Many farmers, ranchers face 'total loss' from flooding

It will be weeks, perhaps months, before it's known how much damage the recent flooding has done to Louisiana's agriculture industry.

What we've seen so far, though, is enough for some to speculate it could be the worst such event in decades for farmers and ranchers along the Red River.

"You're talking about thousands and thousands of acres that are underwater just in this area," said James Wagley, Natchitoches Parish president for Louisiana Farm Bureau Federation. "This is by far the worst I've ever seen it. Unless you're 70-something years old, you've never seen anything like this."

"I have probably 4,000 acres underwater," said John Danley, who owns and leases farmland at Mibermel Plantation north of Natchitoches. "Rice, milo, soybeans, it's all gone. It will be next spring before I can plant again."

Commissioner of Agriculture Mike Strain met with dozens of farmers, ranchers and other stakeholders from the agriculture industry to discuss the situation and answer questions at Mibermel Plantation Friday.

It was a fitting location. All up and down Louisiana Highway 1, land that recently supported crops is covered by water that stretches to the horizon.

Glyn Davis left a tractor on the highest ground on his property. Now it's partially submerged and he jokes he left it there as a gauge. Davis sold his cattle because all of the 800 acres they grazed has been flooded.

"I'll buy back when I get some grass," he said. "But that's looking like next spring."

Davis is far from alone. People throughout the affected areas are telling stories of being forced to move or sell stock, or watching as feed, hay and growing crops were claimed by the rising water.

"We're looking at a substantial loss to the wheat crop," Strain said. "Here, you're looking at corn, beans, some of this rice is flooded way too deep. This is not like a flash flood that goes up and down. You can survive that. I think you're going to see a total loss of everything that's underwater, but you don't have to be an agronomist to know that."

Strain also predicted losses among livestock owners from disease and low weight due to stress.

Even after the water recedes, Strain said, the effects will continue to be felt. Rehabilitating the land to support crops and grass again is a process that's going to take time.

"When land is underwater, you're losing nutrients that have to be replaced," Strain said. "Soil is a living entity. Standing water takes soil and makes it clay. Soil grows crops, clay doesn't."

Strain stressed the importance of documenting through record keeping and photographs all the expenses farmers and ranchers incur due to the flooding.

Tony Leone, 75, is one of the few farmers around old enough to remember the historic flood of 1945. As a boy, he recalled his family being told they had only hours to get their possessions to the highest point in their newly built home, just ahead of the water "that came with a roar."

Leone has been fortunate that some of his bean crop has been spared and he still has dry land to pasture his cattle, but "if it keeps coming up, I'm going to be all the way underwater."

In addition to agriculture, industry that uses the river for shipping is being disrupted. John H. Overton Lock and Dam No. 2, which is south of the Alexandria Regional Port, closed to barge traffic Thursday, joining locks to the north near Colfax, Coushatta and Shreveport that had already closed due to high and swift-moving water.

"It's basically shut down the whole river," said the port's executive director, Blake Cooper. "We have a tenant that brings in six barges a week of fertilizer, and now they're having to unload in Lettsworth (in Point Coupe Parish) and truck it in at a cost of $30 a ton more. No one knows when it's going to go down, but you could be looking at the end of July or beginning of August. And even after the locks open, you're going to have to do some dredging and other things."