Two months after planting most crops, Sunflower County farmers were tending their 2021 rows crops editions.
But the incessant and Biblically-proportioned rains (up to 24-inches) that fell on Monday June 7 and Tuesday June 8 swallowed up and drowned thousands of acres of hard work.
Some farmers are still under water while those where the flooding has receded and dried up enough are replanting some crops.
They were able to do so with support from crop insurance, a federally subsidized product sold commercially.
Basically, crop insurance falls into two main categories – Yield Protection and Revenue Protection. The insurance helps protect against loss of crops due to natural disasters such as hail, drought and flooding.
Or the loss of revenue due to a decline in agricultural commodities.
Farmers set up their coverage in February prior to planting. There are different levels of protection a farmer can purchase.
For both coverages, a decade of yields is averaged to establish a base of yield for coverage. Farmers then decide on a level of coverage anywhere from 50 percent to 85 percent.
Jack Harris of Jack Harris Crop Insurance first got into selling crop insurance in 1994 while still farming. By 1999, he started selling full time and rented out his farmland.
“We’re doing all we can to help them,” Harris said. “This certainly is a disaster for quite a few people. Most farmers have RP coverage or Revenue Protection.”
His office has more than 100 claims thus far. Many of them are for replanting.
“Crop insurance generally encourages replanting but in some cases, there was no opportunity to replant,” Harris said. “Farmers lost their crop to a flood and that water is still there in many cases.”
Alex Deason, Sunflower County Extension Agent, has been working to help farmers and gather needed information for possible state and federal help.
“It’s still a rolling target (acres affected),” Deason said. “We’ll know more in a week or two. In the county it was contained more or less to Sunflower and north. That area around Parchman and Rome received flooding from the rainfall event. Then we had secondary flooding from the Quiver and Sunflower Rivers.”
Deason explained the massive level of flooding
“With each acre inch of rainfall, that’s 27,000 gallons of water. You take a 100-acre farm and you multiply that by 20 and that’s a lot of water that’s got to go somewhere,” Deason said. “Where we had our biggest issues was where those rivers got out of their banks and weren’t able to contain it. You saw entire farms turned into a lake and the rivers started backflowing.”
Initial estimates of $1,000 an acre of damage and losses beginning at $500 million range across the Delta, according to Deason. Those numbers will likely increase as more than 700,000 acres have been affected. That does not include any homes but only crop production.
State and federal help may come down the road.
“You have different levels of disaster and those thresholds are different. When you hit one of those thresholds, then it goes to Capitol Hill. But that money has to come from somewhere and that’s up to those guys where that disaster package would come from,” he said.
Sunflower County farmer, Stafford Shurden was affected by the rain and flooding and finally got back in the field to replant.
“We got beans up now from the replant and instead of looking at 70-75 (bushels per acre) you’re looking at 40-45 bushels per acre. That’s a significant reduction in yield. And you’ve planted it twice, sprayed it twice and we’ll probably have more insect pressure. We’ll have a little more money in it and make a little less.”
Shurden, an ardent crop insurance buyer, had never had a soybean claim in his quarter century of farming. When less expensive versions of crop insurance were created, he and other farmers polled together to take advantage.
“It groups all of your farms in together and makes insurance cost less but it also pays a lot less,” Shurden said. “You get hit with a double whammy because we were right at the point where we can replant or fail the acres.”
Replanting was his first choice but knew his yield would be reduced. Forty percent of Shurden’s crop was affected by the flood.
“Replant insurance pays me a few dollars an acre to replant. We couldn’t have gotten the flood at a worse time. You’re fully invested in your crop yet the crop insurance isn’t going to pay you much for that. If it happened earlier, it would have been better or if it came later and been a total failure, you would have gotten some insurance on it.”
He notes the “most disheartening thing is as a farmer all the hard work you put into something and it’s just gone and you have to start over from scratch with no return on what you’ve done at all. If you stand still too long you get to thinking about it. So, we try to stay busy and not think about it.”
Shurden explained that “farmers farm” and didn’t want to fail his crop and sit around for the rest of the farm season. A lot of farmers are still under water according to Shurden and are losing any replanting window.
“The only option many of us had was to replant. But they won’t have that option.”
