Farming was once a Vegas gamble with highs and lows for Gary Kempker, but growing crops is now a fixed game, he says, rigged by government and big business. Annually, Kempker watches Missouri’s Osage River sequester his acreage, eat his farmland soil, and take profit from his pocket.
Kempker loses approximately $40,000 per year because he cannot consistently access island farmland due to the high flow of the Osage. Multiple farmers in the river basin insist the government, at both the federal and state level, has turned a blind eye to their predicament, in favor of a business heavyweight, Ameren Missouri, the largest electric power provider in the Show-Me State with 2021 earnings of $518 million. Nationally, Ameren’s 2021 revenue totaled $6.394 billion.
“When it gets down to any conflict involving big money and power, who does the bureaucracy support? If you think the answer is farmers or regular landowners, then you don’t know anything about government,” Kempker says.
In addition to farmland access issues, Kempker battles severe and sustained erosion of his bankside ground. He attributes the erosion to Osage River mismanagement by Ameren Missouri, compounded by conditions imposed by Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC), Missouri Department of Natural Resources (MDNR), and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services (FWS).
After $273,000 in crop losses across nine years, he has drawn a line in the sand: Compensation is due. Referring to his monetary and soil losses as a “bureaucratic disaster,” Kempker is at wit’s end, and places blame and financial accountability on federal and state agencies.
“MDC, MDNR, FWS, and the Federal Energy and Regulatory Commission (FERC) sit back and watch as Ameren is in constant breach of its license to operate,” he explains. “They pass the buck, suck up tax dollars, issue new studies that have gone on since 1925, and ultimately do nothing. All the agencies and FERC are in breach of the license agreement because they all signed and agreed to the terms.”
Kempker fears he and other farmers along the Osage are pawns in a political game of whose-ox-is-gored: “We’ve been fighting so long for what’s right. No matter what happens, we want people to know who the government is willing to sacrifice.”
Minefield
For over a century, the Kempker family has grown row crops along the Osage in central Missouri’s Miller County, including 1.5 miles of river frontage that has collapsed inward 75’ across the entire stretch over the past 80 years. From the windows of a hilltop house, surrounded by 600 acres of corn, soybeans, occasional wheat, pasture, and hay ground, Gary and Elaine Kempker see the rise and fall of the river’s flow. Their son, Joe, and daughter-in-law, Rachel, have taken over fieldwork on the operation.
North of the Kempkers, 30 miles as the crow flies, Bagnell Dam bottles the Osage and holds back a 54,000-acre bathtub—Lake of the Ozarks. Bagnell Dam, owned and operated by Ameren Missouri, determines the lake’s drainage via the lower Osage River outlet.
The lower Osage contains 21 islands, including two owned by Kempker. “This is really good farm ground,” he says. “Even at low yield, soybeans are always above 50 bushels per acre and there are spots on the islands that go over 100 bushels. Some years we completely lose production depending on if we can get on the islands, and last year we had to plant into dust on June 30 (optimal planting date is April 15 in Kempker’s region), even though we were looking at some of the highest commodity prices of our lives—all because of the operation of a dam.”
His islands cover 16 acres and 52.5 acres (68.5 total). However, “island” is a misnomer: At low water, the small land masses are connected to the mainland via gravel bars and roads owned by Kempker, and his family has farmed the islands for decades, slipping on and off according to the caprices of Mother Nature. Those days of relative ease are over.
The islands often are inaccessible due to the Osage’s flow. Simply, Kempker cannot get agriculture machinery onto the island ground because the surrounding water level is too high. Boiled down, the Osage’s flow, controlled via the push of a button by Ameren Missouri at Bagnell Dam, is determined by rain events, lake levels, hydroelectric demand, erosion factors, and environmental concerns. Agricultural considerations, Kempker says, are at the absolute bottom of the priority list.
Cooks in the Kitchen
In technical parlance, Kempker, 77, requires a “deviation in flow” to access his islands, i.e., Kempker needs Ameren Missouri to turn down the tap when he wants to farm the island ground.
