2011 Mississippi River Flood

in late April and early May heavy rains in the Mississippi River watershed pushed the river to record Heights flooding hundreds of thousands of acres and ruining the chances for a successful crop year for many farmers across Mississippi with winter wheat not quite ready to harvest and with corn and soybeans already in the ground many farmers faced a disaster not only will they lose the crop but they have contracts booked on crops that won't be harvested I think everybody was really excited with the high commodity prices the problem is a lot of people went out and looked ten eleven dollar soybeans now they're thirteen fourteen dollars and the elevators are going to want their money if they don't deliver the crop so you know you booked twenty thousand bushels soybeans at ten dollars and set 14 offs in Euro and eighty thousand dollars on top of not making a crop as the river was rising Miller who farms in Sharkey County felt helpless well right now we're all kind of waiting we're watching the river it's supposed to top the backwater levees at fifty six point two feet and come over the backboard levee which it was designed to do the Corps said that it would not break it a hold they've had levees do that before so we're waiting to see if that's going to happen they're talking about this area here have ninety five foot of water on it which would put us in about four foot of water where we're standing today and it will affect most every farm that's not on Deer Creek in this area while Miller said that some but not all of his land will flood the same cannot be said for Doug Jeter Jeter farms about five hundred acres of soybeans wheat and corn in Warren County the river took his farm early all of it everything's under water lost all my wheat lost my beans and they won't be anything left I guess you can see on the west side of 61 but for anybody that's forming in this area I call the core yesterday checking to see about further down the line about replanting Eva even if we're going to get to plant and at this time they still don't know out to June 2 xx I think they had to River like it forty six point seven feet and at that stage I'm still all underwater at June of 20th and that's getting beyond your planting date then so right now we don't when I share if we don't even be able to plant this year at the same time Jeter is mourning that just planted crops in his field some farmers were trying to save crops that they'd had in the field since last fall Amelia Don and his family farm in Adams County near Natchez their red winter wheat crop was nearly ready for harvest well we're basically trying to do mr. Greg is cut the wheat before the water gets on but we're trying to give it as long as we can in the field to dry down before we cut it so we just couldn't what the water is going to take every day it's not completely dry down in the field we're running about 20 percent moisture and we haven't run it through a grain dryer so how much how much basically how much does it take in a day how much you have our artists today around fifty or sixty acres on this one place we've got two more combines in two separate places doing the same thing we are that wheats a little bit more wet than ours than this place down here we've been cutting down here since Thursday last Thursday gheh Don says his plans for this year are still up in the air well we're going to see how long the river comes only how long it stays up and when it starts falling back our fear right now is it's such a big river Ness a little later than most rivers no stone we get rested in April big rivers but we're not sure we're going to be able to plant everything behind it you know in the fall I mean to cook to plant in time to cut it what's your cutoff date well it depends on how much we get planted before - before we set our cutoff date we've planted beans last year I planted some beans behind a river in the middle of July and I don't we don't I don't like to plan on much later than that my grandfather locals we planted they planted them in August before but usually our yield drop significantly with beans planted August the river crested in mid May but that was not the end of the problems for agriculture the water started it's slow descent but didn't get below flood stage in most areas until mid-june Rob Coker from Yazoo County would be what most people would consider a large-scale farmer well I've expanded this year when my neighbor retired and I'm farming 7,500 acres this year or trying to plant it 4,300 acres of corn and I had 750 acres of wheat and was going to plant the remainder in soybeans we stopped planting as the floodwater started coming up and started getting our center pivots our engines our wellheads electric panels and protecting equipment took us about a week to do that as we waited for the floodwaters then we sat around and said is it coming and it did we've lost anywhere between 2,500 and 3,000 acres of corn I estimate I had a total of probably 4,500 acres under water at the peak at the crest Coker is asking himself the same question as many other farmers what do we do now if I have to do tillage I may wait put soybeans in there and that that's going to be decisions as we go field by field case by case our plans are to plant our irrigated land first we're fearful that we're not going to get all replanted into a crop so we're going to focus on our irrigated land where we have the higher yield potential and protection from the heat in the drought and then we'll move into two more you know the dry land areas my goal is to break even I hope my banker and tell people my goal is to break even if I can make a little money I would just be overjoyed but if I could break even I think we would have a very successful year and so that's our goal Matt Edgar farms next door to Coker in Yazoo County but he lost 75 percent of his crops right now what we ended up getting flooded completely was about sixteen hundred and fifty acres that consisted of about 650 acres of wheat about 500 acres of corn and the balance and being somewhere between 4 and 500 acres the wheat was with in about two weeks of being ready to harvest the corn we had almost finished everything on it with the exception of a little fertilizer and the soybeans were up and growing about a month old we saved about five hundred acres of corn and 150 acres of wheat Saul he saved these farmers are in need of some help to keep their operations in business fortunately the companies that provide their seed have stepped up to the plate one of them is given 60% replant one of you and 75 percent replant so that's going to help us on some of the cost of the seed and you know we're hoping for a good bean crop and good prices and if the Lord's will and everything works well we will be able to cash flow while row crop farmers have been the focus of most of the damage other areas of Agriculture were affected also Mississippi leads the nation and farm raised catfish production and for a while it looked like many of the catfish ponds in the Delta were going to be flooded and the fish were going to just swim away but that industry seemed to dodged the bullet we only had a small number of acres in extreme south eastern part of the Delta that was impacted of several of those farms down that area were luckily protected by interior levees so they were spared it did disrupt some processing and some production as well but I think we were very very lucky if any of those interior levees had given a you know the worst case scenario would have been that we'd had water all the way up to highway 12 and belzoni many people incorrectly assume that farmers are insured for all losses or will get disaster payments to bail them out Doug Jeter filed for disaster payments in 2008 and 2009 and he just recently received the Oh eight payment I got it in October of last year two and a half years later I got it 408 and I still hadn't got it 409 so just call the declared disaster don't mean don't think you're going to have relief cuz it's not that much anyway compared to what you you know you're losing the you know the joke on disaster payments are usually if you survive the disaster and get to the payments you've made it anyway you're talking will take so long and they're usually not very good payments you know a couple years ago they gave $17 an acre on soybeans it takes a lot more than $17 making to grow soybeans officials say that flooding in Mississippi has caused between a quarter and a half billion dollars in damages to agriculture from the loss of an almost ready wheat crop to the loss of crops already planted to the loss of seed that was already in the grain bins the full effects of the flood of 2011 may not be known for a long long time

Channel: Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation

Views: 77,758

Rating: 4.5980864 out of 5

Keywords: 2011, Mississippi, River, Flood

Id: BZ73Z-d6svw

Length: 9min 46sec (586 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 13 2012