Flood

After an early planting kick-start to the crop season, torrential rains blanketed northeast Arkansas and Missouri Bootheel farmland in late April and early May. The flood disaster raises a tangle of questions about crop insurance, risk and water management.

Overtopping be damned, on the night of May 2, 2011, Birds Point levee was blown and 130,000 acres of Missouri farmland were swallowed. The water left, but the scars of shattered legacies remain. When the rights of agricultural producers clash with government regulation, federal law holds the trump cards.

The evil twin of drought is drainage and both can cripple a crop in short time. When a river rises or a culvert backs up, water can sit on farmland for weeks and prevent planting and harvest, or simply kill crops mid-season. Time to saddle a Water Hog beast and pump directly through a levee.

Here’s how to protect your crop from excessive rainfall, drought and cold temperatures.

The Midwest is still at risk as spring rains fall and the snowpack melts

The Army Corps of Engineers increasing water levels this week at Gavins Point Dam. That’s a dam in the Southeast Corner of South Dakota on the Missouri River. Picture courtesy: KTIV

For decades, Peggy Sellars and her husband George have warily watched periodic floodwaters inundate the land around their home in the Mississippi Delta, but the dwelling always remained dry — until this year.

EPA says it has surveyed Superfund sites in flooded areas of Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri.

As floodwaters recede, it’s time to start examining structures and equipment to make sure it survived the flood.

Just when it looked like the trade-war pain would ease, flooding across the Midwest has done billions of dollars in damage.