The “deviation in flow” request moves along an agency daisy chain. First, Kempker sends a “deviation in flow” request to Ameren Missouri. Second, Ameren Missouri forwards the request to the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC), Missouri Department of Natural Resources (MDNR), and US Fish and Wildlife Services (FWS) for approval. Third, the agencies vote. Fourth, the agencies respond to Ameren—yea if the vote is unanimously affirmative, and nay if the vote contains a single holdout. Fifth, Ameren contacts the farmer with a green or red light regarding the original request.
The process, mildly stated, is a game of telephone.
“You can’t even make up how crazy the scenario is,” Kempker says. “Right off the bat, it’s a complete bureaucratic minefield.”
There are too many cooks in the kitchen, along with inordinate political pressure, he asserts.
“On our mile and half, and all up and down the river, we are losing land. Miller County has lost 700 acres along the river. Who sincerely believes MDC or DNR is going to go against Ameren? We’re talking about Ameren-owned Lake of the Ozarks. It’s a commercial enterprise surrounded by $10 million homes. Imagine the pressure on politicians to make sure nothing upsets the status quo on the lake or big business.”
Farming Fantasy
On any agriculture operation, farming is timing. Poor timing; poor crop. Planting, fertilizing, spraying and a host of other necessary agronomic tasks are subject to seasonal slim windows of opportunity, and when those windows are further tightened by human action or bureaucratic diktat—particularly on hard-to-access river islands—the possibility of sustained farming success bottoms out.
In Kempker’s case, he must have island farm access for each link in the timing chain. One break and the crop is lost, i.e., if he plants in April, but can’t access the island again until late summer, the weeds will grow as tall as a tractor. Adios to the crop. Period. Full-stop.
In 2005, to renew a FERC operating license for Bagnell, Ameren Missouri signed a settlement agreement with FWS, National Park Service (NPS), MDC, and MDNR. Kempker insists the agencies have failed to uphold the terms of the license. He points to Section 10-C of the Federal Power Act: Each licensee hereunder shall be liable for all damages occasioned to the property of others by the construction, maintenance, or operation of the project works or of the works appurtenant or accessory thereto, constructed under the license, and in no event shall the United States be liable therefor.
“All these agencies are responsible for compensation for the use of our property,” Kempker says. “The use of our land could be considered a taking. Every time Ameren generates electricity, water covers and often damages our roads and erodes our property. We want compensation for the use and damage to our property. Compensation should be paid by Ameren and the other agencies that agreed to and signed the license.”
Ameren Missouri operates on a federal FERC license issued in 2007. The text of the license in article 3.3.6 addresses “island farming,” but arguably sets up all sides for future failure—Ameren Missouri and farmers—by setting agriculture parameters that shine on paper, but are complicated in practice.
3.3.6: Accommodation of Island Farming. The Licensee may deviate from the Prescribed Minimum Flow for brief periods as necessary to accommodate access to islands in the Lower Osage River for the purpose of farming including ground preparation, planting, cultivation, spraying, and harvesting crops. Any such deviation shall be based upon agreement with the MDNR, MDC, FWS, and the impacted property owners. Property owners will be required to coordinate together and provide specific times for needed access. This consultation shall provide the basis for a report as to duration of the deviation, taking into consideration the hydrologic and other relevant circumstances of the given year…
In the vernacular, the license requires farmers to create a symphony from farming chaos: coordinate together and provide specific times for needed access.
Or, as Kempker bluntly espouses, the FERC license requires farmers to “herd cats.”
(FERC declined all Farm Journal interview requests regarding Ameren Missouri’s Bagnell Dam license.)
“Think about what the agencies demand,” Kempker notes. “We need a permit to get on our own property and we must coordinate with other farmers in three counties. That is pure arrogance from the agencies to hit us with something they know can’t be done.”
