As Arkansas Floods Recede, Counties Cope With Damage

As the rivers running through eastern Arkansas start to recede, residents and farmers are beginning to cope with the aftermath of devastating floods — ruined homes, ravaged farmland and major holes in local budgets.

Agriculture is the major industry in many flood ridden areas of the state. The Arkansas Farm Bureau in early May, when more than one million acres of cropland were under water, indicated the total crop loss from flooding was at $500 million, with millions more in equipment and other damage.

As the state’s largest industry segment, agriculture annually accounts for $16 billion of Arkansas’ economy, according to the Farm Bureau. Impact from cropland floods is expected to have effects far beyond the farmers’ and ranchers’ direct losses.

Randy Veach, a cotton, rice and soybean farmer from Manila (Mississippi County), who is president of the Arkansas Farm Bureau, noted that the state has this year experienced “flood levels never seen before.” He said it would take several months to determine the extent of the disaster’s impact on the state.

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.

Warren Carter, director of commodity and regulatory affairs for Arkansas Farm Bureau, said the loss in rice acreage is expected to be around 300,000 acres, resulting in a loss of $300 million in rice production. Arkansas is the largest rice-producing state in the nation, annually accounting for about half of the nation’s rice crop.

Carter noted that much of the loss could be offset by plantings of other crops. Soybean acreage, as an example, is expected to skyrocket, because the planting window for that crop is significantly wider than for rice, cotton, corn and grain sorghum. However, late-planted crops are susceptible to a number of additional risks, including early frosts, hurricane season, insect and disease issues and other problems. This makes the replacement value of those crops difficult to assess.

Arkansas was projected to plant 1.3 million acres of rice in 2011. Some of the rice crop already planted could survive the floods, though reduced yield and quality issues will likely limit the value of that crop further.

The Farm Bureau estimates that 120,000 acres of the roughly 550,000 acres of winter wheat planted this year 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.

Source: Associated Press, Arkansas Farm Bureau

Topics Profit Loss Flood Agribusiness Arkansas