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, sporting his common 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 examine or change its depth. The younger rice has entered an important stage; it has taken root however continues to be tender and wishes 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 good.

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, transferring water right into a drainage ditch that flows into the close by Mississippi River. “That complete nook would’ve gone beneath if I hadn’t seen it,” Gerard says.

This day by day scramble throughout 2,500 acres of flat, muddy bottomlands is now routine for certainly one of America’s northernmost industrial rice farmers. But it surely wasn’t at all times. Gerard’s story is each proof that change and innovation in farming are potential and proof of how laborious 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 had 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 had 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 newest Nationwide Local weather Evaluation, 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.

“Probably the most excessive heavy precipitation is growing at a far sooner fee than general complete seasonal or annual precipitation,” defined Trent Ford, the Illinois state climatologist. That elevated depth “has been a sooner and bigger change, and that has induced extra impacts on account 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 preventing the water anymore.

“I might develop one thing that will develop in water,” he mentioned. Or stop.

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Local weather change is shifting the place rice can develop. Lengthy thought of a southern crop, it has crept north by 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 unimaginable, as ProPublica and Capitol Information 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 help.

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 the complete infrastructure — from grain bins to rail traces 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 inclined to develop what their dad and mom and grandparents did. Even the native consultants — the oldsters on the close by Farm Bureau places of work and college extension applications — are largely educated in what’s at all times been accomplished.

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

And federal coverage is transferring deeper in that route. President Donald Trump has scrubbed local weather language from farm applications. Though the “Huge, Lovely Invoice” signed in July offers further funding for applications that would assist with crop diversification, it largely reinforces the concept that crops ought to keep the place they’ve at all times 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 mentioned 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 unimaginable is a vital testing floor. But it surely wasn’t simple. 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 thousands and thousands of {dollars} to make it work. Gerard exhibits what is feasible, but additionally how unbelievable it’s for the Corn Belt to diversify with out the sustained effort of federal coverage.

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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 residing on a tiny island in the midst of the river simply north of Cairo, Illinois. Searching for dry land that will 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 stored rising. Blake’s father took over the farm and put in a pump on his lowest area to take water away from the corn, however the water stored developing.

“The water comes from beneath the bottom right here,” Blake Gerard mentioned.

He was finding out at Mississippi State when his father died in August 1990. Overwhelmed, he left college, got here residence and harvested the ultimate crop his father had planted. However with floods coming extra steadily, he nervous that the federal government would get out of the crop insurance coverage enterprise, which helped preserve him afloat. He briefly thought of fish farming however nervous 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 — generally known as the “Freedom to Farm Act” — gave farmers flexibility in crop selection.

He seemed south, to Arkansas and Missouri, for steering, driving round, knocking on doorways and asking farmers a couple of 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 mentioned, “You realize what? I met your dad. You’re lots like your dad. He got here down right here within the ’70s asking me the identical questions.”

Gerard hadn’t recognized about his father’s early curiosity. But it surely led them each to the identical place, the place he discovered his reply: “I’ve obtained 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 applications to assist pay for the transition, and it was costly.

The large effort was grading the land: flattening it and constructing embankments so water would cascade from one area into the subsequent. At $1,000 per acre, Gerard would make investments thousands and thousands into turning his floor from soy to rice.

Gerard realizes the funding was one he might 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 need to borrow 1 / 4 of one million {dollars} to do that and make all these modifications 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 models, gas tanks, generators, pipes, the water management constructions, and on and on. Gerard scratches his head when requested about his complete funding — it’s an excessive amount of to recollect and too laborious to maintain monitor of, he mentioned. What he knew for sure was that he was going to decide to rice.

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This yr, Gerard’s farm lastly obtained some assist: a Local weather-Sensible Commodities grant that will permit him to spend money on issues like soil moisture meters, pump automation and water screens. Then in April, he acquired extra information: The funding, thought of a “local weather” program, had been canceled by the Trump administration. Then in Could, he was advised the funding was again — beneath a distinct identify.

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 town of Chicago. Excessive winds introduced free topsoil throughout the state and into town, limiting visibility and stunning meteorologists who had not documented a climate occasion of this sort within the metropolis because the Mud Bowl of the Thirties.

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

The dominance of soy and corn, with little variation, might have “potential long-term impacts” on “financial returns, communities, and the atmosphere,” in keeping with the web site for Various Corn Belt, a USDA-funded mission of researchers and scientists who collaborate with authorities businesses, farmers and conservation teams. They need 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 one of the vital troublesome locations to grasp in U.S. agriculture,” mentioned 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 elevate cattle; you’re in Iowa, you develop corn. All these locations which might be form of funky on the margin — we don’t make coverage for them.”

Diversifying crop rotations would assist in the Midwest, but additionally in locations with different climate-related woes, like more and more dry Texas and storm-wracked Louisiana. Making such modifications will not be unimaginable, mentioned Louisiana State College researcher Herry Utomo, who developed the rice pressure grown by Gerard. Local weather change is “coming anyway, so now we have to be constructive and reply to it appropriately,” he mentioned. “With good planning, anticipation and understanding of the speed of change, we will reply.”

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

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

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

For Gerard, his willingness to threat all the pieces paid off. He had a banner yr in 2024 — his most profitable rice-farming yr thus far. He not wonders whether or not the “massive river” or a deluge will take out his crop. Whereas a spread 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 beneath the burden of their very own grain.

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

“Folks mentioned you may’t develop rice right here,” Gerard mentioned. “I had the crop rising within the area they usually’re like, ‘You possibly can’t develop rice, we’re in Illinois, they develop rice in Louisiana.’”

That was a quarter-century in the past.