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Tornadoes and heavy rains damage eastern MO crops

Farmers in eastern Missouri are assessing crop damage after EF0 tornadoes and heavy rains moved through Warren and Jefferson Counties earlier this week.

“There are fields of corn laying down and the biggest thing was probably the 4 to 9 inches of rain in 45 minutes or less.”

Eric Kopmann raises corn and soybeans in southern Warren County near Treloar and he says there’s water in places he’s never seen before. And Kopmann’s been pumping water out of fields trying to save crops.

“I think about 20% of my acres have been hit pretty hard, either drowned out or will have a yield ding. That’s about 200 acres.”

A few miles down the road from Kopmann, farmer Dave Schwoeppe says he’s been scouting fields for damage and the soybeans don’t look great.

“You have to travel a good ways away to see a good soybean field. Everything is yellow, very patchy and there are bare patches in the field. I think it’s mostly due to wet feet. The beans never got good vigor to take off and then, we started getting wet in July. It’s unbelievable.”

It’s not the first heavy rain event for the area this growing season. Schwoeppe says around Independence Day there was six inches of rain and it’s the wettest July he’s has experienced farming. Despite that, he says a light rain wouldn’t be terrible for some of the crops.

“It’s silly to say we want more rain, but it’s actually what we need right now. If there’s a chance of some crops surviving, we could get the mud off the crops with a few tenths of rain.”

The National Weather Service in St. Louis tells Brownfield the weather is going to be dry and cooler through Saturday, but a low chance of rain and thunderstorms returns on Sunday with chances for rain on-and-off through early next week.

A slight break from the rain might give fields a chance to dry out and give farmers time to apply fungicide to protect the surviving crops.

Schwoeppe says some of the drowned-out soybean fields won’t bounce back and it’s unclear how the tasseling and dented corn will do after being completely submerged with water, but he’s expecting some mold.

He says the farmers who have lost crops to the flooding might replant soybeans, but cover crops are more likely to be seeded at this point in the growing season.

Photo credit: Dave Schwoeppe, eastern Missouri