Wet conditions leave Ohio planting behind schedule

By Marc Kovac

news@vindy.com

COLUMBUS

Republican state Rep. Bob Peterson had about 34 hours of dry weather last weekend at his family farm in Fayette County.

Like many farmers statewide trying to cope with wetter-than-normal conditions, he took advantage of that window of opportunity

“Sleep wasn’t a priority,” Peterson told an audience Thursday at the Ohio Department of Agriculture. “For the first time in my life, I missed church to sit on a tractor. My father missed church to sit on a tractor. And my brother missed church to sit on a tractor.”

The result of their labor: About one-fourth of this year’s corn crop and one-eighth of the soybean crop at the Peterson farm is in the ground.

That’s well behind the average, leaving the Petersons and other family farmers wondering whether they should scramble to plant, shift their crop options or forgo this year’s bushels and collect insurance payments.

So far, there aren’t any easy answers.

“It’s the most-expensive crop that I will ever plant,” Peterson said. “My land costs went up. My fertilizer costs went up. My seed costs went up. My crop-protection costs went up. ... All the costs are already paid for or borrowed.”

“We have a lot of contracts that need to be filled,” added state Agriculture Director James Zehringer. “We have livestock that needs to be fed, we’ve got fertilizer and chemicals sitting in elevators and co-ops that’s paid for that a lot of people don’t know what to do. We have cover crops that have gone to head; there’s an issue with that.”

Zehringer hosted a spring planting-assessment meeting at the Ohio Department of Agriculture’s headquarters outside Columbus. The session included comments from state and federal agencies that are working with farmers dealing with record precipitation.

The rain has left cropland too wet to plant. James Ramey, director of the National Agricultural Statistics Service’s Ohio field office, said only 11 percent of the state’s expected corn crop and 4 percent of its soybean crop were planted as of last weekend.

Normally, 80 percent of corn and 54 percent of beans would be in the ground by now.

“In the history of Ohio crop progress reports, planting of corn in Ohio has never been this far behind,” Ramey said, adding, “It’s 69 points behind the five-year average and 76 points behind last year, which was really kind of a banner year for planting.”

Farmers have a few weeks to plant fields before yield losses begin to make the exercise economically unfeasible.

National Weather Service projections are calling for warmer and dryer weather over the next couple of weeks.

“We can get a lot done in a short amount of time on the dry fields,” Peterson said.