Farmers not expecting the best

BY SUSAN HARTLEY

shartley@dailycall.com

Mike Ullery

Area farm­ers in the midst of har­vest­ing their drought-stricken fields know not to expect their nor­mal yields from the 2012 plant­ing season.

A report released by the U.S. Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture in early Sep­tem­ber said corn pro­duc­tion in Ohio will drop 13 per­cent to a six-year low — the low­est since 2006. Ohio soy­bean pro­duc­tion is expected to be the low­est since 2003.

Accord­ing to Ohio State Uni­ver­sity Exten­sion econ­o­mist Matt Roberts, the 2012 drought has been tough on farm­ers across the Midwest.

“I don’t think this is a sur­prise to any­one, espe­cially grow­ers. For most farm­ers, this is the year that they will lose much of the prof­its they’ve made over five good years,” Roberts said in a press release from OSU extension.

Harold Wat­ters, assis­tant pro­fes­sor and Ohio State Uni­ver­sity Exten­sion field agron­o­mist, said as of mid-September, the Logan County crops look “about like the rest of cen­tral Ohio. Too dry for too long for the corn — it will be from 65 to 80 per­cent of nor­mal yield,” he said. “Soy­beans look bet­ter from late-season rains, but will likely still be off the aver­age by 10 per­cent with some yields maybe off 25–30 percent.”

It’s not all bad news for all grow­ers. The Fiebigers of Miami County said their corn yield at their Brown Town­ship loca­tion will be yield­ing 180–200 bushels per acre. But not all area farm­ers will be as for­tu­nate. It just really depended on how much rain each field received through­out the hot summer.

Accord­ing to a news release from the Ohio State Uni­ver­sity Exten­sion office, the USDA in August cut its pro­jected U.S. corn pro­duc­tion to 10.8 bil­lion bushels, down 17 per­cent from its ear­lier fore­cast of nearly 13 bil­lion bushels and 13 per­cent lower than last year. Soy­bean pro­duc­tion is fore­cast to be down as well, to 2.69 bil­lion bushels, which is 12 per­cent lower than last year, as well as lower than the 3.05 bil­lion bushels the USDA fore­cast last month.

The pro­jec­tions mean this year’s corn pro­duc­tion will be the low­est since 2006, with soy­bean pro­duc­tion at its low­est rate since 2003. The USDA said it expects corn grow­ers to aver­age 123.4 bushels per acre, down 24 bushels from last year, while soy­bean grow­ers are expected to aver­age 36.1 bushels per acre, down 5.4 bushels from last year.

In Ohio, those num­bers trans­late into a pro­jected yield of 126 bushels per acre, which is down 32 bushels per acre from last year for corn. Soy­beans are pro­jected at 42 bushels per acre, down from last year’s 47.5 bushels per acre yield. While yield per acreage is down, higher grain prices are good news for area farmers.

“Prices will go a long way to make up the bushel short­fall and likely give good income for most grow­ers who did not have a big loss on corn yield — some fields only 25–30 per­cent of nor­mal,” Wat­ters said. “Crop insur­ance for most will make up enough on the losses to keep us in busi­ness for another year.”

Siz­ing up the hay crop, Wat­ters said, “I hear and see lit­tle of hay, but the impact to live­stock farm­ers will be the great­est — with grain prices too high to make money off live­stock and hay in short supply.”

How are area coun­ties far­ing with their 2012 grow­ing sea­son? We asked local experts in each of the fol­low­ing counties.

• Auglaize County

John Smith has been the Ohio State Uni­ver­sity Exten­sion edu­ca­tor, agri­cul­ture and nat­ural resources, in Auglaize County for more than 26 years and he can only think of one other drought — 1988 — that would com­pare to this summer’s drought.

The year “1988 was bad, but not quite as bad as this year,” Smith said, not­ing the drought that year was not as severe dur­ing the crit­i­cal pol­li­na­tion period. Besides the lack of rain this sum­mer, the 100-degree plus tem­per­a­tures “dou­bled the effect,” Smith said. He esti­mated the tem­per­a­ture in the mid­dle of corn fields on the 100-degree days to 115 to 120. “You just don’t get pol­li­na­tion at those tem­per­a­tures,” he said.

