relief. But the next day, momentum on a signed agreement that would eventually put money in farmers’ bank accounts was paused by the federal government’s shutdown.
“(The $531 million) will provide some much-needed assistance,” Buck Paulk, owner of Shiloh Pecan Farms just north of Valdosta, told the Ledger-Enquirer.
Hurricane Helene’s eye passed through Paulk’s 4,000-acre pecan farm with wind speeds over 111 mph, ripping 20-30-year-old pecan trees from the ground. He lost 60% of his pecan crop. He said his immediate loss totaled $4.8 million from the cost of cleanup, replanting, field and irrigation repairs, as well as income for years to come.
The funding announcement is meant to help farmers like Paulk, but it comes four months after Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins told the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture and Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) that funds would come “soon … by the end of the month.”
The federal funds come in the form of a block grant authorized by the American Relief Act and initiated 82 days after the storm swept through in 2024. The funds total $30 billion, with $10 billion allocated for agriculture. Some of that has been distributed in tranches throughout the year to other states affected by extreme weather events.
How the feds and state decide on funding amounts per farmer
After applying for the grant, and if they are approved, farmers will get a percentage of the total loss and damage they sustained, according to Matthew Agvent, communications director for Georgia Department of Agriculture.
The University of Georgia Extension estimated damage to agriculture and timber is $5.5 billion for the state of Georgia from Hurricane Helene.
Agvent said the $531 million took four months of negotiation between Georgia Department of Agriculture and the USDA because they had to build multiple “brand-new disaster aid programs” to cover commodity crops that are not “traditionally covered by the USDA.”
That means someone like TJ Moore of the 4,000-acre Moore Farms near Waycross, who grows a variety of crops like squash, cucumber, bell pepper, eggplants, tomatoes and watermelons, should be reimbursed.
Moore told the Ledger-Enquirer via text last week he hasn’t received any of the funding since the storm a year ago and is living on borrowed money.
“I hope I actually get something,” he wrote.
The block grant negotiations started the last week of May, according to Agvent, shortly after Rollins talked with the Senate.
Agvent said his team had to “justify every dollar they asked for . . . invest(ing) hundreds and hundreds of hours into this process.”
UGA Extension helps quantify Georgia farm losses from Helene
He added that the GDA had to work with the UGA Extension and USDA to identify farms and quantify multiple loss types across dozens of commodities.
Georgia Agriculture Commissioner Tyler Harper said he was proud to provide the “essential” funding of $531,236,000 across Georgia and thanked Rollins for her urgency.
Many have vented on Facebook about how long this has taken.
Agvent noted the USDA averaged 13 months in agriculture distribution during the Biden Administration. Hurricane Michael took 18 months to reach a block grant agreement and to begin disbursing funds.
What happens to Helene relief for Georgia farmers after shutdown ends
The final agreement has technically not been signed yet. But after it is signed and the shutdown ends, Agvent said, GDA has a team of professionals on standby, ready to begin reviewing and approving applications to make the process as “efficient and effective as possible.”
The USDA is unavailable during the government shutdown and could not answer questions about why they started negotiations in May rather than earlier in the year, after the new administration came into office, 120 days after Hurricane Helene tore through the Peach State.
“I’m concerned this agreement has taken so long and is still not finalized,” Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) said in a news release. “Georgia farmers and foresters can’t wait any longer for relief.”
The USDA blames the “Radical Left Democrat” shutdown atop the press release page on its website for the news about the funding agreement.
This story was originally published October 7, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
