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 Trump’s trade policies, The New York Times reported. “When you’re losing money to start with, how do you take on extra losses?” asked Clint Pischel of Niobrara, Neb., whose lowland fields were flooded by the ice-filled Niobrara River after a dam failed. He spent Monday gathering 30 dead baby 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 protection rose by 19 percent last year across the Midwest, the highest level in a decade. 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. Farm experts said it was too early to quantify the full economic toll of the floods, but Steve Wellman, director of the Nebraska Department of Agriculture, said the disaster could cost the state’s livestock sector $400 million. Farm groups said it would take months or years to recover, and that residents across the region would need emergency federal aid. “You’ve got a generation of young farmers on the verge of leaving; you’ve got a lot of mental health stress out there — and that was before the storm,” said Roger Johnson, president of the National Farmers Union. “You just pile this on top.”
