Predicted low corn yield in Sandusky Co.

By Becky Brooks

news@gazettepublishingco.com

The drought has hit the 2012 corn crop through­out North Cen­tral Ohio pretty hard but area agents have hopes that recent rains could still save the soybeans.

Ag offi­cials, though, pre­dict the har­vest will be early this year and final losses will depend on how much rain keeps com­ing into September.

Todd Warner, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the San­dusky County Farm Ser­vices Agency, said the county Ag emer­gency board met at the end of July.

“Yes it is affect­ing San­dusky County,” he commented.

“First of all, through the end of July our rain­fall was down… We were at 49 per­cent,” he said about the nor­mal rain­fall for the area from April 1 through July 30.

San­dusky County has nor­mal rain­fall for the first quar­ter of the year.

“At this point, we put in a 30 per­cent loss on corn, and that may be con­ser­v­a­tive,” he added about esti­mates by the emer­gency board. He added its expec­ta­tions are a 20 per­cent loss on soy­beans and 50 per­cent loss on hay.

“Our dol­lar loss just on those three crops is going to be just over $30 mil­lion,” Warner stated recently. The loss esti­mate is based on 2011 crop prices when corn in the region was sell­ing for $6.40 a bushel.

The Sun­rise Coop­er­a­tive Clyde grain facil­ity is cur­rently pay­ing nearly $8 a bushel for corn, Warner pointed out, not­ing the loss in crops due to drought may be far higher.

He added the Ag emer­gency board only took three main crops into account.

In a typ­i­cal year there are 68,484 acres of corn in San­dusky County with an aver­age yield of 159 bushels per acre. Using those fig­ures — the corn loss could be $21 mil­lion alone based on last year’s grain price, he said.

“Nobody really knows; we are just try­ing at this point to come up with our best guess,” Warner added.

Soy­beans in the county aver­age 44 bushels per acre, he added.

“We believe the high­est poten­tial yield for soy­beans has passed us,” he said in late August.

Warner also pre­dicted that wheat also would be down — but not because of drought — but instead the very wet fall in 2011 the area saw.

San­dusky and Seneca County Ag Exten­sion Agent Mark Koenig said, “There was a dis­cus­sion in Seneca.

Corn in North­ern San­dusky County is fail­ing to fill in the top third and local Ag offi­cials are pre­dict­ing a 30 per­cent loss in pro­duc­tion for 2012.

“They are run­ning pretty close to what we are think­ing in San­dusky County.”

“Their con­di­tions are just a lit­tle dryer than what we are here,” he added.

Koenig said the final out­come on corn will depend when farm­ers were able to get it into the fields and if it can ben­e­fit from the mid-August rains in the region.

“We’ve just had these really nice rains. The beans seem to shoot again,” he said.

Koenig said that pro­duc­ers with whom he has talked to have seen ears short or fill­ing in the mid­dle and not on the ends.

“It was really hot when they were sup­posed to fill,” he added about July’s record heat of 100-degree days.

The ears may look good on the stalks but when it is husked down, he warned, they have not filled in.

Another fac­tor play­ing into the final loss of crops in the two coun­ties will be the soil types, he added.

San­dusky County Farm Bureau pres­i­dent Scott Chalfin lives in the far south­west cor­ner of San­dusky County in Scott Town­ship near the Wood and Seneca county borders.

“From a soy­bean stand­point, I’m not sure the drought will affect us a lot,” he said. From his per­spec­tive, he said could be down 20–25 percent.

Chalfin said that he sees the aver­age pro­duc­tion of corn to be closer to 170 bushels an acre — higher than what the Ag emer­gency board projected.

“Our goal as pro­duc­ers is to pro­duce 200 plus bushels per acre,” he added.

The future of the corn crop is already writ­ten, he added.

“Soy­beans — you got two, three weeks,” Chalfin said about them being ready by some­time in early September.

The Farm Bureau pres­i­dent said that from what he has heard in Wood County — the sit­u­a­tion is about the same as in San­dusky County. Chalfin works in agron­omy for Sun­rise Coop­er­a­tive, he noted.

For Erie and Huron coun­ties, the farm ser­vice agen­cies have a com­bined office in Nor­walk where Diane Strouse is the director.

“On July 3, they said we are blessed; we are going to be good,” she shared about the out­look for crops in her two counties.

“July changed every­thing and now a 30 to 40 per­cent loss in corn is being pre­dicted,” she added.

Strouse said the rain has not been con­sis­tent in the two coun­ties so the per­cent­age of loss will vary by farm and field.

She com­mented, how­ever, the losses in the two North Cen­tral coun­ties will not be as bad as other sec­tions of Ohio.

Becky Brooks is the man­ag­ing edi­tor of The Belle­vue Gazette & OCM Lake Erie Cen­tral Division.

Posted by Becky Brooks on Aug 29 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.