Farmers face sad sights and big decisions

USA TODAY, July, 2008 by Edward Iwata

OAKVILLE, Iowa -- The murky floodwaters sloshed against farmhouses, telephone poles, towering silos. They call the windswept fields here "the bottoms," a 50,000-acre stretch of rich, dark soil along the Mississippi River that farmers have tilled for generations.

Riding in a friend's flat-bottom fishing boat, 60-year-old Robert Kuntz and his two grown sons, Chad and Trent, surveyed the damage late last week. Their corn and soybean crops on half of the 2,500 acres they farmed were ruined when a levee burst a few days earlier.

Days before mandatory evacuation, the farmers and their wives and children moved to safe ground. They hauled away their stored grain, farming equipment and furniture. But all three families nearly lost their homes, giant storage bins,...