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Levees held and harvest better than expected

Harvest is turning out better than expected for a North Central Missouri farmer where Missouri River levees held through the summer. Rob Korff, who farms north of the river at Norborne says they’ve been getting “respectable yields”, all things considered.

“We’ve kind of gone full circle from back in the first week of July when the river was running over the levee south of Norborne and we had a tremendous sand-bagging effort by a lot of people to stop the water and hold it back,” says Korff, “By some miracle of God our levees in our area held and we’re actually having a pretty good harvest.”

Korff says his heart goes out to his neighboring farmers north and south of him where levees did not hold during the flooding.

Most of Korff’s corn harvest is done and he says they’ve had a good week harvesting beans. If it stays dry, he says they could be done with soybean harvest in two weeks.

Although the levees in his area held, Korff says there is some concern about next year, “We’re still protected but there are some areas that need a lot of repair. And, the river has gone down. It’s down below flood stage now at the Waverly gauge,” says Korff, “We’re still letting some water out upstream. Hopefully, they’ll let enough out to be able to hold any major rainfall or snowpack events next year and it will not be another issue.”

Korff says he’s firmly behind efforts to force the Corps of Engineers to make flood control the top priority for the Missouri River. Korff is the new chairman of the Missouri Corn Merchandising Council.

 AUDIO: Rob Korff (4:00 mp3)

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