The wettest 12 months in all of U.S. history was followed by the second wettest May on record, and for some parts of the Midwest the month of June will be even worse. Since Friday, as much as 10 inches of rain has fallen in the Ohio Valley causing flooding, necessitating water rescues and creating a mudslide near Lexington, Kentucky.
At this point, millions of acres that farmers had intended to plant with corn will go completely unused. In some parts of the heartland, it literally looks like a hurricane just came through. When Ohio Department of Agriculture Director Dorothy Pelanda recently toured farms in her state, she saw fields that were "filled with water and weeds instead of crops".
Other farmers will be hit with huge losses at the end of the season when yields are way down. For many Midwest farmers, this will be their last year in operation. Farm bankruptcies had already risen to the highest level since the last recession even before all of this rain. According to one recent survey, it is expected that the number of farm loan defaults over the next year will be double what we saw in 2017.
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