The improved portion of a Butler County levee officials stood on Wednesday morning represents $1 million of work by a drainage district, and is all that stands between thousands of acres of Alex Clark’s farmland and crops lost to regular flooding.
It also unfortunately marks only three-fourths of one mile out of the 11 miles that need similar work.
Clark explained the challenges his multi-generational farming operation faces to U.S. Rep. Jason Smith, during Smith’s annual farm tour. Smith was joined by state Rep. Hardy Billington, Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and other local officials.
The levee needs are as old as farming in Butler County, but other, newer issues, like high interest rates and trade issues with India, also plague the rice, corn and soybean grower.
“It means a lot that he’s down here, visiting farm country,” said Clark, who is married to Kathryn, an agriculture teacher at Three Rivers College. The couple has a new baby, Lucy, who is 5 weeks old and joined part of the tour with her mother. “Any exposure we can have at all (with) our local representation gives us a chance to tell our story, the challenges and opportunities that we’re up against right now.
“They need to hear it.”
The Clark farm grows, on average, about 2,000 acres of rice, 2,000 acres of soybeans and 1,000 acres of corn annually. Based primarily in southern Butler County along Highway 53, the operation was started in 1960 by Clark’s grandfather. Initially focused on cotton, the farm moved into rice as a primary product in 1974.
It’s now the Clarks’ “bread and butter,” but impacted by many outside forces.
__Flooding__
The family lost crops in 2017, Clark shared with the members of the tour. The group included Butler County Presiding Commissioner Vince Lampe, Butler County Emergency Management Agency Director Robbie Myers, area rice growers, members of Drainage District 7 and others.
Clearwater Dam topped its emergency spillway, sending large amounts of water into the Black River.
“It was a steady stream that just kept the levee system overwhelmed,” Clark said.
County officials have long said that decades of debris, trees, limbs and other materials clogging the river south of the Clark farm creates a bottleneck that further increases flooding in the southern portion of Butler County.
The county is seeing better engagement from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in addressing Black River problems, Lampe shared later, but still has many regulatory agencies to deal with, including the Missouri Department of Conservation and Missouri Department of Natural Resources.
The Corps has said they would take over maintenance of the 11-mile earthen levee in Drainage District 7, said Andrew Clark, a board member for the district and Alex’s uncle. But the district is required to clear and bring the levee up to Corps standards first, he said.
The district receives about $400,000 annually in tax dollars, and work on the first three-fourths of a mile by a contractor cost about $1 million, Andrew Clark shared.
The county and drainage district are continuing to work with other agencies to address the issue, but more resources are needed, they shared with officials.
“I know his (Smith’s) staff has been involved in a lot with talks on the levee and being able to get funding and fix our issues, but I wanted to get his eyes on it and make sure he knew how important it is to this area,” Clark said. “We need funding. We need help. We’re able to come up with a plan.”
__Other issues__
Congress hasn’t passed a Farm Bill since 2018, Clark said, and there are many outdated items that need updated.
Part of that is the terms and amounts for price loss coverage.
“It’s kind of a safety net for us. It hasn’t been updated in several years,” Clark said. “What I tried to emphasize too is that we’re dealing with a lot more input costs. Seeds are more, fertilizer is more, labor is more, interest is more, so we’ve got a lot more to lose.”
The cost of a combine two years ago would have been close to $500,000 but today is nearly $1 million, the family members told Smith, during conversations about the increased cost and difficulty in getting parts and machinery.
“Some of the biggest things we’re talking about are struggles that farmers and small businesses and working families are having, and that is the spike in the cost of all types of goods,” said Smith.
Inflation has gone up 16.9% in the last two and half years, said Smith, who is marking his 11th farm tour this year. He had previously made stops Wednesday in Stoddard County, including at Lowery Farms of Puxico.
“We heard at this stop how interest rates are making a huge impact. Farmers are land-rich and cash-poor. They finance a lot based on the ground they’ve had for years for their operating lines of credit,” said Smith. “When interest rates double, that creates a substantial cut to whether they can break even or not.”
Clark also shared concerns about India’s rice production, which is subsidized by other entities and makes it difficult for American farmers to compete, he said.
Smiths said he has also heard over and over concerns about making sure trade agreements are enforced properly, such as Mexico following through on commitments to purchase U.S. corn and other products, he said. Smith also mentioned the subsidizing of rice crops by the Indian government.
“It causes a big competitive disadvantage for our farmers,” he said.
Smith hopes to continue finding solutions for farmers and families, something he said he has had success with in the past 11 years.
“Over the time, we’ve always heard of the regulatory burden that the federal government has on farmers and small businesses,” Smith said. “We were very fortunate whenever President Trump was in office, over 20 different federal regulations that came up during our farm tours, more than half of them we got President Trump to fix and to reverse.”
It has gone in the opposite direction with this administration, Smith added.
Smith helped co-author the tax cut and jobs act in 2017.
“That had a significant impact on our farmers,” he said. “We had the small business deduction, which drastically affects income for LLC’s and subchapter S’s, which most farms are incorporated as. We also made provisions in there that allowed them to do more expensing.”
Smith had more than a dozen stops planned on his tour this week, including locations in Dunklin County on Wednesday afternoon.