Under water but not out of business

With a population of little more than a thousand, the town of Hamburg, Iowa rarely sees any kind of national recognition. Unfortunately, that all changed this summer when the town became ground zero in one of the biggest floods this country has ever known.

Due to two large breaches in the federal levee, the massive amount of water rushed through the area's first and strongest line of defense, slamming against the smaller levee in Hamburg—now referred to by one report as "a small Iowa town's only hope..."

A farmhouse and buildings sit surrounded by flood waters from the nearby Missouri River, Wednesday, June 15, 2011, in Hamburg, Iowa. The water level continues to rise and officials say that it should crest sometime later this week. Photo: Charlie Neibergall / AP

But this smaller levee was not built to hold against the unprecedented amount of water that came through the area in mid-June, and when city officials saw that it would fail, they desperately looked to a neighbor for help.

Mike Woltemath owns the farmland adjacent to the Hamburg levee—which needed to be built up higher so that the water couldn't rise above it. So, with 80 percent of his land unable to serve its purpose or yield any crop, Woltemath gave some of the remaining land to stop the water, in an attempt to save what was left of the area.

And so far, it's holding.

But Mike didn't only lose his land—he lost his barns, and several pieces of very expensive farm equipment. "Right now, there's nothing we can do… We just have to wait," he said. And because of flood damage to his house, he and his wife are unable to even wait in their own home, having to stay with her parents in Cairo, Nebraska.

Unfortunately, Mike's situation almost looks promising when you compare it to his father's. "80 percent of my land is under water, but my father lost everything."

Woltemath is a fourth generation farmer—no stranger to the bevy of natural disasters that frequent the Midwest—but this is unlike anything he or his father have ever seen. "The flood of '93 is the only thing that comes remotely close. But even then the Gavins Point Dam was only releasing water at a rate of 70,000 cubic feet per second."

Today, Gavins Point is releasing 160,000 cubic feet per second—enough to fill a football field with four feet of water instantly. The estimated time frame when this will finally slow down? Not until the end of August—more than two months after the floods began. "We're using spillways we've never even used before," Woltemath said.

Of course, the land is still there somewhere, but there is no way of telling how long it will take for the water to recede. And once it does, there will be trash, tree limbs, sand, and other forms of debris that need to be removed before it can be productive again.

And yet, despite all of this, Mike Woltemath doesn't seem to feel sorry for himself or expect any kind of sympathy. He talks about the situation very matter-of-factly, as if this is just another part of the job that he has accepted—it happened, and now he needs to figure out the best way to move on. "There's nothing that we could have done to prevent this from happening, and there's nothing that we can do now but wait."

Once the fields have dried, houses have drained, and the streets have cleared, farmers will return, ready to get back to work and in many cases, rebuild their operations from the ground up.

It's times like this, Woltemath says, that this country benefits from farmers having the protection of strong farm policy.

"Crop insurance needs to be protected. It provides us with a very good backstop, and if you take that away you leave an already high-risk industry with no protection, making it almost impossible to withstand this kind of catastrophic event."

"You know," he continued, "it's not unheard of to have $700 invested in one acre out here, much of which is borrowed from banks that would not likely approve the loan without the protection of crop insurance. No one realizes how much we invest in order to produce the food and fuel that we do. But when you don't have anything to sell, you can't invest, and when you can't invest, you can't produce—it's a downward spiral."

When it comes time to discuss the farm safety net in the 2012 Farm Bill, let Congress look to Mike Woltemath and his neighbors as a warning—what would happen if U.S. farmers weren't protected and flood waters were left to wash away American agriculture?