Ohio Grain Farmers Symposium held in Wilmington

By ANDREA L. CHAFFIN

achaffin@wnewsj.com

Eve­lyn Browning-Garriss, a world-renowned his­tor­i­cal cli­ma­tol­o­gist with Brown­ing Con­sul­tants, was one of the speak­ers at the sym­po­sium. (Photo by Andrea L. Chaffin)

More than 100 farm­ers from across Ohio gath­ered in Wilm­ing­ton in late Decem­ber to learn about issues that impact the agri­cul­ture indus­try the most at the 2012 Ohio Grain Farm­ers Sym­po­sium (OGFS).

This is the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year Clin­ton County has hosted the event, which is held in con­junc­tion with the annual meet­ings of the Ohio Corn & Wheat Grow­ers Asso­ci­a­tion (OCWGA) and Ohio Soy­bean Asso­ci­a­tion (OSA).

“We were really excited because there were a lot of great speak­ers and we were really happy with the crowd,” said Adam Ward, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Ohio Soy­bean Asso­ci­a­tion. “Hav­ing it in Wilm­ing­ton, there are always a lot of folks from south­west Ohio that can make their way over.”

Among the top­ics dis­cussed dur­ing the gen­eral ses­sion were a leg­isla­tive update, overview of the cur­rent Renew­able Fuel Stan­dard and mar­ket val­ues, and a pre­sen­ta­tion from a nation­ally known cli­ma­tol­o­gist regard­ing past, present and future weather trends.

Atten­dees also had the oppor­tu­nity to choose from a vari­ety of break­out ses­sions about weed resis­tance, water qual­ity and the Farm Ser­vice Agency.

“All of the top­ics were pretty inter­est­ing,” Ward said. “But, when you take a step back, there are a lot of farm­ers con­cerned about weed resis­tance issues spring­ing up across the south. Prob­a­bly what hit clos­est to home is what’s going on with Farm Ser­vice Agency and how dif­fer­ent pro­grams will be affected by a lack of a pas­sage of a Farm Bill.”

Jerry Bam­bauer, pres­i­dent of the Ohio Soy­bean Asso­ci­a­tion, said Thursday’s event was one of the “neat­est (he) had attended in a long time.” Bam­bauer, who cur­rently farms 850 acres of corn, soy­beans and wheat in Auglaize County, has been a farmer since the 1970s and an OSA board mem­ber for six years.

“We are try­ing to under­stand some of the things we are com­ing up against, and, as a farmer, I like the updates on how things are pro­gress­ing,” he said.

The dis­cus­sion on water qual­ity was the most help­ful for his oper­a­tion, as he has been deal­ing with the issue increas­ingly for the past two years. Two water­sheds are located near his farm, Bam­bauer said.

“It’s prob­a­bly the main topic com­ing into the com­mod­ity groups,” he said. “We’ve all got to be con­scious of it and we’re all affected by it.”

Other top­ics he felt were espe­cially impor­tant were weed resis­tance (in ref­er­ence to the her­bi­cide resis­tant weed species rag­ing through the South) and the cli­ma­tol­ogy pre­sen­ta­tion by Eve­lyn Brown­ing– Gar­riss, a his­tor­i­cal cli­ma­tol­o­gist with Brown­ing Con­sul­tants who has served clients across the world.

“I’m not really a big global warm­ing per­son, but the cli­ma­tol­ogy (ses­sion) really gave a new per­spec­tive on why things are hap­pen­ing,” he said. “She told us why it’s hap­pen­ing and was able to pre­dict some things in the future — that was pretty neat.”

When asked what next year’s weather will be like com­pared to the droughts of 2012, Bam­bauer reported that due to a “La Nina,” there will be bet­ter tem­per­a­tures and mois­ture for crops, repeat­ing the pre­dic­tion of Browning-Garriss.

Learn­ing from one another is what the sym­po­sium is all about, Ward said.

“One of the big things we can do is share what dif­fer­ent prob­lems farm­ers are hav­ing and their solu­tions,” he said. “As we con­tinue to pro­vide con­sumers with food prod­ucts they want, we all have to make sure we’re learn­ing from each other and pro­vid­ing the best infor­ma­tion we can so that we’re doing our job in agriculture.”

(Andrea Chaf­fin is a staff writer for The Wilm­ing­ton News Journal.)

Posted by Tina Murdock on Jan 10 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.