Johnson Taber corn and potatoes reporting hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage from Saturday’s (June 13) thunderstorm.
The crop near Barnwell was hit with plenty of rain and up to golf ball-sized hail. Farm Manager, James Johnson, says about 40% of their corn was damaged and about 30% of their potatoes.
He tells our radio station it’s too early to say at this point if there will be less corn to sell this year. “Our early stuff was fine, it wasn’t touched. So, we’ll probably start [selling] end of July, first part of August kind of like we normally do. But, there’s a good chance that we’re going to have some gaps. We won’t have quite a steady supply as we normally do.”
Johnson notes that the potatoes should bounce back from the storm, and hopes that the loss in the corn supply will be minimal.
This is the second season in a row that the Johnson Farm crop has been damaged by inclement weather. It endured large hail and high wind during a storm last August that damaged a majority of its crops, cutting that selling season extremely short.