In 2012, Edward Brown, a University of Missouri agronomist stationed in Miller County, addressed article 3.3.6 in a letter to Ameren Missouri. Brown’s assessment was point-blank: “…it would be impossible for even two growers to coordinate and satisfy these criteria….When you multiply numerous growers, multiple crops, multiple cropping systems, rainfall and soil temperature variation, multiple varieties and hybrids, the number of combinations is almost endless. Consequently it would be impossible for property owners to coordinate together and provide specific times for needed access.” (emphasis added)
Dan Engemann, director of regulatory affairs for Missouri Farm Bureau (MOFB), says the farmer coordination requirements stipulated by the FERC license are “ludicrous.”
“At present, these farmers flat-out do not have access to their own ground as needed, and when they do get access, they have to perform a logistical dance. Keep in mind, we are talking about highly productive ground that has been in families for generations and will remain so.”
“It only works in the mind of a bureaucrat,” Kempker echoes. “The whole thing is a farming fantasy and the license is a joke. They’ve purposely set the bar impossibly high and they know it.”
Cat and Mouse
Ten miles upriver from Kempker and roughly 20 miles downriver from Bagnell Dam, Tim Clark lives on a hillside overlooking the Osage. He once raised hogs and cattle, but traded hats for fulltime carpentry and now rents out his farmland. Berry Island, a 15-acre, egg-shaped nob approximately half-mile long in the Osage, has been in his family since 1921.
Across his career planting crops on Berry Island, Clark experienced wins and losses. No more. The present is blanketed by repeated losses. Berry Island has held crops for every year of Clark’s 65-year life—except for the past three.
“All my life, it’s been a cat-and-mouse game getting on the island, but no longer. Today, every agency gets what they want from the river, and farmers are ignored. Island farmers and riverbank farmers are losing money, year after year, and nobody cares.”
“I believe the government wants to own these islands in the future,” Clark says. “My place is not for sale. I can handle nature and adapt, but I can’t handle people that manipulate nature and hide behind agency rules. Take a look at the rationale behind the Ameren license and then look at the government agencies involved, and you will see unelected bureaucrats with jobs for life making decisions about farming.”
Island Strains
Travis Hart cut his teeth on a cattle operation 5 miles from the Osage River bottoms in Miller County. He lives beside the same land of his raising and maintains 100 head of Angus cows. Hart is also the plant manager at Osage Energy Center—aka Bagnell Dam. However, he is far from a bureaucrat, and speaks about the strain of island farming in a plain, straightforward manner.
“Our FERC license tells us to work with farmers to help them gain access, but we’re talking about a 90-mile stretch of river, and access is not always feasible. Literally, it can be wet in one place and not the other. From a farmer standpoint, they call us and ask for access, and we try, but depending on the weather and nature, there are serious challenges. Some years they just can’t get access and I certainly understand their frustration.”
Bagnell Dam also provides major advantages to farmers, Hart emphasizes. “With all our rain this spring, the Osage would have entered moderate flood stage during planting season. None of that happened, partly due to Bagnell and Truman Dam. Many of the farmers up and down the Osage River bottoms benefitted.”
“It’s never as simple as someone couldn’t get on an island because someone else wouldn’t help. It’s related to competing priorities, whether that is emergency power generation, or more often, Mother Nature. We do the best overall job to benefit the basin as a whole. However, if you’re a guy that can’t get planted, it doesn’t feel that way.”
In contrast with Hart, Kempker believes Ameren Missouri sometimes disallows deviations in water flow primarily due to financial motivation: “We think the reason is they have the opportunity to sell power on the spot market to another power company for a lot of money,” Kempker says.
In Ameren Missouri’s FERC-issued license, Article 5 states: the licensee (Ameren Missouri), within five years from the date of issuance of the license, shall acquire title in fee or the right to use in perpetuity all lands, other than lands of the United States, necessary or appropriate for the construction, maintenance, and operation of the project.
According to Kempker, Ameren and FERC never contacted any Osage-vicinity landowners to obtain easements within the five-year window described in Article 5. “Not one,” he asserts. “They ignore what is in their own license.”
Article 5 places responsibility on the licensee to acquire all land rights necessary for normal project operations, Kempker continues. “Obviously, our land is needed for the operation of the project because they use it every time electricity is generated. Even when electricity is not needed, Ameren must release enough water to accommodate the new minimum flow, a condition insisted upon by MDC, and that prevents access to our land.”
