Farmers find ill wind blows no man to good.

• Position: North Carolina agriculture

Twice in three peak growing months, Bobby Ham and other farmers watched hurricanes scour the flat fields of southeastern North Carolina, tattering tobacco leaves still on the stalk and leaving a trail of damage.

"Wind not only blows cotton down, but it blows it out of the bolls," says Ham, who has 2,000 acres of cotton in Greene County. Even cucumbers, which grow on ground-hugging vines," got beat all to pieces by the wind," and flooded fields ruined much of the state's peanut crop, which brought in cash receipts of $103 million in 1995.

What Bertha and Fran really blew away was a banner farm year. Arnold Oltmans, agricultural economist at N.C. State University, says it would have topped the previous Tar Heel record for cash receipts from crops and livestock - $7 billion in 1995.

As winter approached and farmers and crop insurers continued counting losses, damage was estimated at $700 million from Fran and $200 million from Bertha, according to Jim Knight, public-affairs director of the N.C. Department of Agriculture.

But the saving graces for the industry were strong prices, generally good harvests before the hurricanes and increasingly sophisticated farming. Ham, for one, farms 5,500 acres. Besides cotton, he has 700 acres of tobacco and 1,400 acres of vegetables, plus 1,400 acres in other crops such as soybeans.

Those factors helped offset storm damage to the extent that receipts are still expected to come close to matching 1995's and should exceed the $6.4 billion of 1994.

"From a price standpoint, it was an excellent year, if you had any crops left to sell," Knight says. "We had the prettiest tobacco crop in many years all across the state. Particularly with vegetables, we had a favorable spring and were going into a situation where we hadn't had weather-related damages to that point, which is unusual. Prices were up on corn and soybeans and were trending up on tobacco."

Also helping offset crop losses was the performance of North Carolina hogs, broilers and turkeys. Hog receipts were expected to exceed $1.3 billion as the state closes on Iowa as the nation's top pork producer, Knight says. The number of hogs in the state, 9.3 million, was up 15% from a year ago. Broiler receipts, $1.2 billion in 1995, were expected to be flat. But North Carolina strengthened its position as the largest turkey producer, sending 61 million birds to market for about $600 million, up 3%.

But margins, particularly independent producers', were under...