Now that the news crews are leaving, we talked to Carey Martin of the Louisiana Farm Bureau about the extent of the damage. He says the news covered Baton Rouge because it’s a major population center, but the actual flooding impacted most of south Louisiana including rural areas the size of Delaware.

 

 

But in addition to Baton Rouge, dozens of smaller communities had devastating flooding, and hundreds of thousands of acres of crop land went underwater, including rural homes, outbuildings and businesses. Martin says the total damage is still being assessed, but ag economists at LSU have issues some preliminary estimates of crop losses. 

 

 

And that is for crop losses, not rural homes and businesses. Total losses from the flooding, urban and rural, are likely to run into the billions of dollars, much of that not covered by insurance.

 

The area produces rice, soybeans, corn, sugar cane and some cotton. 

 

Martin says his own home had five feet of water, and his family is living on the second floor, expecting it to take months to arrange for repairs to the lower floor.