A preliminary report released Thursday by the University of Florida estimated up to $370.9 million in agricultural losses from Hurricane Idalia, which barreled through rural areas of North Florida in late August.
And losses could increase as damage to infrastructure and such things as timber are factored in.
Christa Court, director of the Economic Impact Analysis Program at the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, pointed to a role the report could play amid recovery efforts from the Category 3 hurricane.
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“We know that there’s a lot of decisions that are being made now, or in the near future at local levels, state levels,” Court said. “There’s a lot of discussions going on at federal levels and we want to make our information available to them as fast as possible so that they can make informed decisions.”
Idalia made landfall Aug. 30 in the Keaton Beach area of Taylor County before moving through parts of North Florida into Georgia.
While powerful, Idalia had a relatively narrow path that crossed mostly sparsely populated areas that include many dairy and poultry farms and row crops.
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