Todd Hays’ family has been farming in the Monroe City area for seven generations. But the COVID-19 pandemic is causing problems in the farming industry that he said his family has never faced. Hays, the Missouri Farm Bureau vice president, is among thousands of Missouri farmers who have applied for federal relief funding to offset the enormous financial losses caused by the pandemic. According to an April report from the Food and Agriculture Policy Research Institute at the University of Missouri, the net income for farmers is expected to drop $20 billion in 2020. Crop prices were expected to decline by as much as 10% and prices of livestock by as much as 12%. Hays is a livestock farmer. When the pandemic hit Missouri, the plants that usually process his livestock or dairy products reduced their capacity by as much as 75%, he said. That means plants face a backlog. Milk that cannot be processed within a few days will have to be thrown away, Hays said. And when farmers butcher their…