Farms in southern New Mexico are still under water after recent massive flooding and that has farmers worried their popular crops could be wiped out. After weeks of rain, some farms in Eddy County saw nearly 26 inches of rain. Woods Houghton, with Eddy County, said the pinto bean crops in their area have been wiped out.

Houghton said the county’s largest crop, which is cotton, is looking like its headed that way too.

Now farmers are having to wait for the water to recede before they know for sure which crops can be saved and which are going to be a total lost.

“The pecos valley its not looking pretty good,” Houghton said. “We’re going to have a significant crop loss justdue to the disease.”

Hougton said Eddy County is the seventh largest agricultural county in New Mexico. Their fields produce cotton, pumpkins, pinto beans and even chile. With a good portion of farms there are still under water the majority of crops in the county could be jeopardy.

“Our chile crop doesn’t look too good either,” Hougton said.

Houghton said their chile is sold across the state. He said while a lot of the state has already picked, roasted and sold bags of its green chile, the Pecos Valley was just getting started.

“We had just started picking our green chile. We are a little behind the Rio Grande Valley,” Houghton said.

He said he’s received emails showing that some plants are starting to rot and looked diseased.

An agricultural expert from New Mexico State University said flooded fields can led to diseased plants and bring on root and crown rots. Once one plant has it, it can spread to the entire crop.

The only way to save some chile pods or pumpkins is to harvest it. However, Houghton said that’s been a challenge.

“We’re just now getting a look at the chile picked and so we’ll see what it looks like for the next couple of weeks,” Houghton said. “Right now, we cant walk on the fields.”

Houghton said until they can get onto the fields there is no telling how much will be saved and can be sold. That could mean a smaller chile crop for New Mexicans.

Houghton said this is the last thing they expected to be dealing with.

“We went through two years of severe drought; farmers were planting less than 10% of their crop because they didn’t have enough water,” Houghton said. “This year we finally got enough water to plant your full farm and you get wiped out by a flood.”

Eddy County was recently declared a disaster because of the drought.

Source - http://krqe.com/