ALMA, Ark. — The Smokehouse Creek fire in Texas was the largest in the state’s history, burning just over one million acres.
Although it is now 100% contained, according to the Texas A&M Forest Service, many farmers lost their land and their cattle. The Farmers who do have surviving livestock are now facing feed shortages.
A farm in Alma has partnered with Denali, a Russellville company specializing in full-service recycling organics, to help donate bales of hay to those affected.
"Seeing everybody losing their farms and stuff burning up, we had a bunch of grass and a lot of folks have donated as well so we wanted to help out,” James Marion, a farmer in Alma, said.
34 bales of hay were loaded on a truck Tuesday morning and will be headed to the Texas panhandle.
The truck will deliver the bales of hay to a Texas A&M livestock supply point, and be distributed thereafter to cattle producers in need.
"Farming is a risky business, sometimes disasters like this happen,” Sam Liebl, director of communications for Denali, said. “One of the ways that we can help pull farmers out of these kinds of situations is by being generous and moving resources from one part of the country to the other."
According to Denali and Marion, the donations were made possible by Missouri and Arkansas farmers who used Denali’s organic fertilizer that yielded a surplus in hay.
Denali has also purchased additional hay to bolster the donation to the farmers.
“We are deeply involved in agricultural communities across the country,” Liebl said. “We know the importance of forage to these ranchers. We're very involved with cattle operations here and in Texas, so this seemed like a great way for us to leverage our network of producers.”
According to Denali, 700 bales of hay are expected to be delivered, feeding hundreds of cattle for weeks.
Watch 5NEWS on YouTube.
Download the 5NEWS app on your smartphone:
Stream 5NEWS 24/7 on the 5+ app: How to watch the 5+ app on your streaming device
To report a typo or grammatical error, please email KFSMDigitalTeam@tegna.com and detail which story you're referring to.