Widespread damage has been reported to crops throughout the state of Iowa due to the powerful derecho storm Monday. Tracy Gathman with Two Rivers Cooperative says locally, there are some spots in fields that were knocked down, but the overall status of crops in Marion County does not compare to the devastation seen along Interstate 80 and Highway 30 in central and eastern Iowa.

“I’ve been up north in the Newton, Kellogg area helping our son and daughter-in-law with some issues they had at their home–the corn is flat on the ground,” he says. “I’ve talked to a couple of producers that have been up to Marshalltown and over toward Tama, and in the Colo area, and they are saying the same thing as to what I’ve seen up in the Kellogg area — it’s whole fields, and they are absolutely flat.”

Gathman says corn that snapped off is already dying, and while there may even be some ability to salvage some stalks that remain green, what remains is great difficulty and uncertainty when it comes to the maturing of those plants and harvest season.

“It’s so devastating to see, because we saw some spots here in Marion County up through Jasper County, and really through most the state — because I was in northwest Iowa two weeks ago and I’m going to be honest, I didn’t see a bad field here all the way up to Okoboji,” Gathman says. “We were set up for what looked like probably an absolutely record crop, and the unfortunate thing is you have producers within an hour on Monday — it was gone. It’s just so devastating and heartbreaking to see that, and our hearts reach out to those people, because hopefully the crop insurance will help them out.”

Gathman says crop insurance can’t replace those kinds of losses of crops overall, because it’s designed to prevent economic disaster, and not replace what would have been record yields. Additionally, Gathman says several commercial operations and outbuildings were destroyed as well, which will have significant impact on the industry for possibly months and years to come.