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NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Hurricane Rita is threatening cattle ranches and rice and cotton fields in east Texas.
"We've encouraged ranchers along the Gulf Coast to move their livestock to safer places, preferably to higher ground," said Beverly Boyd, deputy assistant commissioner with the Texas Department of Agriculture.
According to the TDA, Texas is a leading producer of beef and ranks first in the nation in total number of cattle and calves with 14 percent of the total U.S. inventory.
Besides livestock, Texas is also the second-largest agricultural state after California, accounting for about 7 percent of total U.S. agricultural income.
The fact that the bulk of the state's livestock ranches are located away from the coastal areas and in the Texas Panhandle cushions the storm's blow to beef producers, Boyd said.
Nevertheless, the eastern Texas counties still contribute about 10 percent of the nation's total beef production, said Trent Wickwire, agricultural statistician with the Department of Agriculture.
Dan Vaught, livestock analyst with A.G. Edwards, pointed out that Hurricane Katrina sparked volatility in cattle futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
He expects a similar reaction after Rita runs its course.
"There's some anxiety because of the uncertainty about Rita," Vaught said.
Because a lot of these animals on the cow and calf operations in east Texas are one to two steps removed from actual beef production, Vaught thinks producers could escape with only short-term disruptions to operations.
The longer-term worry centers around gas prices spiking again if Rita takes out more refineries in the Gulf Coast.
"People pull back on consumption across the board and they buy fewer expensive grocery items like red meat when they're consistently paying more for gas," Vaught said.
Fields of rain?
Like the cattle ranches, Texas' cotton farms are split between the Panhandle area and the east coast.
"Harvesting is going on right now for cotton crops but I can't really say how much of that will be rushed because of the storm," Boyd said.
She added that rice farmers may have dodged the bullet because more than 95 percent of the crop has already been harvested
Or maybe not, said Wickwire.
If the first crop helps pay for the expenses, it's the second crop that helps farmers make a living by churning out that extra profit.
"A lot of rice farms get two crops a year on the same farm," he said, "They've harvested the first crop already but farmers could lose the second crop if the storm causes extensive flooding."
No doubt, the Gulf Coast shrimp industry could really use a time-out after taking a direct hit in Louisiana.
The Gulf Coast provides about 80 percent of the shrimp for domestic consumption, and a third of that comes from Texas' shrimp industry, which includes both wild shrimp harvested from the Gulf of Mexico and tank-raised shrimp from farms located in western Texas.
"We haven't yet determined whether the farm shrimp production will help offset production lost in the Gulf," Boyd said.
Global Insight's U.S. economist Brian Bethune said he's hoping Rita follows a similar pattern to Katrina where the storm lost some of power once it reached the mainland.
"The risk to crops and farms won't be as significant if it loses force," Bethune said. "When you look at the lessons from Katrina, the eventual damage to agriculture was less than feared. The department of agriculture actually revised up its estimates of production in the state after Katrina passed."
At the same time, he's not debating the impact on the offshore fishing industry.
Said Bethune, "The only consolation to farmers is that the price of seafood will go up further. So when production gets back on track, fish and shrimp producers can use the profits to recover their lost costs."
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