La. yam growers having less than sweet year in 2015

A Thanksgiving staple is having trouble making it to dinner in south Louisiana this season.
A mix of drought and rain has sweet potato farmers struggling through a late harvest.
Farmer Larry Fontenot with E&L Produce said here at the end of the growing season, the beginning and middle part of the crop year was rough.
“In the prime growing season, he lost 45 to 60 days of growth,” Fontenot said. “At the beginning of September, we were estimating about a 350 bushel yield, which is not enough for us to bring in and sustain our farm.”
Fontenot said he and many other sweet potato farmers in south Louisiana, took a gamble, holding off on harvesting most of their crop in hopes of better conditions.
“We went from 120 days of drought, to field saturation in 48 hours,” he said. “We went from a slow-paced harvest, but were advancing, to where in the last two weeks we haven’t harvested anything at all.”
Muddy conditions make harvesting difficult, but they have to get the potatoes out of the field because the drought, followed by a foot of rain, is what Fontenot calls a “recipe for a rotten potato.