Volunteer for food safety certification

By TONY NYE nye.1@osu.edu Fruit and veg­etable pro­duc­ers of all sizes now have the option of par­tic­i­pat­ing in a vol­un­tary food safety cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gram in Ohio. The Ohio Pro­duce Mar­ket­ing Agree­ment (OPMA) offers pro­duc­ers food safety stan­dards and an oppor­tu­nity to attain food safety cer­ti­fi­ca­tion through third party inspec­tions. Born from grow­ing con­cerns about fruit and […]

New rules placed on moving livestock across state lines

By TONY NYE nye.1@osu.edu A new rule estab­lish­ing gen­eral reg­u­la­tions for improv­ing the trace­abil­ity of U.S. live­stock mov­ing between states became final on Dec. 20 and will become effec­tive on March 11. The USDA has estab­lished the ani­mal dis­ease trace­abil­ity rule to help tar­get when and where ani­mal dis­ease occurs and to facil­i­tate a rapid response […]

OSU Extension announces Ohio New and Small Farm Colleges

By TONY NYE nye.1@osu.edu Are you a small farm landowner won­der­ing what to do with your acreage? Are you inter­ested in explor­ing options for land uses but not sure where to turn or how to begin? Have you con­sid­ered adding an agri­cul­tural or hor­ti­cul­tural enter­prise but you just aren’t sure what is required, from an equip­ment, labor, […]

Can you defer your crop insurance check?

By TONY NYE nye.1@osu.edu The year has been of the wacky kind when we think back to what the grow­ing sea­son was and the now the results of the har­vest sea­son. Many areas of Ohio and other Mid­west­ern states were hit hard by the 2012 drought. How­ever, yields for south­west­ern Ohio as a whole I think […]

Drought-stressed corn may exhibit poor stalk strength

By TONY NYE nye.1@osu.edu The 2012 har­vest is in full swing and if weather holds, this could be a har­vest com­pleted ear­lier than nor­mal. Yields will vary and be all over the board due to the exces­sive heat and very dry con­di­tions at many crit­i­cal times through­out the grow­ing sea­son. Ohio State Uni­ver­sity agron­omy spe­cial­ists, Peter […]

The drought of 2012 has stressed us enough and our crops to this point of the sea­son, but the addi­tion of extreme tem­per­a­tures poses an addi­tional stress to our bod­ies. As of right now the “Dog Days of Sum­mer” are here and there seems to be no end in sight for any relief both for […]

Family farm child labor propsal withdrawn

By TONY NYE The Depart­ment of Labor is announced in late April they would with­draw the pro­posed rule deal­ing with chil­dren under the age of 16 who work in agri­cul­tural voca­tions. The U.S. Depart­ment of Labor at that time, issued the fol­low­ing state­ment regard­ing the with­drawal of a pro­posed rule deal­ing with chil­dren who work in […]

Hello. Welcome to ACRES

It started as a seed of an idea by Ohio Com­mu­nity Media group pub­lisher Pam Stricker. Last Decem­ber, all of our news­pa­pers under her lead­er­ship met to dis­cuss this idea — a monthly farm­ing and agri­cul­ture pub­li­ca­tion aimed at the farm­ers and those who serve their needs in our south­ern Ohio region. It would be […]