Skin in the Game
A silent thief stalks the Osage, according to Chris Luebbering. Erosion, he says, is carrying away bankside farmland in real time. A row crop farmer across the river and several miles south of Kempker, and president of the Osage River Flood Control Association, Luebbering says his ground is sloughing into the river, including a quarter-mile stretch where 20’ of the bank is gone.
“Maybe I’m one of the lucky ones,” he says. “There are other guys that have lost much more land. Ameren pushes buttons and the river goes up and down, and the banks get torn to hell. Everyone sees it except the government agencies. I know people that have lost 20 acres and more so far—that land is gone and never coming back. Natural problems I can accept as a farmer, but man-made problems I cannot.”
“MDC, DNR, and FWS come up with paper solutions pulled out of a book and issued from a desk, but they are not river people. The banks are caving in everywhere while MDC issues more studies on pink mussels.”
The Osage erosion damage is major, real-time, and undeniable, says MOFB’s Dan Engemann. “I’ve seen the scouring of these banks with my own eyes and it is unreal,” he describes. “There are property owners on the Osage paying taxes on land that has washed away. The farmers are not exaggerating these serious erosion conditions and we can’t continue to turn a blind eye.”
Since 2014, Kempker describes “crazy levels” of erosion on the Osage. “You don’t need a title or degree; you just need to live here to see it. “There is a dam upstream, Bagnell, pushing water downstream in excess of 300,000 hp. You’re telling me you can shove that much water downstream and not erode the land?”
Aaron Jeffries, MDC deputy director, says rapid lowering or raising of water is not tenable on the Osage. A shutdown from 36,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) to 1,500 cfs, for example, leaves banks high and wet—instead of high and dry. “That type of drop in water leads to major erosion and you can see it up and down the river,” he notes. “That’s why the water can only be lowered gradually.”
“It doesn’t take a scientist to recognize that big drops leave the bank exposed for 10’-15’, and that’s a heavy, muddy bank that collapses easily compared to a dry bank. We can’t go back to raising and lowering water at a quick pace. Folks, including farmers, won’t like the end result.”
Ameren’s Hart acknowledges erosion on the Osage, but he believes damage has diminished in recent years, according to periodic Ameren surveys. The causal factors, he posits, are unclear: “If it was your dirt and you lost some of it, you’d feel strongly about it like the farmers do. We test every 10 years, relying upon independent experts who utilize LIDAR from a plane. Their studies, which they put their name behind, show erosion is less now than years back. There is no simple answer to the erosion issue. We recognize there are multiple causes. From my perspective, solutions must be implemented over the whole river system to be effective.”
Clark contends erosion is significantly worse than governmental agencies or Ameren acknowledge. “Bank erosion on the Osage is unbelievable right now,” he says. “Trees are going in with no root systems; banks are cracking open; I’ve got a half-mile of sliding river frontage; and there is unfortunately nothing unique about my situation.”
Down the 80-mile stretch from Bagnell Dam to the Osage’s confluence with the Missouri River, Clark estimates 150 landowners are affected by erosion across three counties (Miller, Cole, and Osage).
“We live here. We farm here. We work here. We see study after study, all funded by taxpayers. We see studies of the studies. We attend meeting after meeting with no change. We see a revolving door of new agency employees with no knowledge of the past, no skin in the game, and no consequence for their actions, good or bad.”
“Make no mistake. The government knows this is happening on our lands and MDC is the ringleader of incompetence,” Clark continues. “Erosion is worse than it’s ever been in my life and I dare any government official to look at my ground and tell me otherwise, because they’ll either be ignorant or lying. Take your pick.”
King Current
In 2012, Kempker began actively tabulating crop losses he attributes to direct government action—or rather, inaction. Repeatedly, he has attempted to garner political attention to landowner claims along the lower Osage, and wrote a letter to Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo) in March 2022, describing the impasse. Members of Hawley’s staff visited Kempker’s farm several months later for an on-site review. (Farm Journal requested an interview with Hawley or Hawley’s staff regarding Kempker’s claims. Hawley’s office declined all interview requests and issued a 10-word response: “Senator Hawley is working to assist landowners along the Osage.”)
