By Carey Gillam
WINFIELD, Missouri (Reuters) - The Mississippi River onFriday burst through an earthen levee that may have beenweakened by burrowing muskrats, inundating a small Missouritown and adding to woes from disastrous U.S. Midwest floodingthat has fuelled fears of soaring world food prices.
The levee break, the 36th in the last two weeks, sent atorrent of muddy water into Winfield, a town of about 800 northof St. Louis, where officials said about 100 homes and 1,700acres (688 hectares) of crop land would be submerged.
A second section of the same levee broke later on Fridayand volunteers hurriedly began piling sandbags at a fall-backposition.
Officials said the initial morning break was in an areawhere muskrats, semi-aquatic rodents common in U.S. lakes andstreams, had been digging.
"We believe the original breach was attributed to animalburrows created sometime in the past" and although the holeswere plugged "the area remained problematic," the LincolnCounty Emergency Operations Command said in a statement.
Scattered heavy rains again were reported in the region onFriday and forecasters warned more flooding was likely becausethe sodden ground can absorb little more. The flooding hascaused billions of dollars in damage.
"It's a tragic, devastating disaster," Russ Kremer, a grainand livestock farmer who is president of the Missouri FarmersUnion, said of the worst Midwest floods in 15 years.
He said towns like Winfield and hundreds of thousands ofacres of prime crop land submerged in the region represent "acomplete loss for a lot of people. It will have a significanteffect on the market."
Heavy rains this month have caused more than $6 billion (3billion pounds) in crop damage in Iowa, Illinois, Indiana,Missouri and Nebraska, a key growing region in the world'sbiggest grain and feed exporter, according to the American FarmBureau Federation.
Corn prices hit a record at the Chicago Board of Trade inovernight screen trading on Friday at $8.25 per bushel in theJuly 2009 contract, more than double the 40-year average.
Fears that as many as 5 million acres (2 million hectares)of corn and soybeans have been lost to flooding have pushedcorn and livestock prices to the record highs.
Corn is the main feed for livestock, is used for ethanolfuel and contributes to hundreds of other food and industrialproducts throughout the economy.
Before the floods, stockpiles of corn in the United States-- which ships 54 percent of all world corn exports -- hadalready been projected to fall to 13-year lows next year.
So the effect on global food prices as U.S. prices rise hasalarmed everyone from central bankers to food aid groups.
FARMERS LOSING HOPE
Iowa officials said this week at least 2.5 million acres(1.01 million hectares) of corn and soybeans, well above 10percent of planted acreage in the top U.S. producing state forthose crops, needs to be replanted. But it is too late in theseason for good yields on replanted fields.
Jason Roose, an Iowa corn and soybean farmer who is ananalyst for U.S. Commodities in Des Moines, said he had plannedto replant his acreage this week.
"But it didn't happen. I'm not able to do anything, andeveryone else around here is in the same boat," he said.
The Des Moines Register reported that the first half of2008 was the wettest in Iowa since record-keeping began in the19th Century, with nearly two feet (61 cm) of rain.
In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where 4,000 homes were flooded twoweeks ago, the city's broken sewage treatment plant wasreported allowing 25 million gallons (94 million litres) of rawsewage to drain into the Cedar River daily.
Chemicals from farm fields and other toxic substances leftbehind as waters recede have created a potential health threat.Drinking water supplies remain unpolluted in most areas.
The Midwest storms and torrential rains have killed 24people since late May. More than 38,000 people have been drivenfrom their homes, mostly in Iowa where 83 of 99 counties havebeen declared disaster areas.
Federal disaster officials said they have handed out morethan 13 million sandbags in the region, a quantity that ifplaced end-to-end would stretch from San Francisco toWashington, D.C. The size and speed of flood aid and relief wasshaping up as a political issue in a U.S. election year.
(Additional reporting by Lisa Shumaker and Sam Nelson inChicago. Writing by Michael Conlon in Chicago. Editing by PeterBohan and Vicki Allen)
