Central American farmers are scrambling to save damaged crops for the longer term and focusing on new farming regions and methods.
From corn and bean farmers, whose small plots feed their countries, to banana, coffee and sugar-cane plantations whose exports will pay off loans needed to rebuild roads and bridges, Central Americans are plotting recovery.
Experts are lavishing attention on long-neglected areas that now offer hope for warding off hunger, and using the impulse provided by the emergency to address festering problems.
"This is the moment to take advantage of an opportunity to do things better, to use improved seeds, soil conservation techniques and to introduce new crops," said Mr Robert Rivera, projects director at Interamerican Agriculture Co-operation Institute. "It's not just confronting the emergency, but using the emergency as a basis for programmes that can sustain themselves in the future."
The feasibility of key parts of Nicaragua's programme will depend on $8 million to $10 million in funding that the country requested on Monday from international aid agencies.
Also at stake for farmers is their countrymen's faith in better farming as a way out of Central America's gruelling poverty. The devastation of the storm has shown how precarious farming can be and thus has revived a debate over whether to bet the future on modernising agriculture, as Nicaragua and Honduras largely have.
The near-total destruction of the Honduran banana crop has resulted in 12,000 layoffs as companies decide what to do next. But economists insist that these countries must stick to what they do best: harvesting the tropical soils that give them two or even three crops a year.
Since taking office in 1997, President Arnoldo Aleman has focused his development plan on reviving agriculture in Nicaragua, which until two decades ago was the ranching and farming envy of Central America.
Mr Aleman's supporters fear that those who believe that the country should industrialise instead will find their argument strengthened if farmers cannot recover fast enough.
The most immediate concern is to salvage as much of the harvest as possible. But farmers and their advisers know they must soon begin to cope with the issues of replanting plantations and relocating farmers whose fields were left unproductive by mudslides.
That requires careful planning which must, nevertheless, be done quickly.
"Our first priority is to save as much as we can of this harvest," said Ms Mary Jeanne Salinas, president of the Managua Coffee Association in Nicaragua.
Coffee is the most important source of export revenue in Nicaragua, accounting for 16 per cent of its $703 million in exports last year. She estimated that 30 per cent to 40 per cent of the harvest was destroyed.
To get what is left to market, the Agriculture and Public Works ministries have designated 1,000 miles of washed-out roads as the top priority for reconstruction, said Mr Carlos Arce, economic adviser to the Nicaraguan Agriculture Ministry.
As bad as they look now, sugar cane fields, like those at the San Antonio plantation in Chichigalpa - covered by a mudslide and battered by rain - will largely recover on their own.
However, no matter how hard they try, farm experts recognise that this harvest is not going to be good. Conservative estimates are that Nicaragua has lost 30 per cent of grains for local consumption and 12 per cent of export crops. In Honduras, 70 per cent of agriculture was wiped out, including the 50,000 acres of bananas that were nearly all destroyed.