Steady, heavy rains and high winds have had a negative effect on a major part of Arkansas' economy. Some storms within the last week have wreaked havoc on farm crops in the state. In Northeast Arkansas some corn fields were nearly wiped out by last week's high winds.

"In some cases, [it's] devastating," said Jeff Welch, Lonoke County Extension Agent Staff Chair for the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture.

"We were very fortunate to escape the damage that that Northeast Arkansas farmers had," said Welch. "If we get 2 or 3 or 4 more rains we're going to be out of the field for another week to 10 days and we're going to have some sprouting in these crops, especially this wheat and that's going to really drive down the quality and the price a farmer gets for it."

"The dampness, continual dampness, is just keeping us from getting in and doing what we need to do," said Lonoke farmer Rick Bransford. "We have been waiting, trying to get the rice dry enough to put fertilizer on but we can't do that right now because it's too wet."

"We had a storm go through that kind of wiped out some tomatoes," added Tom Gillihan of Sue's Garden, which supplies Little Rock Kroger, Whole Foods and Fresh Market stores as well as local restaurants. "We had 60-mph winds and got some tin off of our barn but other than that we're surviving."

But not everyone is cursing the weather, including Bo Bennett, who coordinates the farmers market every Sunday at Little Rock's Bernice Garden.

"It's hard to access the fields but it's not a total loss," said Bennett. "A lot of our city-based gardeners are pulling off a lot of nice crops, a lot of carrots and beats and roots like that and the rain's been really great for that… I guess it depends on the scale of agriculture, some people benefit from these kinds of rains when you're doing things on a small scale."

For farmers like Bransford the weather has had a domino-effect of sorts because he can't harvest his wheat, which could ruin that crop and also prevent him from planting soy beans in those same fields after the wheat is harvested.

"We do what we can and what we can is all we can do," said Bransford. "I'm a person of faith and you better have a little faith when you're out here."

Source - http://www.thv11.com/