PICKENS, AR – More than 40 farmers gathered at Walnut Lake Country Club near Dumas, to speak to Republican Senator Tom Cotton Tuesday, July 6, 2021, on a wide range of topics, mostly related to the need for state and federal governments assistance after an unprecedented amount of rain fall destroyed acres of crops
"We have a lot of young farmers in this area who are not strong enough to hold this kind of loss for a long time," Steve Stevens, a Desha County farmer, told Cotton. "Time will be of essence."
"The clock is ticking for these farmers when their crops in the field have been under water," he said. "The promises that will come six, eight or 12 months from now don't pay the bills."
Farmers in several counties in southeast Arkansas suffered more than $205 million in direct crop loss after the major flooding and storm event in early June, according to an estimate Tuesday by experts with the University of Arkansas System Agriculture Division.
Vic Ford, associate vice president of agriculture and natural resources at the division, said the crop loss total could reach even higher after a final analysis.
Andrew Ross, a Dumas farmer, said the timing of the flooding couldn't have been worse.
"We had 1,600 acres of soybeans lost," he said. "The issue here is that we already had so much invested. We had already sprayed and fertilized the beans and we put a cost into it. Now it's gone."
Replanting these crops is a challenge because of the need for adequate rainfall, which can be difficult this time of year.
"This will have a ripple effect," Ross said. "This will affect the banks, the chemical companies and the salesman who needs to meet a quota to get a bonus. It goes way beyond the farmers. We will take the brunt of it because we borrowed the money and we lost it all."
Jay Coker, a Stuttgart farmer, said farm families in the region were hurting mentally, physically and financially.
"In some of these areas like this, farmers will have a hard time recovering and you will start to see these rural communities fade away," he said. "You start to lose local ownership of these farms; it will have a big impact."
A number of farmers expressed concerns about being forgotten by the federal government because of where they live.
"I just hope this is enough to get y'all's attention," Ross said. "We are sometimes treated like the redheaded stepchild because we aren't the Midwest."
"To get attention of all Congress, it has to be on the nightly news and in the headlines, it has to be a hurricane or an earthquake, but that is why we have a system of representative government," he said.
Cotton said he will work with officials from the surrounding states that also were affected by the deluge.
"Local economies don't stop at state lines," he said.
Cotton said the main problem that stood out to him was with the drainage districts in the area.
Water flows into Desha County from as far northeast as between Pine Bluff and Grady, and continues until it reaches the Mississippi River, the county's eastern border.
Canal 19, just southeast of Dumas, usually captures the excess rainwater, but the canal overflowed in June, leaving miles of roads and fields under water for hours at a time.
Farmers told Cotton the drainage infrastructure in the area can no longer handle the amount of rain that is falling in the area and needed to be adjusted.
"Some of these ditches were designed in the '40s and not designed to handle the amount of rain that occurred," Coker said. "The amount of significant weather events we are enduring means that we are now at risk. This is a short term issue that needs to be resolved.".
Farmers also stressed the importance of the H-2A temporary agricultural worker program that allows farmers to bring non-immigrant foreign workers to the country to work seasonally.
"If we lose that program, then you can forget what you see here," one farmer told Cotton.
Coker said the bureaucracy around the program is making it more challenging to get help from foreigners who have been laborers for years.
"The day they go back we are starting the process for next season almost six months ahead of time, and even then, it will come down to almost the last minute," he said.
Cotton said the H-2A program often gets tied up in more controversial elements of the immigration debate.
