Birds Point crop loss estimated at $85 million

A new study sets a value for the loss of crop production from the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway levee breach. 

The University of Missouri’s Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute, or FAPRI, estimates total losses come to $85.2 million. The total assumes no harvest in the floodway for the year 2011.

FAPRI associate director Scott Brown says that the total cost could be even higher when one takes into consideration loss of economic activity for Mississippi and New Madrid County’s laborers, farm suppliers, and agriculture-related industries.

“Using some implant estimates available to us, we would have suggested that $85.2 million loss in value production would have amounted to about $157 million when you think about the indirect and induced effects on the economy in those two counties,” Brown said.

However crop insurance and federal government assistance program will help alleviate some of the losses.

“When you add all these things together - value production, lost variable cost, and then the government payments to help offset that - we come to about $42.6 million,” Brown said.

Farmers are trying to put crops in the ground, so Brown cautions that the year may not be a total loss and his figures could change with time.

Jacob McCleland, KRCU

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Economist predicts $93 million drop in total revenue for Mississippi County

CAPE GIRARDEAU, MO (KRCU) - A Southeast Missouri State University economist studied the impact of the Birds Point Levee breach on the Mississippi County economy.

Dr. Bruce Domazlicky says that the impact of flooding half of the county’s farmland will have the most direct impact through the loss of agriculture output from this land.

The indirect impact is the loss that agricultural suppliers will face. These include lost seed and other input sales.

There will also be an induced impact from the loss of farm wages.

"What we found is that employment in 2011, the current year, will decline by a little over 500. Which is quite significant. That’s about 9% of the total employment in Mississippi County," Domazlicky said. "The second thing we found is that labor income would fall by about 12 million dollars in the county, and that’s also about 9% of the total labor income in the county."

The total revenue in the county, Domazlicky says, will go down by about 93 million dollars. He says this figure is the result of less agricultural output, but it is also affected by the reduction in sales by input providers.

Domazlicky says that these figures translate to about 14 percent of total revenue for the county. The numbers account for the current year.

"What’s going to happen going forward with respect to whether or not those acres can be brought back into cultivation, will then determine how extensive those impacts are going to be in the future," Domazlicky explained.

Domazlicky says that government assistance programs will mitigate these numbers somewhat, but will not completely make up for the direct loss of revenue for the county.

Jacob McCleland, KRCU

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