HOLT COUNTY, Mo. – For about five months, northwestern Missouri looked like one big river. But now it’s more of a desert, as several feet of sand covers the soil and farm equipment almost as if farms are frozen in time.
“I farm roughly 2,500 acres along the Missouri River, and about half of that got destroyed this past year,” said farmer Bruce Biermann.
Some of Biermann’s land is okay, but much of it was once covered by feet of sand, especially his land near Corning, Mo.
“I had an area up there that had all the way from one foot to over five feet of sand on that,” Biermann explained.
For Biermann to get his land cleaned up and ready for planting, the cost was nearly crippling. It cost $4,500 per acre to remove sand five feet deep.
Wendy Tubbs, from the Farm Service Agency, which doles out federal money in a cost sharing program to farmers in Holt County, says Biermann’s case isn’t unusual.
“We’ve had over a hundred applications just with that program, but hundreds of farmers have been affected by this and families,” Tubbs explained.
The area is also seeing sand storms now, making the clean-up more difficult.
“They no more than clean their ditches out, and they’re silted back in,” Tubbs said.
Biermann worries if other people’s sand isn’t cleared, it’ll destroy whatever crops he can grow.
“That wind is just going to take that sand it’s going to be just like a knife and just literally go ahead and cut it off at the root,” he explained.
Biermann and Tubbs say there are many farmers who will never be able to farm their land again because of deep holes left by the water and the loss of minerals taken by the flood. Many farmers are also waiting to plant their crops this season because levees haven’t been rebuilt yet, and new crops would have no protection from another flood.
