Governor Jay Nixon told reporters during a press event at a Callaway County farm along the Missouri that farmlands damaged by both high water releases and levee demolition must be restored
“It’s feeding the world…the export agreements that we signed, the necessity to feed the world comes from having that bottom land, like this bottom land, that while it has some years where there are risks, ultimately is the most productive farmland in the world.”
Nixon also said that flood control needs to be the top priority for managing the Missouri River basin, not recreation. The Army Corps of Engineers released record amounts of water from a South Dakota dam this year, flooding farmland and portions of Interstate 29 in Missouri this summer.
Large stretches of farmland in southeastern Missouri was also flooded when the Corps blew up the Birds Point Levee along the Mississippi River in order to spare the town of Cairo, Illinois.
