Illinois Mud Traps Farmers, Govt Funds Them to Stay Sunk
In June 2024, Steve Williams and daughter Brandy Renshaw staged a muddy family reunion when their tractors found the infamous Dogtooth Bend quicksand worthy of an Indiana Jones sequel. After the 2019 Mississippi flood gifted them millions of tons of sand and Medicare-age gray hair, Steveâs offer to retire 1,200 acres at $3,200 an acre became no-hopers in a federal program with less cash flow than a Snapchat IPO, buried in bureaucracy lasting through Trump and Bidenâs terms. Meanwhile, Uncle Sam played farm fairy, tossing $35 billion at Illinois crops over three decadesâmostly to keep farmers planting, even on failed levee lands where slipping into the mud is just the down payment on the disaster buffet. Itâs a bureaucratic mud-wrestling match where the government advises abandonment but simultaneously pays for persistence, except everyoneâs stuck â including Dave Hiatt, the USDA biologist now on paid leave thanks to Trumpâs workforce cuts.
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Stuck tractors, aging farmers, and government buyouts so slow you could grow a soybean crop waiting. Illinois just turned flood tragedy into Sisyphean mud-wrestling, with Uncle Sam demanding farmers plant anyway while drowning in paperwork.
Who needs Netflix when you have Dogtooth Bend mud dramas? Watch grown adults wrestle tractors out of quicksand while Congress debates how to politely ignore decades of flood damage.
Congress gave Illinois farmers $3,200 an acre to quit farming flood mud, but the paperworkâs so slow, theyâre stuck farming mud AND bureaucracy. Itâs like Sisyphus but with corn.
Source: Propublica | Published: 9/4/2025 | Author: by Molly Parker, Capitol News Illinois, Julia Rendleman for ProPublica and Lylee Gibbs, Saluki Local Reporting Lab
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