Federal Farm Service Agents will be fanning out this week to start assessing flood damage to 25 Missouri River counties and two more in northeast Missouri. The assessments are part of the process that could lead to presidential disaster declarations for those counties.  The first assessments will be done in the northwest Missouri counties of Holt, Platte,  Atchison, and Buchanan. because those counties have incurred the most heavy damage in the last six weeks.  But the high water now has gone beyond Kansas City and damage will be accumulating between Kansas City and St. Louis in coming weeks.

State Farm Service Director Ed Hammil says county-wide and individual farmers’ losses will be considered.  Primary disaster  counties will have to lose at least 30 percent of the estimated yield of a single crop or have individual farmers with crop losses of more than 30percent.

Northeast Missouri’s problems have a different cause. He says some eight-to-12-inch rainstorms have caused flooding in that area. 

Similar assessments were made for the southeast Missouri floods in April and early May.  But Hamill says that flooding was early enough in the season that many farmers there are able to get in a late crop.  The Farmers in the 27 counties the FSA inspectors will visit won’t have that chance.  The Missouri River is not expected to go back within its banks for many week.

Listen to interview with Ed Hamill 16:07 mp3