How an Illinois Farmer Turned Flooded Farmland Into Rice Paddies — ProPublica

On a late July morning, Blake Gerard zips throughout his Southern Illinois rice farm on a four-wheeler, carrying his normal USA Rice shirt and shorts that hit above the knee. It’s the one rice farm in Illinois, a spot the place rice by no means grew earlier than.

He carries rubber hip boots in his truck for when he must wade into the water to test or change its depth. The younger rice has entered an important stage; it has taken root however remains to be tender and desires a shallow, regular blanket of water, which Gerard maintains with a system of cascading fields surrounded by levees and pumps. Two to 4 inches of water is right.

For the elements of the fields he can’t attain in his truck, a drone does the seeing. This morning, it catches a patch the place the water swimming pools too deep, and he activates a pump, shifting water right into a drainage ditch that flows into the close by Mississippi River. “That entire nook would’ve gone below if I hadn’t seen it,” Gerard says.

This every day scramble throughout 2,500 acres of flat, muddy bottomlands is now routine for certainly one of America’s northernmost industrial rice farmers. However it wasn’t all the time. Gerard’s story is each proof that change and innovation in farming are potential and proof of how onerous they’re — and why so few have tried. The transition took many years. It was additionally costly and largely unsupported by federal farm coverage, which is closely centered on corn and soybeans.

Corn, soy and wheat have been the crops Gerard, now 55, was rising within the early Nineteen Nineties when he took over his household farm close to the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. By then, the floods have been already coming extra typically. Gerard’s grandfather remembered them in 1943 and 1973, however as Gerard started farming, they got here each two years — in ’93, ’95 and ’97.

In response to the most recent National Climate Assessment, annual precipitation within the Midwest elevated in some locations by as a lot as 15% between 1992 and 2001. Importantly for farmers, the quantity of precipitation on the times with probably the most rain has elevated by 45% over the previous 50 years.

“Essentially the most excessive heavy precipitation is rising at a far sooner charge than total whole seasonal or annual precipitation,” defined Trent Ford, the Illinois state climatologist. That elevated depth “has been a sooner and bigger change, and that has triggered extra impacts because of flooding and erosion.”

For Gerard, a fourth-generation crop farmer, solely in his 20s, working the fields of the Mississippi River bottomlands in Alexander County, Illinois, there was no sense in combating the water anymore.

“I may develop one thing that may develop in water,” he stated. Or give up.

Local weather change is shifting the place rice can develop. Lengthy thought-about a southern crop, it has crept north by way of the Missouri Bootheel, and with Gerard’s expanded operation, now has a foothold in Southern Illinois. It’s a crop that may thrive the place others can’t, like alongside the riverbanks of flood-prone Alexander County.

However for a lot of farmers, making the transition to a brand new crop is almost not possible, as ProPublica and Capitol News Illinois reported this week. Though rice is a commodity crop and Gerard receives insurance coverage subsidies and commodity helps, corn and soybeans dominate U.S. agriculture, particularly within the Midwest, and that’s what federal subsidies are set as much as assist.

Federally backed insurance coverage for these crops cushions the chance of local weather change for growers, even in floodplains; ethanol coverage props up demand; and your complete infrastructure — from grain bins to rail strains to river barges — helps transfer corn and soy from fields to market to abroad. Illinois is the second-largest corn exporter within the nation.

There’s additionally tradition: Farmers are likely to develop what their mother and father and grandparents did. Even the native specialists — the parents on the close by Farm Bureau places of work and college extension packages — are largely educated in what’s all the time been finished.

“All the things’s stacked in opposition to it,” stated Jonathan Coppess, a former U.S. Division of Agriculture official and present farm coverage knowledgeable on the College of Illinois. “No one says no, however the system doesn’t know say sure.”

And federal coverage is shifting deeper in that route. President Donald Trump has scrubbed local weather language from farm packages. Though the “Huge, Stunning Invoice” signed in July gives further funding for packages that might assist with crop diversification, it largely reinforces the concept crops ought to keep the place they’ve all the time been.

ProPublica and Capitol Information Illinois sought remark from the USDA on Aug. 20 about how it’s responding to local weather change and crop diversification. An company spokesperson stated the USDA was engaged on a response however didn’t present it in time for publication or specify a day when it might reply.

This stretch of the nation the place Gerard did the seemingly not possible is a crucial testing floor. However it wasn’t straightforward. There have been no mills to course of what he grew, no market to promote it into, no roadmap to observe. In the end, it took 25 years and tens of millions of {dollars} to make it work. Gerard reveals what is feasible, but in addition how unbelievable it’s for the Corn Belt to diversify with out the sustained effort of federal coverage.

In 1943, when the Mississippi tore away from its banks and charted a fierce and muddy course throughout America’s central farmlands, Gerard’s grandfather, Harold Gerard, had already fled the waters as soon as.

He had been dwelling on a tiny island in the course of the river simply north of Cairo, Illinois. In search of dry land that may be amenable to the wheat, alfalfa, corn and cotton he was accustomed to rising, he moved his household about 30 miles north.

However even there, the water saved rising. Blake’s father took over the farm and put in a pump on his lowest discipline to take water away from the corn, however the water saved arising.

“The water comes from below the bottom right here,” Blake Gerard stated.

