Flooding hurting farmers again; could delay planting

Precipitation in January 2020 as a percentage of the average for the 20th century.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration map; click on the image to enlarge it.

American farmers could see planting delays and crop losses for the second year in a row, as ground still saturated from last year's flooding can't absorb heavy recent rains.

"Relentless storms that have marched across the Midwest and into the South this winter have already filled rivers to the brim and are threatening to make farm fields too soggy to plant as spring arrives," Brian Sullivan reports for Bloomberg. "And there isn’t much to suggest an easing ahead. Heavy rains forecast through next week could push waterways higher where the Mississippi and Ohio meet in Illinois, and into northern Mississippi and Arkansas." Farmers in Washington state, North Dakota and Minnesota have been seeing flooding, too.

Because the recently concluded meteorological winter was two to three times as wet as normal in most states, it wouldn't take much more rain to once again cause major problems for farmers, homeowners, businesses and infrastructure, Sullivan reports.

The 2019 flooding was so bad that last year's crop insurance payout was the highest in history and farm bankruptcies rose 20 percent. "Odds are we won’t have the $20 billion in losses we had last year," Scientific American meteorologist Jeff Masters told Sullivan. "But the odds are we will see multi-billion dollar losses."