this year. it came fast. and it hasn t stopped. the missouri river flooded to record levels across midwestern states taking with it homes, crops and livestock leaving farmers with hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. as you stand here and you look at the flooding, what are the emotions that come to you? there is a lot of pain and uncertainty of your future. reporter: this on top of new tariffs which have lowered prices on crops and livestock implemented by a president many farmers here support. dustin sheldon is a fifth generation soy and corn farmer in iowa. he hasn t biable to get to his 2,000 acre farm since sunday. how much of your land would you say is underwater right now? 95%. what is the damage that you are looking at? it s over a million dollars.
assess the damage. some think they won t even have a crop to plant this year. it came fast. it hasn t stopped. the missouri river flooded to record levels across midwestern states, taking with it homes, crops and livestock. leaving farmers with hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. as you stand here and you look at this flooding, what are the emotions that come to you? there s a lot of pain and uncertainty of your future. reporter: this on top of new tariffs which have lowered prices on crops and livestock, implemented by a president many farmers here support. dustin is a fifth generation soy and corn farmer in iowa. he hasn t been able to get to his 2,000 acre farm since sunday. how much of your land would you say is underwater right now? 95%. reporter: what is the damage you are looking at?
war. it gets worse. the usda announcing friday, it is delaying a crucial crop report due to the shutdown, leaving farmers without vital information. let s get right to cnn s vanessa you re cavich. what do these struggling farmers have to say about trump and this shutdown standoff? reporter: hi, ana. this shutdown really came at a poor time. we re here on brian duncan s farm. he is a soybean, hog and corn farmer. he had a tough 2018 with the tariffs from china and retaliatory tariffs that came from mexico. in order to help him out, the government decided to provide subsidies for farmers like brian. he was able to apply for those subsidies, for soybeans and hogs. but he just finished his corn crop just last week, and the government was shut down at that point. so the paperwork is sitting on
the usda. many farmers use that report to plan out crop distribution for the year ahead. cnn business correspondent is live for us in northwest illinois. vanessa, what are you hearing from farmers there? reporter: well, this trump shutdown could not have come at a worse time. after 2018 when they experienced so much trouble in the trade war with china, retaliatory tariffs from mexico, they re really struggling out here. right now we re on brian duncan s farm. he s a soybean farmer, a corn farmer, and a hog farmer. he relies on selling to china and mexico, who are not buying his soybeans or hogs. so the trump administration has given farmers subsidies in order to offset that revenue. what that does is help get them through the year. but the government, as we know, is shut down. and they are not getting those
just last month, president trump pledged to boost financial help for farmers whose earnings got crushed by his china tariffs, promising emergency farm aid in the form of subsidies. but then government agencies shuttered their doors, leaving farmers in farm aid limbo. now they can t even apply for the assistance to help them survive the president s trade war. it gets worse. the usda announcing friday it is delaying a crucial crop report due to the shutdown, leaving a farmer without vital information. let s get right to cnn s reporter who s talking with farmers in illinois. vanessa, what do these struggling farmers have to say about president trump and this shutdown standoff? reporter: hi, ana. well, this shutdown could not have come at a worse time for farmers after 2018 when they were hit with this trade war with china and retaliatory tariffs. brian duncan, whose farm we re on here today, he s a soybean farmer, a hog farmer, and a corn farmer, he was waiting to get