He was learning at Mississippi State when his father died in August 1990. Overwhelmed, he left faculty, got here dwelling and harvested the ultimate crop his father had planted. However with floods coming extra regularly, he apprehensive that the federal government would get out of the crop insurance coverage enterprise, which helped preserve him afloat. He briefly thought-about fish farming however apprehensive about floods there too. In the end, Gerard realized he wanted a crop that liked the thick, muddy floor he calls “gumbo.”

Round that point, farm coverage was altering: In 1996, the Federal Agriculture Enchancment and Reform Act — referred to as the “Freedom to Farm Act” — gave farmers flexibility in crop selection.

He appeared south, to Arkansas and Missouri, for steering, driving round, knocking on doorways and asking farmers a few crop that wasn’t afraid of the water.

At one farm within the Missouri Bootheel, an older man listened to Gerard’s questions for an hour, then stated, “You realize what? I met your dad. You’re loads like your dad. He got here down right here within the ’70s asking me the identical questions.”

Gerard hadn’t identified about his father’s early curiosity. However it led them each to the identical place, the place he discovered his reply: “I’ve bought rice floor.”

In 1999, Gerard planted his first 40 acres of rice. The following season, he tripled his acreage. After that, Gerard began changing his fields “like loopy.” There have been no authorities packages to assist pay for the transition, and it was costly.

The massive effort was grading the land: flattening it and constructing embankments so water would cascade from one discipline into the following. At $1,000 per acre, Gerard would make investments tens of millions into turning his floor from soy to rice.

Gerard realizes the funding was one he may solely have made when he was nonetheless younger and unafraid of debt. “I had time to get all of it paid for, however should you’re my age now, mid-50s, why do I wish to borrow 1 / 4 of one million {dollars} to do that and make all these adjustments and create extra work for myself? It’s extra work. Rice farming is far more work. Double, triple the work that corn and beans are.”

Gerard additionally needed to make investments closely in farm tools. He rattles off an inventory: energy items, gasoline tanks, generators, pipes, the water management constructions, and on and on. Gerard scratches his head when requested about his whole funding — it’s an excessive amount of to recollect and too onerous to maintain monitor of, he stated. What he knew for sure was that he was going to decide to rice.

This yr, Gerard’s farm lastly bought some assist: a Local weather-Sensible Commodities grant that may permit him to put money into issues like soil moisture meters, pump automation and water screens. Then in April, he obtained extra information: The funding, thought-about a “local weather” program, had been canceled by the Trump administration. Then in Could, he was informed the funding was again — below a special title.

However across the state, circumstances for farming this yr have continued to deteriorate. In Could, the Nationwide Climate Service issued a mud storm warning for the primary time ever for the town of Chicago. Excessive winds introduced unfastened topsoil throughout the state and into the town, limiting visibility and stunning meteorologists who had not documented a climate occasion of this type within the metropolis for the reason that Mud Bowl of the Thirties.

Researchers imagine that the corn and soybean rotation that dominates Midwestern farming is not less than partially accountable — changing the grasses that gave the Prairie State its nickname with crop rotations that don’t maintain the soil in place, and a gentle stream of fertilizers and pesticides doesn’t assist.

The dominance of soy and corn, with little variation, may have “potential long-term impacts” on “financial returns, communities, and the setting,” based on the web site for Various Corn Belt, a USDA-funded venture of researchers and scientists who collaborate with authorities businesses, farmers and conservation teams. They wish to discover methods to provide farmers extra crop choices.

That’s particularly urgent in locations like Alexander County, a nook of the nation that bridges totally different farming areas. “It’s some of the troublesome locations to grasp in U.S. agriculture,” stated Silvia Secchi, a professor on the College of Iowa, who research farm coverage and is an investigator with Various Corn Belt. “However the system isn’t constructed for a spot like this. The system is constructed for: you’re in Nebraska, you increase cattle; you’re in Iowa, you develop corn. All these locations which can be type of funky on the margin — we don’t make coverage for them.”

Diversifying crop rotations would assist in the Midwest, but in addition in locations with different climate-related woes, like more and more dry Texas and storm-wracked Louisiana. Making such adjustments will not be not possible, stated Louisiana State College researcher Herry Utomo, who developed the rice pressure grown by Gerard. Local weather change is “coming anyway, so we’ve got to be optimistic and reply to it appropriately,” he stated. “With good planning, anticipation and understanding of the speed of change, we are able to reply.”

However Coppess, a former USDA official, stated farm coverage has by no means been nice at planning for local weather change.

“There’s nothing in farm coverage that takes into consideration local weather change. In truth, most arguments could be that it’s at finest impartial and at worst counterproductive for local weather change,” Coppess stated.

And below Trump, analysis universities are dropping funding and local weather initiatives are being decimated.

For Gerard, his willingness to danger every part paid off. He had a banner yr in 2024 — his most profitable rice-farming yr to this point. He not wonders whether or not the “large river” or a deluge will take out his crop. Whereas a variety of things — from climate to worldwide markets — have an effect on whether or not he makes cash, his shift to rice has taken manufacturing volatility out of the equation and he rests simpler.

He remembers certainly one of his first harvests, late within the rising season, when the mature stalks of rice had begun to bend towards the bottom below the load of their very own grain.

One farmer, he recalled, pulled over and laughed on the drooping stalks. To him, the sector appeared ruined — nothing just like the stiff, proud stalks of wheat rising close by.

“Individuals stated you possibly can’t develop rice right here,” Gerard stated. “I had the crop rising within the discipline they usually’re like, ‘You’ll be able to’t develop rice, we’re in Illinois, they develop rice in Louisiana.’”

That was a quarter-century in the past.