“There are a lot of stalks in the mid­dle of some fields that are bar­ren,” Smith said.

While the har­vest hadn’t started when Smith was inter­viewed in early Sep­tem­ber, he said was hope­ful that the aver­age corn yield for Auglaize County will be in the 120 bushel an acre range, well below the nor­mal 156 bushel aver­age. How­ever, Smith said some the yield for some farms will be well below the 120-bushel range.

As far as the soy­bean yields, Smith said it’s more dif­fi­cult to judge what effect the recent rains will have. His esti­mate for the soy­bean crop is 35 to 38 bushels an acre, well below the 45–46 aver­age yield for Auglaize County.

It’s not only the grain crops that have suf­fered from the drought, Smith said the hay yields also have lagged well behind aver­age figures.

“The first cut­ting was very good and the sec­ond was a lit­tle less because of the drought, but the third cut­ting was almost non-existent,” Smith said. “Hay is very expen­sive,” Smith said, not­ing the price is in the $300 to $450 per ton range, about triple the nor­mal $100 to $120 per ton paid by dairy farmers.

Smith said higher mar­ket prices — with corn near $8 per bushel and soy­beans at near $17 in early Sep­tem­ber — will help farm­ers make up for the lower yields, but won’t be enough to cover all the losses.

“If you don’t have any­thing to sell, you don’t make any money,” he said.

New Bre­men area grain farmer John Heitkamp esti­mated his corn yield will be well under the 160 bushels per acre he har­vests dur­ing an aver­age year. Heitkamp farms about 1,500 acres.

“Beans might be close to aver­age,” Heitkamp said, not­ing some rains that came in mid-August were too late to boost corn yields, but were in time to help soy­bean development.

The tim­ing of the rains — includ­ing a 3-inch rain in early Sep­tem­ber — made a major dif­fer­ence. “If we could have had that rain at the end of June, it would have been tremen­dous,” Heitkamp said.

While his yields will be down, Heitkamp said farms in the Cold­wa­ter and Union City areas have been hit even worse by the drought.

Heitkamp also said the higher grain prices will help farm­ers weather the drought. He also noted that crop insur­ance will help farm­ers through the cri­sis, esti­mat­ing that 75 to 80 per­cent of Ohio farm­ers are insured. Heitkamp is a crop insur­ance agent.

• Logan County

While some parts of Logan County have been hit hard by this summer’s drought, Darin Leach, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Logan County Farm Ser­vice Agency, said over­all farm­ers in his county have fared bet­ter than their coun­ter­parts in west­ern Ohio.

“The farms in the east­ern half of our county are going to have a decent crop,” Leach said, adding that those in the west­ern por­tions will see much lower yields.

“We’re hop­ing to see a 120 bushels an acre aver­age,” Leach said, not­ing that would be about 25 per­cent under the nor­mal yield of 145 to 150 bushels an acre.

Since the soy­bean fields are still green in most areas of the county, Leach said in mid-September, it’s a lit­tle more dif­fi­cult to gauge the yield for this year’s har­vest. “I’d esti­mate we’ll be around 40 bushels an acre, the nor­mal yield being about 46 to 48 bushels,” he said.

Leach said the crops in Logan County were planted a lit­tle later that in some other area coun­ties, result­ing in later matur­ing crops that ben­e­fited from late-summer rains. He also said some areas received a more rain, espe­cially in east­ern Logan County, that drought-stricken west­ern Ohio and Indiana.

The drought has reduced the yield for hay crops in Logan County.

Higher grain prices will bring some relief for farmers.

“If you have 100 bushels an acre at $8 a bushel it’s as good as 200 bushels at $4 and there isn’t as much wear on equip­ment,” Leach said.

“Some of our dairy farm­ers are scram­bling to have enough hay to make it through the win­ter,” Leach said, not­ing the hay crop yield is well below aver­age in his county

• Cham­paign County

For Cham­paign county crop out­looks Harold Wat­ters, an OSU exten­sion Field Agron­o­mist, states, “We’ve been con­cerned for most of the year now.”

