DESHA and ARKANSAS COUNTIES, ARKANSAS – Phew! The Sun is finally out this Friday morning after a very difficult week for many in the mid-South – one so wet Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson declared an emergency in the region hardest hit.
According to the National Weather Service, rainfall recorded on Tuesday this week in Desha County, just west of the Mississippi River, made for the wettest June day in the state of Arkansas since 1974.
The storm brought more than 15 inches of rain to some areas, and with nowhere for that water to go due to the already saturated areas, causing flash flooding, road closures, power outages, home and business evacuations, and early crops completely submerged with floodwater.
“In the worst affected areas, flooding has resulted in washed or breached levees and loss of our flood depth management,” said Dr. Jarrod Hardke, Rice Extension Agronomist, University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture. “This will have less direct, but lasting effects on our crop management. In some extreme instances, rice fields are completely underwater. Rice tolerates a shallow flood but does not like to be submerged. Fields that are older will start to die after seven days of submergence. However, young rice can survive for weeks if floodwater conditions are right.”
Robb Dedman, an independent crop consultant with Ultimate Ag Consulting, manages thousands of acres in the areas hit the hardest. “I don’t think we are going to know the magnitude of the damage until the water recedes,” he said. “Thousands of acres of cropland are still underwater in our area. I just walked out of a bean field with 3 feet of standing water, which will be a total loss.”
“I’ve never seen anything like this in all my years,” said Keith Glover, CEO of Producers Rice Mill in Stuttgart. “I’m particularly struck by how unlucky it all seems – here we have too much water and our friends in California don’t have nearly enough. But that’s agriculture."
“Our Arkansas rice producers are resilient and accustomed to dealing with unforeseen adversity,” said Arkansas Rice Executive Director Kelly Robbins. “The upcoming week looks mostly dry, we are hopeful this will help expedite the drainage of the floodwaters, keep crop damage to a minimum, and allow our members to get back to business as usual.”
Governor Hutchinson will be visiting the affected areas today to assess the damage and needs of the affected communities.
Photos courtesy Robb Dedman and Kelly Robbins