Helene shuts poultry plants, twists cotton crops in southeastern US

By Tom Polansek

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Hurricane Helene shut at least two poultry plants in Georgia and North Carolina and twisted cotton crops in South Carolina in blows to U.S. food and fiber production, company and agriculture officials said on Monday.

More than 100 deaths across a half-dozen states have been attributed to the powerful storm that slammed into Florida's Big Bend region late on Thursday before cutting a destructive path through Georgia and into the Carolinas.

Wayne-Sanderson Farms, the nation's third largest poultry producer, closed a Moultrie, Georgia, processing plant due to a loss of electrical power from downed transmission lines, company spokesman Frank Singleton said.

The complex processes 1.3 million chickens weekly and its timeline for resuming operations depends on Georgia Power crews restoring power, Singleton said. The company is providing fuel deliveries to local farms that also lost power, he said.

In South Carolina, many poultry operations are running on backup generators, said Eva Moore, spokesperson for the South Carolina Department of Agriculture. The state's cotton crops took a big hit, she added.

"Open bolls have been knocked around, and plants are twisted," Moore said. "This will make for a complicated harvest and may affect the grades of the cotton."

Concerns over potential crop damage in key growing areas boosted ICE cotton futures.

In North Carolina, Smithfield Foods, the world's largest pork processor, said transportation for its hog production operations was strained but the company did not suffer material disruptions.

A chicken plant near Morganton, North Carolina, is down, said Bob Ford, executive director of the North Carolina Poultry Federation. Still, the poultry industry was generally lucky because feed mills are operating and floods largely did not affect farms, he said.

For live chickens around Morganton, "they're just going to get fatter" until the processing plant reopens, possibly on Wednesday, Ford said.

(Reporting by Tom Polansek in Chicago; Editing by Bill Berkrot)