By Joe Ragusa

BLOOMINGTON – All but one Illinois county is included in the USDA’s disaster designation for areas impacted by massive rain this summer.

McLean County is one of 87 Illinois counties where farmers are now eligible for low-interest emergency loans because of heavy rains and flooding that have occurred since June 1.

Adam Nielsen with the Illinois Farm Bureau said the soil hasn’t been able to handle the rain from the first few months of the summer.

“You can still see it: Yellow spots in fields, stunted growth,” Nielsen said Soybeans don’t particularly like, as they say, ‘wet feet,’ or wet roots, and a lot of the rain came after farmers planted their soybeans and they were in the first stages of growth.”

That means farmers are expecting much lower crop yields than last year’s record-setting numbers.

The USDA says farmers in the 87 and 14 other contiguous counties are eligible for low-interest Farm Service Agency loans to cover part of the damages and losses that they have incurred. Farmers have eight months to apply for loans. Contact the Farm Service Agency for more information at (309) 452-3848.

Joe Ragusa can be reached at [email protected].