By Meredith Saldana
KTEN Reporter
As posted and broadcasted on KTEN, June 20, 2008.

The devastating floods in Illinois and Iowa have damaged agriculture from crops to livestock. Now Oklahoma is seeing a profit in their crops. KTEN's Meredith Saldana reports.

As far as grains are concerned Oklahoma farmers are making more money as a result of the floods.

Iowa alone is reporting a 2 to 3 billion dollar hit to their agricultural economy because of the rising water levels and have lost an estimated 15 to 16 percent of crop production acreage.

Noble Foundation Economist, Job Springer, explains what this means for farmers in our area.

Springer says, "On the local side of things we've seen grain prices increase because of the shorter supply and so we've seen soy beans and wheat which are commodities grown in this area increase on a per bushel basis."

Now the downside of this locally is now that grain prices are going up so is the cost of feed for cattle.

Many local people depend on the sale of their cattle for profit but with the demand for cattle not rising along side the rising cost of grain, farmers are spending more money to feed the cattle and not making as much of it back in sales.

This article and broadcast appeared on KTEN, www.kten.com, on June 20, 2008.