Mid-South Growers Deal with Flood Damages

Located just 45 miles north of I-10 in rural Louisiana, in a town just off the western banks of the Mississippi River, George LaCour’s farm has seen just about every type of weather-related setback this season.

 

The Batchelor, LA, grower intended to plant over 3,000 acres of corn, soybeans and cotton in 2011, just as prices were making each crop attractive. But on a day in early June when LaCour should have been tending to a young crop, he instead was forced to sit idly by, as thousands of his acres lay under water and thousands more remained bone dry.

 

“We’re just sitting here sitting on our hands, because we can’t even plant our fields that aren’t under water. We’ve had a drought down here. We haven’t had a rain in a couple of months,” says LaCour, who now finds himself wishing for rain to fall while simultaneously wanting the flood waters to recede.

As extraordinary as LaCour’s plight is, countless other producers share in his dilemma up and down the Mississippi River, in the Mid-South’s most concentrated cotton producing region. Heavy April storms in the upper Mid-South and throughout the Mississippi River’s drainage network helped create a volume of water in the Mississippi River basin that set flood-stage records in Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana.

 

For LaCour and other farmers in his region of Louisiana, severe natural flooding began in late April.

 

“I went home on Good Friday and everything was fine. I came back on Monday morning and everything had gone to hell. One day falls into the next after that,” says LaCour. He eventually lost 1,000 acres to the flood, and that was before the Army Corps of Engineers opened the Morganza Spillway on May 14, effectively flooding thousands more of his acres for the remainder of the summer. LaCour says the decision to open the spillway was necessary to save his home.

 

“By the time the water got to us, it wasn’t going to be just another ‘high water’. It was going to be the highest water on record. So by that time, we were already thinking about trying to save our homes. So there wasn’t any conflict or controversy over opening the spillway because we know that’s the way the system works,” he says.

 

But 500 miles upstream, in New Madrid, MO, a different set of circumstances surrounded the opening of another floodway. As the Corps of Engineers prepared to blow the Birds Point Levee in early May, Missouri legislators stepped in on behalf of the growers who would be impacted by flooding approximately 130,000 acres of farmland located in the floodway. 

 

Despite strong opposition from U.S. Representative Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO) and U.S. Senator Roy Blunt (R-MO), among others, the Corps of Engineers ultimately blew the levee on May 2, leaving many Missouri cotton acres underwater.

 

“Our actual shop is dry, but we have 800 acres that are in the floodway right now, up under water. I would say 500 of that would have been cotton,” says Chris Wescoat, who farms with his father near New Madrid, MO.

 

Like LaCour, Wescoat is resigned to the fact that he won’t be able to plant anything on much of his acreage this year.

 

“The problem with getting a crop in is this – when will it get dry? Our season is short here. Not incredibly short, but it’s shorter than most. The chances for an early frost for us are a lot higher than for most people. Even our bean crops, it’s going to be so late when this ground gets ready, if it gets ready at all,” says Wescoat.

 

Mid-South growers outside of the floodways haven’t been immune to the flooding this season. Oftentimes, the river finds its way around – or under – the strongest levee systems.

 

Such is the case for Justin Cariker, a producer in Tunica, MS. As the Mississippi River swelled on the other side of the levee from Cariker’s operation, it began to push its own pathway underground. This seep water eventually breached the surface on Cariker’s farm, turning 200 acres of would-be cotton into a soupy mixture of soil and river water. Known as a sand boil, this seep water flooding was a common occurrence along the Mississippi River during April and May.

 

“The way the seep water works in our area, you’ll have a part of the field that looks dry, and you go out there and find out that it’s like soup. And that’s what we had out there, the whole field looked like you had a perfect flood on it, like you’d furrow irrigated it,” says Cariker.

 

Unfortunately, the flooding was only one of Cariker’s weather-related problems this season. Damaging winds in late April destroyed three irrigation pivots on his farm. Cariker says evidence points to an overnight tornado as the cause of damage on at least one of the pivots. 

 

Like much of the Mid-South, extremely dry conditions hounded production in Tunica County as well, and created a problem familiar to most growers in the Southwest: sand damage.

 

“The sand damage in Tunica County has been the biggest financial hardship for us. We’ve had to replant 1,100 acres of cotton from the sand damage. Of course, I need my pivots to be running to get a good stand of cotton after the replant, but they’re torn up.

 

“Like I said, it’s just been one bear after another here,” Cariker says.

 

Though it may take most of the summer, floodwaters will eventually begin to recede along the Mississippi River and its tributaries. Mid-South producers realize they will hardly be out of the woods at that point. The trouble with the floodwaters, says LaCour, is that there is no way to be sure what they have dropped onto your farm ground.

 

“Our biggest concern is worrying about what type of resistant weed came down river and into the soil,” says LaCour. While thousands of agricultural acres upstream of Morganza are infested with herbicide-resistant weed pests, the spillway area has not dealt with the problem before. 

 

LaCour says the debris left by the opening of the spillway will also pose another challenge. Large limbs, tree trunks, and assorted other items that have drifted into the spillway will need to be removed from fields before any type of production can begin.

 

In the New Madrid floodway, Wescoat also wonders what sorts of items and substances have been deposited onto his farm ground during the flooding.

 

“There are diesel tanks everywhere, so that could be a concern. Fuel and oil that was in these farm shops that were flooded out, that would be my main concern as far as hurting the soil,” Wescoat says. “I talked to a farmer and he had maybe 6,000 gallons of oil on-site in his shop and couldn’t get them out in time because the flooding happened so quickly. He chained them down thinking that they would stay, but he said that they’re gone. I’ve had buddies who have been out in the boat and they say that there are diesel tanks floating everywhere.”

 

Wescoat says many in his community worry that the blasts have effectively lowered the height of the levee system near New Madrid for the foreseeable future. He estimates the breech created by the explosions in the levee has lowered the flood stage in the area to 32 feet – a height that the river often reaches in the spring.

 

“We plant our cotton in May and April. Well when do floods come? May and April. It gets to 32 feet quite a bit during that time. When it gets to that stage, I’m pretty sure water will start coming back into the floodway through the breach if the levee doesn’t get repaired before next year,” Wescoat says.

 

Growers affected by the 2011 weather woes in the Mid-South share an added sense of loss in light of the booming cotton market. Wescoat says it is a frustrating feeling to have unused acreage in June, while cotton prices continue to hover above $1 a pound.

 

“Prices are near $1.20 and we can’t grow it,” he says. “It’s tough.”