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 standard 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 verify or change its depth. The younger rice has entered a vital stage; it has taken root however continues 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 good.

For the components 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 entire nook would’ve gone beneath 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 business rice farmers. Nevertheless it wasn’t at all times. 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 had been the crops Gerard, now 55, was rising within the early 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 keeping with 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 rising at a far quicker fee than total complete seasonal or annual precipitation,” defined Trent Ford, the Illinois state climatologist. That elevated depth “has been a quicker and bigger change, and that has brought about extra impacts resulting from 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 might develop one thing that may develop in water,” he mentioned. Or stop.

Local weather change is shifting the place rice can develop. Lengthy thought-about a southern crop, it has crept north by means 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 sort of inconceivable, 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 your entire 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 likely to develop what their mother and father and grandparents did. Even the native consultants — the parents on the close by Farm Bureau workplaces and college extension packages — are largely skilled 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 professional on the College of Illinois. “No person says no, however the system doesn’t know how you can say sure.”

And federal coverage is transferring deeper in that path. President Donald Trump has scrubbed local weather language from farm packages. Though the “Massive, Stunning Invoice” signed in July gives extra funding for packages 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 could reply.

This stretch of the nation the place Gerard did the seemingly inconceivable is a crucial testing floor. Nevertheless it wasn’t straightforward. There have been no mills to course of what he grew, no market to promote it into, no roadmap to comply with. Finally, it took 25 years and tens of millions of {dollars} to make it work. Gerard exhibits what is feasible, but in addition how inconceivable 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 midst of the river simply north of Cairo, Illinois. Looking for 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 stored rising. Blake’s father took over the farm and put in a pump on his lowest subject 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 learning 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 ceaselessly, he anxious that the federal government would get out of the crop insurance coverage enterprise, which helped hold him afloat. He briefly thought-about fish farming however anxious about floods there too. Finally, 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 alternative.

He appeared south, to Arkansas and Missouri, for steerage, 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 mentioned, “ 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. Nevertheless it 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 subsequent 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 subject 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 might solely have made when he was nonetheless younger and unafraid of debt. “I had time to get all of it paid for, however in case 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 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 gear. He rattles off a listing: energy models, gas tanks, generators, pipes, the water management buildings, and on and on. Gerard scratches his head when requested about his complete funding — it’s an excessive amount of to recollect and too onerous to maintain monitor of, he mentioned. What he knew for sure was that he was going to decide to rice.

This 12 months, Gerard’s farm lastly obtained 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 acquired extra information: The funding, thought-about a “local weather” program, had been canceled by the Trump administration. Then in Might, he was instructed the funding was again — beneath a special title.

However across the state, situations for farming this 12 months have continued to deteriorate. In Might, the Nationwide Climate Service issued a mud storm warning for the primary time ever for the town of Chicago. Excessive winds introduced free topsoil throughout the state and into the town, limiting visibility and surprising meteorologists who had not documented a climate occasion of this sort within the metropolis for the reason that Mud Bowl of the Thirties.

Researchers consider that the corn and soybean rotation that dominates Midwestern farming is not less than partially in charge — 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, might have “potential long-term impacts” on “financial returns, communities, and the surroundings,” in line with the web site for Numerous Corn Belt, a USDA-funded challenge of researchers and scientists who collaborate with authorities companies, farmers and conservation teams. They wish to discover methods to offer 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 tough 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 Numerous 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 are 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 modifications shouldn’t be inconceivable, mentioned Louisiana State College researcher Herry Utomo, who developed the rice pressure grown by Gerard. Local weather change is “coming anyway, so we’ve to be constructive and reply to it appropriately,” he mentioned. “With good planning, anticipation and understanding of the speed of change, we are able to 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. In truth, 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 every little thing paid off. He had a banner 12 months in 2024 — his most profitable rice-farming 12 months to this point. He now 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 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 mentioned you’ll be able to’t develop rice right here,” Gerard mentioned. “I had the crop rising within the subject and so they’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.