A SMT News Report

The total sum of flood damage to this year’s crops could easily eclipse the destruction caused by the record-setting flood in 1993, according to the Missouri Farm Bureau.

Farm Bureau President Blake Hurst said this has been a year like none other for flooding in Missouri. The spring flooding caused by the destruction of the Birds Point levee in Southeast Missouri inundated roughly 570,000 acres of quality farmland causing $85 million in total loses.

Current flooding along the Missouri River is taking place too late in the season for farmers to replant, which will lead to millions of dollars in lost agricultural commodities.

“What’s happened this time is we basically had two events. We’ve had the early season flooding in southeast Missouri,” Hurst said. “It’s the first time since the 1930s that the Birds Point floodway was opened. Then, a month later, we’re facing a ’93-like situation in northeast Missouri, so it’s been a double dip for the state of Missouri and the Midwest.”

Continued flooding along the Missouri River has caused significant damage to crop prices throughout the Midwest.