Ohio farmers grow concerned over dry conditions

LISA CORNWELL

Asso­ci­ated Press

CINCINNATI — While farmer John Hoff­man hopes fore­casts of more hot tem­per­a­tures and extremely dry weather across Ohio the next few weeks will change, he doesn’t hold out a lot of hope for much of his corn crop. And he’s not alone.

Con­cerns are grow­ing among Ohio’s farm­ers as abnor­mally dry con­di­tions and triple-digit tem­per­a­tures scorch already parched fields, stunt­ing much of the corn and soy­bean crops. Swel­ter­ing tem­per­a­tures near 100 or above and lack of rain­fall have farm­ers pro­ject­ing reduced yields that even­tu­ally could mean higher con­sumer prices. With no relief in sight, a state Drought Assess­ment Com­mit­tee was meet­ing Fri­day to begin plan­ning Ohio’s response in a state where food and agri­cul­ture form the top industry.

The U.S. Drought Mon­i­tor, which is based on cli­mate indi­ca­tors sub­mit­ted by fed­eral, state and local offi­cials, shows that more of the United States is in mod­er­ate drought or worse than at any time in the monitor’s 12-year his­tory, accord­ing to National Drought Mit­i­ga­tion Cen­ter offi­cials at the Uni­ver­sity of Nebraska-Lincoln.

The mon­i­tor this week clas­si­fied a few coun­ties in north­west Ohio under severe drought con­di­tions and most of the state in mod­er­ate drought, with other areas abnor­mally dry. In a report for the week end­ing July 1, the U.S. Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture rated 26 per­cent of Ohio’s corn crop and 30 per­cent of its soy­beans in poor or very poor condition.

“Our corn crop is a huge con­cern,” said Hoff­man, who raises the state’s top two crops, along with wheat, on about 2,500 acres in south-central Ohio’s Pick­away County. “Rain could still help, but much of the dam­age is already done.”

Hoff­man cur­rently expects about a 35 per­cent to 50 per­cent reduc­tion in his corn yield, but says it’s too soon to say how much con­sumers might be affected.

North­west Ohio farmer Mark Drewes projects about a 40 per­cent to 45 per­cent reduc­tion in corn yield at his 7,000-acre Wood county farm. “We won’t know for sure until harvest.”

Soy­beans are at a stage where farm­ers “could still have a good crop if we begin to get some rain over the next few weeks,” said Kirk Mer­ritt, pres­i­dent of the Ohio Soy­bean Council.

But corn is reach­ing a crit­i­cal point, with pol­li­na­tion beginning.

“If it’s dry and hot, pol­li­na­tion doesn’t lend itself to fill­ing out the ear and gen­er­at­ing the yield we want,” said Tadd Nichol­son, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Ohio Corn & Wheat Grow­ers Association.

Veg­etable and fruit grow­ers also have been affected, but many have had some rain or have been able to irri­gate, said Matt Klein­henz, exten­sion veg­etable spe­cial­ist with Ohio State Uni­ver­sity. So far, grow­ers have been affected more than con­sumers, but that could change.

As of Thurs­day, state offi­cials had not declared offi­cial drought sta­tus for Ohio, accord­ing to Erica Pitch­ford, a spokes­woman for the Ohio Depart­ment of Agriculture.

Spotty rain­fall can’t be ruled out this month, but it doesn’t look like there will be major improve­ment any time soon, accord­ing to the National Weather Service’s Wilm­ing­ton office.

State cli­ma­tol­o­gist Jef­frey Rogers, a geog­ra­phy pro­fes­sor at Ohio State Uni­ver­sity, says many Ohio areas need at least 5 inches of rain to get back to normal.

“This is the worst dry spell in 10 years,” Rogers said.

But some farm­ers remained cau­tiously opti­mistic, even under cloud­less skies.

“That’s part of the job,” Drewes said.

Posted by AP News on Jul 6 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.