Farmers’ Hopes Sink in Waters of Mississippi

Eugene Walker drove his red pickup Friday across acres of mud where his corn should have been, tall and tasseled. “God,” he muttered, “look at that.” His farm was a swamp. Floodwater lay across most of it, brown and still. What corn he could see looked like stubble.

In a good year, Walker, 58, and his son, Mike, 31, plant 1,300 acres of corn and soybeans. They had such hopes this year, until the rains would not stop. Then the Mississippi River, dark and deep and silent as a nightmare, swept out of control across their land and countless other farms in the Midwest.

It has wrecked crops, ruined fortunes and prompted talk about a special kind of fear: food inflation. Walker’s worry is etched in his face, like lines in leather. Inflation, frightening as it might be, was not his biggest concern. “Nothing ‘til next year,” he said, looking out the window of his truck. “There’s nothing we can do.

“Every time it rains, it turns your stomach. If we can harvest anything at all, it has to quit raining.” He shrugged. “I’m just working with whatever kind of mess we’re faced with. . . . We have got to harvest what little we’ve got. . . . You live depressed in a year like this. There’s a lot of stress.”

Walker’s governor, Terry E. Branstad, had told Vice President Al Gore just that morning, in a conference call with other governors in the Midwest, that farmers face disaster. Estimates of total flood damage in the region run to $2 billion. Half the burden falls on farmers. Corn and soybean harvests alone have dropped by nearly 10%.

And that could mean higher food prices. Soybeans to be harvested this fall, for instance, reached a four-year high this week on the Chicago Board of Trade. Some analysts, however, say that the higher prices are likely to be temporary and not the sort of chronic inflation that wrecks financial markets or might collapse President Clinton’s economic program.

Gov. Branstad asked the vice president to take special steps for farmers like the Walkers. “Of special concern,” he said, “is that there will be adequate amounts of financial assistance so that the family farmers are not put out of business.”

Gore promised an “all out” effort to bring relief to farmers and other flood victims throughout the Midwest. He said he would make a personal visit to the flood-stricken area on Monday.

Meanwhile, the human toll climbed. The Mississippi flood has killed at least 15 people in four states. More than a dozen were hospitalized when wind destroyed house trailers. Thousands were homeless in Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

And still the river rolled on. It pushed past Keokuk, Iowa, at 240.1 billion gallons a day, breaking a record of 222.1 billion gallons set in 1973. In Missouri, it broke levees in St. Charles County. Floodwater isolated the village of Portage Des Sioux. More than 7,000 people in Missouri fled.

Across the river in west-central Illinois, National Guardsmen operated bulldozers round the clock to shore up a 52-mile dike threatening to burst along its entire length.

At their Iowa farm near Nichols, a one-block town nearly 20 miles west of the Mississippi, the Walkers shook off flies that were biting--a sure sign, they say, that more rain was on the way here too.

That and more flooding from the river would add to water standing four feet deep in some places on their fields.

“There’s no bottom to it,” Mike Walker said.

At one spot, where it was possible to walk, he grabbed a three-foot cornstalk. “It should be five feet high and tasseled,” he said. His boot sank into the mud. “I don’t know if there is a tassel to be seen out there.”

Where the water had been standing stagnant for days, the fields stank. “Smells like a hog lot,” Eugene Walker said, muttering again.

The worst of it had come Wednesday evening. Eugene Walker was in his truck about half a mile from a levee holding back Wapsie Creek. Warily, he eyed a spot that had ruptured at least four times in the past several years--most recently on Father’s Day in 1990.

As he watched, it happened again.

“I just left,” he said, quietly. “It was a pretty sickening sight. There was nothing I could do.”

Water from the Wapsie, heading pell-mell toward the Mississippi, tore a 300-foot hole through the levee. That alone, Walker figured, would cost $10,000 to repair, and he will have to bear the burden himself. The entire levee is on his land.

Worse, he cannot improve the levee by raising it any higher than 12 feet. The reason is one of the bureaucratic tangles that bedevil farmers everywhere. The Iowa Department of Natural Resources, he says, will not let him.

“It looks like white water when it breaks,” Mike Walker said, trying to describe the rush of the flood through the broken levee.

And it leaves behind trash.

Before the Walkers can do much of anything else, they will have to clean their fields. The water brought rubber tires, logs, tin cans and bottles.

