Despite flooding and millions of dollars in damage, Wisconsin farmers are a resilient bunch, supporting one of the state’s top three industries.
Much of southern Wisconsin was battered by vicious blasts of rain earlier this summer. In some areas, farm crops still stand swallowed in several feet of water. But Wisconsin Department of Agriculture’s Gary Radloff says overall, the state is experiencing a good year.
“We’ve seen record corn prices, record milk prices and record milk production and really the largest dairy exports and general exports we’ve seen in a long time,” Radloff says.
Beneath the broad brushstroke view, Radloff says, some pockets won’t do quite as well this growing season.
“Certain sections of the southeast corner of the state, where they got a lot of rain , lot of moisture Probably enough that it might have taken out their crops for the year,” Radloff says.
Farmers in pockets across 30 counties might qualify for disaster assistance.
Forty miles west of Madison, Brad Peck grows sweet corn and pumpkins on his farm in Sauk County, one of the places up for possible disaster relief. Peck, a fourth generation farmer, says he’s lost crops in the past.
“Well in 93 we had a really similar situation and the local government promised us some ditches to get this area drained out, because there is no natural drainage and then things dried out in a year and it kind of got put on the back burner and forgot about and now here we are again, going through this again. And they’re talking about putting ditches in again but you know they’ve been dragging their feet for six weeks now and nothing’s really changed,” Peck says.
Peck says he won’t qualify for federal assistance. He lost 120 acres, less than a third of his total crops. Peck says he’d have to lose at least 50 percent to qualify for aid.
A jump to the east, John Cull runs a dairy farm with his family in Dodge County. They grow corn, soybeans and alfafa, to feed their cows.
“We didn’t have the bad problems where some unfortunately people where they ha drowned outs and killed out, where the crops had to be replanted. We didn’t have that. We have areas where there’s wet areas in fields that because of that much rain our crops aren’t as good as they should be,” Cull says.
Cull says their fields are yielding a bit less than usual and the crops that remain will be ready for harvest later. All and all, Cull calls himself lucky.
Jogging back west Karin VonRuden is a third generation dairy farmer in Westby. He says Vernon County has been hit by some sort of a storm every two weeks or so.
“We had a lot of erosion because we had some line fences that were washed out and then we had a wind storm that, we probably lost 50 or 60 trees around the farm here,” VonRuden says.
VonRuden says despite chaotic weather, the crops he grows to feed his cows, are fairing amazingly well. He grows as much as he can along ridges. Just below the high ground, VonRuden’s neighbors have lost crops.
“You get down in the valleys and there’s cornfield and hayfield that are over half gone because of the floods. You know they have big gullies in em or there’s just nothing there because the flood flooded the seed out earlier this spring and hasn’t had a chance to grow back,” VonRuden says.
For farmers who didn’t fair as well, federal aid will eventually come their way. The process is long and the final word on crop losses can’t be calculated until the final harvest next fall.
Share / Email
Print
Download
Email a Friend
Facebook
Del.icio.us
Stumble Upon
Digg
Newsvine
