New Orleans counts cost of Hurricane Katrina

The terrible human cost of Hurricane Katrina is likely to be prolonged following initial estimations of the damage caused to the city’s food industry. When the levees surrounding the vulnerable city of New Orleans burst under the relentless pressure whipped up by Hurricane Katrina earlier this week, one of the nation's most important food transport hubs was deluged. The Mississippi River, the cheapest route for the shipping of many crops and other commodities destined for overseas and domestic markets, has become inaccessible in parts. Up to 300 barges containing grains and other products have been left stranded. ''To have the port of New Orleans closed will dramatically hurt the middle part of the country, and that will spill over onto the coasts." Grain processors including Cargill are concerned that with the grain harvest season less than a month away, shipping will remain constrained during the busiest and most important time of the year. New Orleans is different from many other ports, noted M. Eric Johnson, a professor who teaches supply-chain management at Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. ''Any port can handle a shipment of containers," he said. But many port facilities in New Orleans were designed for ''raw materials such as chemicals and scrap metal, and the barge traffic is significant," he said. Not all of those cargoes can easily be diverted to other ports that lack the facilities to handle them. Louisiana's shrimp and oyster industry has also been demolished by the storm and is expected to be out of action for the foreseeable future. Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board executive director Ewell Smith said the impact of the hurricane on Louisiana's $2.6 billion seafood industry "will be severe." The region produces 10 percent of the shrimp consumed in the United States and 40 percent of the oysters, putting oyster supplies - and prices - at particular risk. Further north, the deluge could bring some unexpected benefits. Hit by summer droughts, the shot of late season moisture could be just what the soybean crop in Indiana needs to finish strongly. But any positive knock-on effect will of course represent a drop in the ocean as the sheer scale of this disaster – both human and economic - becomes evermore apparent. Over 80 percent of the city of New Orleans remains under water, state infrastructure has been devastated and a thriving food center and transport hub – not to mention a culturally priceless city - has, for the time being, been brought to its knees. http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com