PICKENS -- Southeast Arkansas farmers expressed to U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton on Tuesday the urgent need for federal relief after last month's floods caused more than $200 million in crop loss.
More than 40 farmers gathered at the Walnut Lake Country Club, about 3 miles away from Dumas, to speak to the Republican senator.
Farmers spoke about a wide range of topics, mostly related to the need for assistance from their state and federal governments after an unprecedented amount of rain soaked the area and destroyed acres of crops.
"We have a lot of young farmers in this area who are not strong enough to hold this kind of loss for a long time," Steve Stevens, a Desha County farmer, told Cotton. "Time will be of essence."
Cotton said in an interview that the event emphasized the strain and stress farmers in south Arkansas faced.
"The clock is ticking for these farmers when their crops in the field have been under water," he said. "The promises that will come six, eight or 12 months from now don't pay the bills."
Farmers in several counties in southeast Arkansas suffered more than $205 million in direct crop loss after the major flooding and storm event in early June, according to an estimate Tuesday by experts with the University of Arkansas System Agriculture Division.
Vic Ford, associate vice president of agriculture and natural resources at the division, said the crop loss total could reach even higher after a final analysis.
Andrew Ross, a Dumas farmer, said the timing of the flooding couldn't have been worse.
"We had 1,600 acres of soybeans lost," he said. "The issue here is that we already had so much invested. We had already sprayed and fertilized the beans and we put a cost into it. Now it's gone."
Replanting these crops is a challenge because of the need for adequate rainfall, which can be difficult this time of year.
"This will have a ripple effect," Ross said. "This will affect the banks, the chemical companies and the salesman who needs to meet a quota to get a bonus. It goes way beyond the farmers. We will take the brunt of it because we borrowed the money and we lost it all."
Jay Coker, a Stuttgart farmer, said farm families in the region were hurting mentally, physically and financially.
"In some of these areas like this, farmers will have a hard time recovering and you will start to see these rural communities fade away," he said. "You start to lose local ownership of these farms; it will have a big impact."
A number of farmers expressed concerns about being forgotten by the federal government because of where they live.
"I just hope this is enough to get y'all's attention," Ross said. "We are sometimes treated like the redheaded stepchild because we aren't the Midwest."
Cotton told the farmers that their stories might not be making national headlines, but he hadn't forgotten their dire situation.
"To get attention of all Congress, it has to be on the nightly news and in the headlines, it has to be a hurricane or an earthquake, but that is why we have a system of representative government," he said.
Cotton said he will work with officials from the surrounding states that also were affected by the deluge.
"Local economies don't stop at state lines," he said.
Cotton said the main problem that stood out to him was with the drainage districts in the area.
Water flows into Desha County from as far northeast as between Pine Bluff and Grady, and continues until it reaches the Mississippi River, the county's eastern border.
Canal 19, just southeast of Dumas, usually captures the excess rainwater, but the canal overflowed in June, leaving miles of roads and fields under water for hours at a time.
Farmers told Cotton the drainage infrastructure in the area can no longer handle the amount of rain that is falling in the area and needed to be adjusted.
"Some of these ditches were designed in the '40s and not designed to handle the amount of rain that occurred," Coker said. "The amount of significant weather events we are enduring means that we are now at risk. This is a short term issue that needs to be resolved."
Cotton told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette he was hopeful that the federal government will allow state and local governments to spend some of the surplus covid-19 funds to help their communities.
"If we are going to spend that money, then they should be able to spend it on things that matter most to their community's economy, and from what you have heard today, one of the biggest single needs they have in this part of the state is more effective drainage infrastructure," he said. "That isn't going to be the case in Los Angeles or San Francisco or New York City, but it's the case here."
Farmers also stressed the importance of the H-2A temporary agricultural worker program that allows farmers to bring non-immigrant foreign workers to the country to work seasonally.
"If we lose that program, then you can forget what you see here," one farmer told Cotton.
Coker said the bureaucracy around the program is making it more challenging to get help from foreigners who have been laborers for years.
"The day they go back we are starting the process for next season almost six months ahead of time, and even then, it will come down to almost the last minute," he said.
Cotton said the H-2A program often gets tied up in more controversial elements of the immigration debate.
"Right now the border is in chaos and that makes it harder to focus on some of the legal pathways to immigration here like a green card or the guest worker program," he said. "That is why it is really important to secure our border and enforce our immigration laws. To give them confidence that our system is working."