While rain lev­els were favor­able back in April and May the drought over the sum­mer has taken it’s toll. Yields of corn and soy­beans looks to be down by about half.

“We’ve been run­ning on soil mois­ture most of the year, we can hold a fair amount of water in the soil but it’s not enough,” said Wat­ters who sees crops planted on soil above gravel to yield 80 bushels an acre for corn, 30 on soy­beans. The typ­i­cal is above 160 for corn and 50 for soybeans.

Those well-drained soils will man­age a lit­tle bit bet­ter this year but will still be down with corn at 120 bushels estimate.

Rain from Hur­ri­cane Isaac should make an improve­ment for soy­beans, but it’s already too late for corn.

“We’ll see,” said Wat­ters of the rain from Isaac, while explain­ing how the high tem­per­a­tures also means an early har­vest, in the next two to three weeks for corn when the typ­i­cal is end of Octo­ber or later, with soy­beans right behind. “I hope for a dry har­vest so we can get the crop out with­out any more issues.”

• Shelby County

The big prob­lem affect­ing crops this year is a com­mon foe: the weather.

“The weather is the one thing we can’t con­trol,” said Deb­bie Brown of the Shelby County OSU Exten­sion Office. “Unfor­tu­nately this year has not been a good year for crops.”

Brown said corn yields and some other crop post poten­tials are expected to be below aver­age for the fall harvest.

“Corn yields, we antic­i­pate, will be off — big time,” she said. “What I am hear­ing as far as post poten­tials are round 50 to 75 per­cent (for corn), and I have heard as high as a lit­tle over 100.”

Brown said fields in the area have been so vari­able, and noted how inter­est­ing it will be when farm­ers get into them.

“Some­times they look good from the out­side, but not so well in the cen­ter,” Brown said.

She said the soy­bean crop has much bet­ter poten­tial for pro­duc­tion this har­vest­ing season.

“We might get some decent yields, some­where around 40 to 60 per­cent over­all,” she stated. “The rains we had in early August really helped, but there are fields that were not able to take advan­tage of that either.”

She added that hay and for­ages have been short and it might be a “tough year for farm­ers who need to have for­ages to feed their critters.”

• Miami County

Like Shelby County, Miami County also is expect­ing sim­i­lar yields this har­vest­ing sea­son, accord­ing to Den­nis Stryker, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Miami County Farm Agency.

Prior to August rain­fall, hot and dry con­di­tions ear­lier this sum­mer became a con­cern to area farm­ers regard­ing poten­tial har­vest forecasts.

Stryker said most of Miami County has not had a good aver­age of rain since the plant­ing sea­son, and although plant roots were able to root them­selves into the mois­ture in the soil, the hot tem­per­a­tures and the drought con­di­tions last month resulted in more mois­ture out of the plant.

“We’re run­ning out of avail­able mois­ture even for the depth that the roots are going,” Stryker said.

He added that in July there was con­cern with the 100-degree heat and how the plants, when they are short on water, couldn’t keep up with the needs, caus­ing wilting.

Also affect­ing the har­vest sea­son in Miami County regard­ing corn Stryker said the heat and lack of rain caused some corn to tas­sel at the top, which cre­ates prob­lems with pol­li­na­tion in those con­di­tions and restricts the process of pollination.

While the area has received rain since the drought-like con­di­tions ear­lier this year, Stryker said in June that Miami County only took in just a lit­tle over an inch of rain.

One area Miami County farmer, Jim Fiebiger, who exten­sively farms in north­west­ern Miami County and is owner of Fiebiger Seed on Miami-Shelby Road, said the heat in June had a neg­a­tive impact on the county’s crops, includ­ing his own.

“So much heat is just dev­as­tat­ing to the plants,” he said. “The heat dras­ti­cally affects yields, corn more than beans.”

Susan Hart­ley is exc­u­tive editor

of the Piqua Daily Call

Tom Mill­house, Bethany Royer and

Will E Sanders also con­tributed to this report.

Posted by Rachel Lloyd on Oct 4 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.