By Tom Polansek

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Hurricane Helene shut down at least two poultry plants in Georgia and North Carolina and destroyed cotton crops in South Carolina, impacting U.S. food and fiber production, business and agriculture officials said on Monday.

More than 100 deaths in a half-dozen states have been attributed to the powerful storm that hit Florida’s Big Bend region late Thursday and then cut a destructive path through Georgia and into the Carolinas.

Wayne-Sanderson Farms, the nation’s third-largest poultry producer, has closed a processing plant in Moultrie, Georgia, due to a power outage caused by downed transmission lines, company spokesman Frank Singleton said.

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

In South Carolina, many poultry operations run on backup generators, said Eva Moore, spokeswoman for the South Carolina Department of Agriculture. The state’s cotton crop has suffered a major hit, she added.

“Open seed pods were thrown around and plants were twisted,” Moore said. “This will lead to a complicated harvest and potentially impact the quality of the cotton.”

Concerns about possible 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 had not suffered any significant disruptions.

A chicken plant near Morganton, North Carolina, has shut down, said Bob Ford, executive director of the North Carolina Poultry Federation. Still, the poultry industry in general has been lucky, with feed mills operating and flooding largely not affecting farms, he said.

For live chickens in the Morganton area, “they’re just going to get fatter” until the processing plant reopens, possibly Wednesday, Ford said.

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