Weather-related farm losses could hit $500 million

Editor’s note: Roby Brock, with our content partner Talk Business, wrote this report. He can be reached at [email protected]

An agriculture economist with the Arkansas Farm Bureau predicted today that recent flooding may cost Arkansas farmers more than $500 million in crop damage.

Farm Bureau officials said that there are more than 1 million acres of Arkansas cropland underwater from the storms and flooding that occurred in April. Sixty-three of the state’s 75 counties have been declared disaster areas by Gov. Mike Beebe.

“We are seeing flood levels never seen before,” said Farm Bureau President Randy Veach, a cotton, rice and soybean farmer from Manila in Mississippi County. “The effect to our state’s commodity crops is staggering, and the entire impact can’t be adequately determined for several months.”

Veach noted the Farm Bureau’s estimate does not include costs to repair infrastructure, farm equipment, loss of grain in storage bins, and repairs to farmland, which could reach well into the tens of millions of dollars.

According to Farm Bureau statistics, agriculture accounts for nearly $16 billion in commerce to the Arkansas economy.

“We aren’t likely to see significant activity in these flooded areas until June 1, at the earliest,” said Warren Carter, director of commodity and regulatory affairs for Arkansas Farm Bureau. “There is an awful lot of water that still has to move through our river systems, and significant drying will have to occur before our farmers can begin the difficult work of reworking their ground."

Carter expects the loss in rice acreage to near 300,000 acres, resulting in a loss of $300 million in rice production. Arkansas is the largest rice-producing state in the nation accounting for about half of the nation’s rice crop.

“Forty percent of the national rice crop likely won’t be planted this year,” Carter said, citing flooding issues in the bootheel area of Missouri and Louisiana, two other sizable rice-producing areas.

Carter also noted the impact to the winter wheat crop that is nearing harvest. Arkansas farmers had planted roughly 550,000 acres this year and the Farm Bureau estimates that 120,000 acres of that wheat will be abandoned due to the flooding, resulting in a loss of $40 million that won’t be replaced by other crops.

Other significant losses are forecast for cotton, with reduced yield losses projected at $66 million; plus another $35 million in added costs to get this year’s cotton crop in the ground, including fertilizer, fuel, herbicides, etc. Additionally, a loss of roughly $37 million is being projected in forage, hay and fencing. The Farm Bureau estimates roughly 6,000 miles of fencing will require repair or replacement.

“I know the resiliency of Arkansas farmers,” said Veach. “They are unnaturally optimistic. They accept risk that most people would not begin to deal with. And while I expect Arkansas agriculture to overcome this, the effects of this disaster will be felt for years to come.”