Last Year's Flooding Catastrophe Not Over For Vermont Farmers

A corn field ruined by flooding near Cambridge, Vermont,
photographed on July 12, 2023.  Vermont farmers are
still contending with the aftermath and damage
of last year's devastating floods. 

 Lisa Rathke over at the Associated Press tells us that far reaching effects of last year's flooding are still torturing many Vermont farmers as we gear up for planting season. 

Silt still in many farm fields, with landowners unsure how to remove it. 

Corn fields from last summer remain unharvested due to mud, silt, and pollutants in the wrecked, unusable crops. Many farmers have to test their fields for pollutants before they can grow any new crops. 

Some farmers kept get hitting.  Rathke highlights one central Vermont farm:

"Dog River Farm, in Berlin, Vermont lost nearly all of its produce crops in the July flooding. The farm removed truckloads of river silt and sand from the fields before another round of flooding in December washed away more precious soils, wiped out the farm's garlic planted in late fall and left behind more oil and several giant holes in a field, said owner George Cross...

'We had 15,000 garlic heads - bulbs growing here which is a significant amount of retail dollars,' he said, pointing to a section of field. 'And now they are gone. They're somewhere down along the Winooski (River)'"

Silt and sand piled up in drifts in floodplain cropland by the disasters of last year are an especially difficult dilemma. You can't dump it back into rivers. You can't pile it up like a dike along the river bank, as that causes environmental harm and might ultimately worsen future floods.

The sand and silt has to be hauled away, somewhere. The farmers have to pay to have that work done. If the sand and silt are not removed, there will be no crops on the affected fields this year. 

A grassroots fundraising campaign called Dig Deep Vermont announced Wednesday that it's giving out its first grants to 32 farms to help with some of those expenses. It estimated farms suffered around $45 million in losses statewide from the flooding, extreme weather and persistent rains. 

Dig Deep Vermont is still accepting donations, by the way. 

Perhaps more than almost anyone else, Vermont farmers are understandably spooked by what kind of weather this growing season will bring. With climate change, storms have gotten worse, and extremes have gotten more extreme. 

Last year, even farmers who suffered no flood losses had a rough go of it. The season started with a devastating freeze that ruined apple and other fruit crops, and disrupted wineries across the state. The summer proved so wet that it was hard to harvest hay. 

That's all bad for farmers. Still, not every growing season will be a mess. Let's do a toast and hope this year brings nothing but perfect farming weather to the Green Mountain State. 

Colorado Farmers Create Fake Drought To Rake In Federal Money. Ends VERY Badly For Them

Two Colorado farmers tampered with a 
federal weather station like this one,
damaging rain gauges to make it look
like less rain fell than actually did.
The scheme was organized so they
could receive federal drought payoffs.

 Two Colorado farmers learned an extremely expensive lesson when they faked a drought by tampering with federal rain gauges, the Washington Post reports. 

Prosecutors said Patrick Esch and Edward Dean Jagers II cut wires, poured silicone and loosened bolts in an effort to keep those rain gauges empty so they could make false crop insurance claims for "drought."  

Federal officials were not amused, according to WaPo:

"Under the criminal pleas, Esch was ordered to pay $2,084,441 in restitution and Jagers was ordered to pay $1,036,625. Those amounts have been paid, Colorado federal district attorney's office spokeswoman Melissa Brandon told the Washington Post on Monday. 

But wait! There's more!

"The civil settlement from a whistleblower involved in the case requires Esch to pay an addition $3 million - $676,871.74 of which is restitution, per court records - plus 3 percent interest over the next 12 months, Brandon said. Jagers has paid his required additional $500,000."

Esch, 72, also spend two months in prison. Jagers, 63, spent six months in the slammer. 

Some of the details get juicy, according to CBS Colorado.

Apparently, Jaber and Esch had two other people involved in this fake drought conspiracy. This takes on the air of a bad TV crime drama. Says CBS Colorado:

".....one of the co-conspirators turned on the group and extorted Esch in particular. The unidentified male threatened to expose the entire enterprise to authorities in exchange for Esch paying the man's bond for release from jail and giving several five-figure payments to he man's girlfriend.

Esch, according to his plea agreement, even shrugged off the man's admitted theft of an all-terrain vehicle from Esch in exchange for the man's silence. 

In August of 2023, a month before Jager and Esch reached their plea agreements with prosecutors, this unidentified male co-conspirator escaped from prison. This triggered a nationwide manhunt and caused Esch and his family 'to go into hiding,' as stated in a court document Two weeks after the escape the co-conspirator was found dead."

Inquiring minds want to know what the co-conspirator died of. 

And I bet Esch in particular really, really regrets his fun and games with rain gauges, given how screwed up his life is now.