Tens of billions in aid for victims of Hurricane Helene should start flowing later this month, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins pledged Wednesday, but delays are already making it hard this year for some farmers to plant crops.
Congress set a deadline of March 21 to hand out the money when it passed a $100 billion disaster relief package on Dec. 21. The late September storm cut a swath from Florida’s Big Bend across eastern Georgia and upstate South Carolina before causing historic flooding in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee.
The National Centers for Environmental Information says Helene is the seventh-most expensive disaster in the United States since 1980, causing an estimated $78 billion in damage and 219 deaths…