Kempker’s base contention remains straightforward: Ameren Missouri is in breach of its federal FERC license, and MDC, MDNR, and FWS are responsible as overseers of the license. Essentially, he insists, the loss of island farming and erosion of soil are costs borne by agriculture producers as collateral damage for the operation of a recreational lake and hydroelectric dam.
(Farm Journal contacted MDNR and FWS with interview requests regarding Ameren’s FERC license and the Osage River; neither agency responded.)
“The FERC license is explicit about island farming and the MDC, DNR, and FWS bureaucrats can’t get away from the facts,” Kempker says. “That’s why they want us to take our losses quietly, shut up, and go away.”
“MDC, DNR, and FWS don’t want people to know how insanely they are run,” Kempker continues. “We’ve gone to 50, 60, or 70 meetings, only to deal with different bureaucrats each time. They have no clue beyond a paper degree and their office walls, but they control our land. Some of them have never seen a river before, much less farmland.”
“No government agency wants to address the actual policies,” Clark adds, “because the devil is in the details. Once you get past the fancy talk and studies, you can see the agencies all are avoiding the basics. MDC is staffed by a revolving door of people that can make a wrong decision and affect my life, but their decisions have zero consequence to their own lives.”
Luebbering’s frustration mirrors the dismay of Kempker and Clark. “I can tolerate a lot of things, but just don’t try to tell me MDC cares about farmers,” Luebbering says. “I’ve lived this; I’ve been to more meetings than I count; I’ve dealt with the arrogance. It’s not that farmers are low on the priority list—we are not on the list at all.”
As always, Hart addresses the controversy with candor and says the issues will remain for the long-haul. “After a rain, especially a heavy one, more water is stored in the Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Lake than the Osage can handle at any one point. To keep the river in its downstream banks, we need to discharge the water over a longer period. A full river often prevents access to the Islands. By preventing the flood, which would affect some landowners, others are prevented from accessing the Islands. It’s a constant balance, a give-and-take, that’s managed to the best of our collective ability.”
“There doesn’t appear to be any near-term solution because of so many variables beyond everyone’s control,” Hart continues. “Do you choose the good of the whole over the good of the one? If you’re the one, that is so rough. But if you’re the one and you have 10 neighbors that could have gotten flooded, then what is the right answer?”
MOFB’s Engemann draws a plain line of demarcation. “This is a denial of private property rights. These farmers should either be compensated or given clear access to their ground.”
Current is king of the river, Kempker concludes. “Anyone can read the federal license and see the sham immediately. Anyone can see the worsening erosion on the river. Anyone can see this is soaked in the politics of big business and the bureaucracy.”
To read more stories from Chris Bennett (cbennett@farmjournal.com 662-592-1106) see:
Young Farmer uses YouTube and Video Games to Buy $1.8M Land
Cottonmouth Farmer: The Insane Tale of a Buck-Wild Scheme to Corner the Snake Venom Market
Tractorcade: How an Epic Convoy and Legendary Farmer Army Shook Washington, D.C.
Bagging the Tomato King: The Insane Hunt for Agriculture’s Wildest Con Man
While America Slept, China Stole the Farm
Bizarre Mystery of Mummified Coon Dog Solved After 40 Years
The Arrowhead whisperer: Stunning Indian Artifact Collection Found on Farmland
Where’s the Beef: Con Artist Turns Texas Cattle Industry Into $100M Playground
Fleecing the Farm: How a Fake Crop Fueled a Bizarre $25 Million Ag Scam
Skeleton In the Walls: Mysterious Arkansas Farmhouse Hides Civil War History
US Farming Loses the King of Combines
Ghost in the House: A Forgotten American Farming Tragedy
Rat Hunting with the Dogs of War, Farming’s Greatest Show on Legs
Evil Grain: The Wild Tale of History’s Biggest Crop Insurance Scam
