For Eddie Marshall, a third generation farmer from Mississippi County Missouri, whose farm lies in the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, the past few days have been hard to imagine. And after flying over the area on Wednesday, May 4, Marshall says its heart wrenching to see the result of the Army Corp of Engineer’s blowing the Birds Point levee.

MST3 Wheeler of MSU Huntington snapped these pics of MSU Paducah's DART working in Shawneetown, Ill., May 2. Nine lives saved. This DART crew comprises personnel out of Paducah, Cincinnati and Huntington.

“Of course there are houses under water, grain tanks that are floating, there are fuel tanks that people did take the fuel out of that are floating,” Marshall said.

Marshall alone has 8,000 acres of farmland under water.

“Of course all my soft red winter wheat was in, in fact I had just gotten through last week spraying fungicide, so we were probably 6 weeks off from combining it, we lost all but 300 of the wheat, I’ve only got about 450 acres of corn planted that the water did not get,” Marshall said. “With the rains we’ve gotten and the Corp of Engineers blowing this levee it’s gonna make for a year that’s not going to be too conducive to our bottom line.

And even though flying over all he could see was water, Marshall says “if” and there are a number of “if’s, but if they get back to a more normal spring, he thinks they may be able to get some soybeans planted.

“It may be a lot worse when this water gets off, but my thinking is, if this river will drop we could get back in the spillway by the end of the month,” said the third generation Missouri farmer.”

AUDIO: Dave Russell interviews Eddie Marshall [Mp3, 16:03 min.]