COLUMBUS, Ohio – Farmers throughout Ohio hurried to harvest as much as they could before cold weather arrived.
According to the United State Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Statistics Center Great Lakes Region, “mild and dry days throughout most of last week supported late-season harvest progress.
Both soybean and corn production are ahead of where they were this time last year. The same is true for the five-year average.
Spectrum News agriculture expert Andy Vance said multiple factors point to the gains.
“One, is it mature enough? So some of that starts back in the spring. Did we get it in the ground in a timely manner? The other part of it is, how many days do you actually have to get the work done? Sometimes, fall can be wet and rainy. Sometimes it can be crisp and bright. This has been a really good fall in terms of getting work done. Part of that is because things are a little abnormally dry. Actually, one of the things that the state statistician noted in this week’s report is the percentage of Ohio’s counties that are in abnormally dry conditions,” Vance said.
In her report, State Statistician Cheryll Turner said, “Abnormally dry conditions or worse were observed in 88.3 percent of the State, up from 85.6% during the previous week.”
According to Vance, while dry weather may have helped corn and soybean production, it may have negatively affected the condition of winter wheat.
“This week’s report says 55% of the crop is good to excellent. So they break down the condition in terms of is it very poor, poor, fair, good, or excellent? Generally speaking, we talk about ratings of good [and] excellent. So better than half, but just barely better than half. This comes back to that dryness. So you think about winter wheat we plant after we take off some fall harvested crop. So take off corn and soybeans, we follow back up with winter wheat. We plant that. The wheat lays dormant all spring long and then we harvest it next summer. And that’s, you know, an important cover crop in some cases, but it’s been an important primary crop as well because we haven’t had enough moisture through that emergence process. That’s part of why you’re seeing that crop condition,” Vance said.
According to the USDA, Ohio’s soybean harvest reached 96%. Corn harvest for grain reached 87% and winter wheat was 83% emerged.
