Smashed potato crops

By Melissa Meehan
IONA’S potato farmers are counting the cost of the floods as the majority of the water recedes from their properties.
Bernard Dillon said the floods had devastated his potatoes.
“Most spuds are a write-off,” Mr Dillon said. “Some might be OK, they are still so wet it’s hard to tell.”
He said potatoes left in water for more than 24 hours were normally “buggered” but he would have to inspect the damage for himself.
“We have a lot of acreage covered by potatoes, maybe 300 acres plus,” he said.
“I’d say 100 acres has been lost – that’ll blow half a million dollars for the budget.”
Mr Dillon also has 170 cows on his property, but they were unaffected by the floods.
“They’re all alive and fared pretty well,” he said.
“Our house is OK, too. We never lost power – we were very lucky.”
He said Iona received 170 millimetres of rain and Garfield recorded 180mm on Friday night.
“We’ll have to wait and see until the water goes, but every farm in the area was affected in some way,” he said.
“I think we were some of the lucky ones.”