Floods costly to Midwest farmers

VERDIGRE, Neb. — Ice chunks the size of small cars ripped through barns and farmhouses. Calves were swept into freezing floodwaters, washing up dead along the banks of swollen rivers. Farm fields were now lakes.

The record floods that have pummeled the Midwest are inflicting a devastating toll on farmers and ranchers at a moment when they can least afford it, raising fears that this natural disaster will become a breaking point for farms weighed down by falling incomes, rising bankruptcies and the fallout from President Donald Trump’s trade policies.

“When you’re losing money to start with, how do you take on extra losses?” asked Clint Pischel, 23, of Niobrara, Nebraska, whose lowland fields were flooded by the ice-filled Niobrara River after a dam failed. He spent Monday gathering 30 dead calves from his family’s ranch in this northern region of the state, finding their bodies under huge chunks of ice.

“There’s no harder business to be in,” Pischel added. “But with death and everything else, you’ve got to answer to bankers. It’s not our choice.”

Farms filing for Chapter 12 bankruptcy protection rose by 19 percent last year across the Midwest, the highest level in a decade, according to data compiled by the American Farm Bureau. Now, many of those farmers have lost their livestock and livelihoods.

The rail lines and roads that carry their crops to market were washed away by the rain-gorged rivers that drowned small towns, forced thousands of evacuations and killed at least three people. Some farmers say they have been cut off from their animals behind walls of water, while others cannot get to town for food and supplies for their livestock.