Leflore County farmers suffered estimated crop damage of more than $30 million from June’s torrential rains, and it’s uncertain that they will get any help to mitigate those losses.
Andy Braswell, the county extension agent, shared with the Greenwood Rotary Club Tuesday the results of an assessment he and a half-dozen other agents did late last month, based largely on self-reporting from those whose land was inundated by the 20 inches of rain that fell in some areas between June 6 and June 21.
In all, nearly 38,000 acres of cropland in Leflore County were flooded during the seasonally unprecedented heavy rains, including 25,300 acres of soybeans and 8,300 acres of corn, according to Braswell. Although soybeans were able to be replanted if the land dried out, the rainfall came too late in the year to replant corn. Braswell said that some farmers opted to switch those acres to soybeans, while others did not replant anything because the herbicides they had applied on their corn crop would threaten soybean growth.
“A lot of people just abandoned” the land for this growing season, Braswell sad.
Neither avenue that farmers might depend on for relief — crop insurance or federal disaster payments — currently looks promising, said Hank Reichle, president and chief executive officer of Staplcotn, the Greenwood-based cotton marketing cooperative.
The crop losses were not widespread enough for crop insurance to kick in for most farmers, Reichle said. Because of the cost of the insurance, farmers who purchase the coverage usually do so on their entire operation, not individual tracts of cropland. Thus, he said, a farmer might lose hundreds of acres to flooding, but if it represented only 10% of the farmer’s total acreage, crop insurance would not apply.
As far as federal disaster subsidies, Reichle and others say that the flooding — which largely occurred in five counties north of U.S. 82 — may have been too isolated to receive a disaster declaration from the White House, which would create the path for Congress to appropriate relief funds.
“Clearly people are still trying to press to make that happen, but there’s no automatic qualification for there to be relief,” Reichle said.
Hurting the cause for a disaster declaration was the scarcity of homes in the affected counties that met the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s criteria for major damage. Of about 170 homes in Leflore County that were assessed for flood damage, only five met the FEMA definition for what the agency considers to be a severe loss.
Statewide, fewer than 20 homes fit into the “major damage” category, prompting state officials to conclude that, at least for residential assistance, Mississippi did not meet the parameters to request a federal disaster declaration.
- Contact Tim Kalich at 581-7243 or tkalich@gwcommonwealth.com.