Even after that, they will not be able to use their tractors. The soil is saturated. “The more you drive on it,” Mike Walker said, “the squishier it gets. You can see your ground moving. It’s like quicksand.”

Both men, father and son, like to think positively. Maybe they can salvage a 30% harvest. There might, however, be an early frost. On the other hand, higher prices at the Chicago Board of Trade could mean making more per bushel. But then there will be far fewer bushels. In any case, there will not be enough money to support the two of them.

Mike will have to find a job in town. He is single and has no children, so he might be able to scrape by. Maybe, he says, he can get work as a trucker or a machinist. If he does, he will continue to help his father farm, as well.

Eugene Walker still gets up at 5:30 a.m. every day for coffee at Casey’s General Store in Nichols. In any other year, he and the other farmers would be boasting about their crops. “It’s a good feeling,” he said, “to have a beautiful harvest.” Not these days. They talk instead about how much rain has fallen.

Normally, they would expect about 32 inches. But this year, they have gotten 50 inches to date--27 of them since March.

But it is a hard subject, so there is not as much talk as usual. “Some people are taking it pretty hard,” Walker said. The same is true at Nichols Agri-Service, where the farmers buy their fertilizer and herbicides. “Nobody’s in really a good mood,” explained the assistant manager. “But there’s nothing you can really do about it.

“Nobody’s ever seen anything like this.”

Eugene Walker has not slept well for at least a couple of nights, according to his wife, Ione. “But if it’s bothering him a lot, he’s not telling me about it. It’s just beyond our control.”

Still, Eugene Walker will continue to live off the land.

“I grew up on a farm,” he said, climbing out of his truck. “It’s a way of life for us. All I’ve ever wanted to do, all I know how to do, is farm.

“No one will hire me now.

“I intend to farm until I’m 65 and turn it over to Mike.”

There was, the Walkers agree, one good thing that came from the flood.

They found it during their tour of the fields. It was a snapping turtle, one of several that have come out of Wapsie Creek and crossed the wet acreage looking in vain for a place to dry out and bask in the sun.

This one weighed 18 pounds.

Mike Walker picked it up by the tail. It snapped viciously. He pitched it into the bed of the pickup.

The Walkers and other farmers in the Midwest like to butcher snapping turtles, pan fry them and eat them. Parts, they say, taste like chicken; other parts taste more like a good steak.

Eugene and Mike Walker took this one to Agri-Service to have it weighed. They dropped it into a tub to soak it clean.

On their way home, they picked up some letters from their mailbox alongside the road. They spent some time working on their tractors, and they got to the house in time to hear Ione Walker talking to a visitor about her faith.

Worrying about something like the flood, she said, “doesn’t help anything.”

“I say there is a reason for everything,” she said. “There’s always some good out of it.”

“Yeah,” her husband said, wryly. “Some good turtle meat.”

High-Water Marks

Water levels at various points of the Mississippi River as of Friday morning. Because of continuing storms, some areas are facing a series of crests. All figures are in feet.

Since June, rainfall has been twice as high as normal in this area.

St. Paul, Minn. River level: 16.7 Flood stage: 14 Crest expected near 17 on Monday *

Davenport, Iowa River level: 23 Flood stage: 15 Crested Friday at 23 *

St. Louis River level: 41 Flood stage: 30 Crest expected near 45 on Wednesday *

Caruthersville, Mo.* River level: 28 Flood stage: 32 Crest expected at 33 on July 17 * Southernmost point that the weather service is predicting flooding *

Memphis, Tenn. River level: 22 Flood stage: 34 Crest expected at 28 on July 19 *

New Orleans River level: 8.8 Flood stage: 17 Crest expected at 12 on July 28 Source: National Weather Service

One of History’s Worst

The 10 worst floods on the Mississippi, as measured by water depth and flow at St. Louis, and ranked by the Army Corps of Engineers:

River height Gallons Year (feet) per second 1. 1973 43.31 6,372,960 2. 1844 41.32 9,724,000 3. 1951 40.28 5,849,360 4. 1947 40.26 5,856,840 5. 1983 39.27 5,295,840 6. 1944 39.14 6,313,120 7. 1986 39.13 5,445,440 8. 1943 38.94 4,039,200 9. 1903 38.00 7,622,120 10. 1982 37.98 5,527,720 Current flooding 41.20 5,647,400

Source: Army Corps of Engineers