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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Floods threaten world's corn
  • Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2008 10:00:24 -0600


http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080614/NEWS08/806140363/1025/NEWS01

Floods threaten world's corn
Reduced supply may drive food prices higher

By STEVENSON JACOBS • Associated Press • June 14, 2008

Floods that have inundated the Midwest could reduce world corn supplies and
drive food prices higher at a time when Americans are stretching their
grocery budgets and when people in poor countries have rioted over rising
food costs.

The U.S. government will report later this month on how many acres of corn
were lost to flooding, but farmers and agriculture experts say the toll
appears grim, with thousands of acres probably destroyed in the region that
grows most of the world's corn.
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"It's not a very good picture at all. We're looking at possibly a good
reduction in acres if a lot of this crop remains underwater," said Chad Hart,
an agriculture economist at Iowa State University. "There's still hope, but
it wanes with each rainstorm."

The disaster has drawn comparisons to the 1993 floods that displaced
thousands of people and wiped away vast swaths of the heartland's
agriculture. At the time, about 18 bushels per acre of corn were destroyed,
"and everybody is reporting that this year is worse," said Jason Ward, grains
analyst at North Star Commodity in Minneapolis.

The most recent floods have sent corn prices soaring past $7 a bushel for the
first time, up from about $4 a year ago. Prices shot to a record for a
seventh straight day Friday, climbing as high as $7.37 a bushel on the
Chicago Board of Trade.

Floodwaters also hurt soybean crops, sending prices near all-time highs.
Wheat, oats, rice and other food commodities were also damaged.

In Iowa, the country's top corn producer, about 9 percent of the anticipated
crop either hasn't been planted because farmers can't get into their fields,
or needs to be replanted because it's waterlogged, said Roger Elmore, a corn
expert at Iowa State.

That's about 1.2 million acres of corn — almost 1.5 percent of the country's
anticipated harvest — that may produce only a fraction of its potential yield.

Rain continued falling Friday in much of Iowa, and it's already late to be
planting corn.

"It's Noah's Ark-like conditions out there ... and if you replant now you're
going to get much lower yields," said Vic Lespinasse of grainanalyst.com in
Chicago.

Corn prices have shot up more than 80 percent in the past year because of
rising energy prices and surging global demand for biofuel and livestock
feed, but excessive rainfall in the Midwest has pushed prices up nearly 20
percent in the past month alone.
Two deaths tied to floods

In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, hospital patients in wheelchairs and on stretchers
were evacuated in the middle of the night as the biggest flood the city has
ever seen swamped more than 400 blocks Friday and all but cut off the supply
of clean drinking water in the city of 120,000.

As many as 10,000 townspeople driven from their homes by the rain-swollen
Cedar River took shelter at schools and hotels or moved in with relatives.

About 100 miles to the west, officials in Iowa's biggest city, Des Moines,
urged people in low-lying areas to clear out by Friday evening. The Des
Moines River was expected to crest Friday night, but officials said just
before the expected peak that a malfunctioning gauge may have led them to
overestimate how high it would rise.

Officials became less worried that the levees would be topped, but U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers spokesman Roger Less said the city of 190,000 residents
would not be out of danger until today.

The flooding was blamed for at least two deaths in Iowa: A driver was killed
in an accident on a road underwater, and a farmer who went out to check his
property was swept away.

Since June 6, Iowa has gotten at least 8 inches of rain. That came after a
wet spring that left the ground saturated. As of Friday, nine rivers were at
or above historic flood levels. More thunderstorms are possible in the Cedar
Rapids area over the weekend, but next week is expected to be sunny and dry.

In Cedar Rapids, the engorged river flowed freely through downtown. At least
438 city blocks were underwater, and in some neighborhoods the water was 8
feet high.

Hundreds of cars were submerged, with only their antennas poking up through
the water. Plastic toys bobbed in front of homes.
Flooding shatters records

For decades, Cedar Rapids escaped any major, widespread flooding, even during
the Midwest deluge of 1993, and many people had grown confident that rising
water would pose no danger to their city. The flood this time didn't just
break records; it shattered them.

The Cedar River was expected to crest Friday night at nearly 32 feet, an
astonishing 12 feet higher than the old record, set in 1929.

Flooding left 2 inches of water in the emergency room at Mercy Medical Center
in Cedar Rapids on Thursday night, and water spilling into the lower levels
threatened to knock out the hospital's emergency generator.

A total of 176 patients — some of them frail, about 30 of them from a nursing
home at the medical center — were moved to other hospitals in an all-night
operation that was not completed until daybreak.

Gov. Chet Culver declared 83 of the state's 99 counties disaster areas, a
designation that helps speed aid and opens the way for loans and grants. The
damage in Cedar Rapids alone was a preliminary $737 million, Fire Department
spokesman Dave Koch said.






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