Jerry Gill's cattle walk near a feeding trough in a pasture at his Kibler, Ark., farm last month. Spring flooding followed by summer drought conditions have hurt farm operations around the state.

KIBLER, Ark. — In a year when severe drought scorched the Southwest, a hurricane drowned crops in the East, and river flooding swamped farms in the Midwest, one of the worst places to be a farmer might be just west of the Mississippi River.

Not only have Arkansas and Louisiana experienced both drought and flooding, but in some cases, so have individual farmers. The cost of the bad weather could reach $1 billion.

Jerry Gill estimated he lost $100,000. Flooding submerged the 150 acres where he usually plants corn and soybeans about 150 miles northwest of Little Rock. Then the drought dried up the pastures his cattle graze. At one point, Gill resorted to running a hose from his house so the skinny animals would have enough to drink.

“It’s tough to grow anything when the temperature’s 114,” said Gill, 64, of Kibler.

Flooding alone caused more than $500 million in losses in Arkansas, and tallies from the drought and other bouts of bad weather aren’t available yet, the state’s farm bureau said. In Louisiana, flooding and drought resulted in an estimated $440 million in losses and increased production costs.

The damage is significant given that the two states typically produce more than 60 percent of the nation’s rice. Arkansas, the nation’s leading rice grower, lost about 300,000 acres this year to flooding, mostly from rivers. That’s about 10 percent of the total U.S. production, the farm bureau said.

All of the two states were declared primary agricultural disaster areas. The only other state designated as such was tiny Rhode Island, whose farmers were swamped by Tropical Storm Irene.

In a letter to Arkansas’ governor, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack noted the state had been hit by one thing after the next, including “hail, high winds, flooding, widespread drought, and excessive heat.”

Gill never planted soybeans after heavy rain and flooding drowned the corn he put in the ground and left his fields looking like the deep end of a swimming pool.

“Then, from one day to the next, the rain shut off and there was no more,” he said.

In two months, June and July, less than an inch of rain fell in Fort Smith, the closest place where precise records are kept, the National Weather Service said. The only thing in Gill’s fields now are fuzzy green caterpillars, beetles and waist-high weeds.

“None of which there’s a market for,” Gill said.