“It’s hard to put into words what the last year has been like,” LeGrand Location Manager for Key Cooperative Matt Brown said.

He said Aug. 10 of 2020 is a day he will never forget. Brown remembers the normal morning beginning with nice weather and a bin capable of storing up to 400,000 bushels of grain was finishing up construction at his site at about 9 a.m.

Between 10:30 and 11 a.m., he received a call from Key Cooperative’s safety director telling him the locations at Kelley and Nevada had taken damage from a storm.

“We had somewhat of a heads up it was coming, but didn’t realize it was going to be what it was,” Brown said.

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO - Local members of the agricultural community are in a better mood this year as opposed to this time last year, when they were surveying damages to their crops and structures from the derecho. Now local cooperatives expect to be operational by this fall’s harvest.

After hunkering employees down inside, the storm hit at 11:45 a.m.

“I’ll remember this forever,” Brown said. “It was dead calm, not an ounce of breeze and then when the wind hit, it went from zero to 100.”

For the next 45 minutes, the derecho ran its course. When it was safe to emerge and assess the damage, Brown realized he lost nearly all of their grain storage. Of the six bins at the LeGrand location, five were totaled, losing 2.2 million bushels of grain storage. The five bins needed to be torn down to their concrete foundation and be completely rebuilt.

With a project of that magnitude, construction would typically take 18 to 24 months. Brown said he’s happy to have his location operational this coming September, completing the project in just over 12 months.

Challenges included shortages of labor and delays in supply chain due to the pandemic, but said beginning the rebuilding process on Aug. 11 helped his location pull through. While the bins have been fully rebuilt, what’s left is installing the grain moving parts to the bins.

T-R FILE PHOTO - Corn in Marshall County was flattened following the widespread devastation of the Aug. 10 derecho of 2020.

“So as doom and gloom as it looked like a year ago today, we took lots of time, we made a lot of decisions, that ultimately we knew we were going to rebuild for the future and not the past like it was,” Brown said.

Given the damage sustained during the derecho, Brown feels Iowa’s agricultural community has come a long way in a short time.

About 100 million bushels of grain storage was lost due to the derecho, according to the Iowa Department of Agriculture, costing up to $300 million to replace or repair.

Mid Iowa Cooperative Chief Operating Officer Bruce Kempf said the effects of the derecho were extremely devastating. Eight of Mid Iowa Cooperative’s locations were damaged, with its location in Midway just outside of Marshall County receiving the most significant damage. Mid Iowa Cooperative lost over 6.3 million bushels of grain storage space.

“We knew immediately that we needed to pick up and move forward,” Kempf said. “When Mother Nature hits there’s not a lot you can do about it, but after she’s passed you got to pick up and put your boots back on and that’s what we did.”

Despite the devastation, he said they will be able to accept grain at their locations this fall with only minor cosmetic repairs left to make.

Kempf said everyone in Iowa’s agricultural community felt the impact of the loss of crop.

An estimate from the American Farm Bureau Federation says Iowa farmers lost $802 million in crops and pasture due to weather in 2020, with farmers having to pay $240 million of those costs out of pocket.

Iowa State University Extension and Outreach Field Agronomist Meaghan Anderson said many Iowa farmers had significantly low yields for 2020 and are facing a high population of volunteer corn this year.

Downed corn from derecho caused many leftover seeds to grow and go unharvested last year, creating a high population of volunteer corn.

Volunteer corn is unintended corn that ends up much shorter, and competes for nutrients and sunlight over the intended corn, which can be critical during an already dry year like 2021. Volunteer corn also attracts unwanted insects which can have an impact on corn in future years.

Anderson said another big issue persisting is the loss of trees, significant damage to farmer’s homes and storage facilities.

“In some cases there were trees that people had on their properties for decades and of course, they were ruined and needed to be taken down and perhaps replaced,” Anderson said. “It will be a long time before things look the way that they did prior to August 10 of last year.”

Local farm owner Paul Veren echoed the same concerns. While he doesn’t feel like he was one of the hardest hit during the derecho, he’s still facing a cost.

Veren lost a third of his corn crop during the derecho, costing him up to $400,000 dollars he estimates with even more cost trying to keep the volunteer corn under control. He said he’s facing over close to 200 times the volunteer corn he would in a typical year.

“The derecho is more than just a one year deal, we’re still all affected by it this year,” Veren said.

He said he’s lucky not to face any significant structural damage, but said the powerful winds are still affecting his structures.

“The worst thing with the derecho is, even if your buildings didn’t blow down it aged them because now they’re weaker,” Veren said.

While he’s expecting a weaker soybean plant this year due to looming drought conditions, he said his corn plant is still looking good this year despite the challenges.

“We’re going to have better crops than we should,” Veren said.

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Contact Trevor Babcock at 641-753-6611 or tbabcock@timesrepublican.com.