Nebraska farmer: Many people won’t be able to recover from floods

Bill Thiele, board president of the Nebraska State Dairy Association, discusses how the massive Midwest floods have affected farmers in Nebraska and why he believes it will be years before the region recovers.

Vice president Mike Pence surveyed the flooding sites in Omaha, Nebraska Tuesday, meeting with first responders amid record flooding as the region braces for even more rain.

Agriculture accounts for 20 percent of Nebraska’s gross domestic product and livestock accounted for nearly 60 percent of its agriculture revenue in 2018.

Bill Thiele, one of the dairy farmers whose farm was damaged by the record flooding, told FOX Business’ Connell McShane that many people won’t be able to recover from the floods. He said some of his colleagues were dumping milk due to the flooding.

“I think there will be a large number of people that never do get back up on their feet,” Thiele said on Tuesday. “We have acres and acres, and miles and miles, some are covered by ice, much more so by flooding waters, I’ve talked to farms and dairymen that have quarters of alfalfa that are ruined, which is of course is their feed supply for this year.”

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A natural disaster of this scale puts the farmers struggling to cope with the aftermath and could certainly put some people completely out of business, according to Thiele.

“I think we are on top of a few stressful years already and I am sure this last straw for some of them.”