NEWS

Ag Beat: Farmers dreamed big this spring

Todd Hill
Reporter

BUCYRUS – An extremely wet June across most of Ohio's 88 counties has set this growing season's row crops back substantially, with the likelihood of record yields now greatly diminished.

That would be in marked contrast to how the season started.

"Ohio field crop planting began behind schedule due to cool temperatures and wet fields late into the spring. Conditions improved in May, however, allowing producers to accelerate their planting pace to be ahead of the five-year average by the end of May," said Cheryl Turner, state statistician for the Ohio field office of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Agricultural Statistics Service.

"While planted area for corn and wheat continued a downward trend in Ohio, producers planted a record high of soybean acres."

Specifically, Ohio farmers planted 5 million acres of soybeans this year, up from 4.8 million last year and 4.5 million in 2013, the USDA said. If they're able to harvest 4.99 million of those acres this fall, that will be a record — but that's a big if given all the rain we've had.

The USDA said 3.5 million acres of corn were planted in the state this year, down from 3.7 million in 2014 and 3.9 million in 2013. Winter wheat numbers also were down, with this year's 550,000 acres lower than both last year (620,000 acres) and the year before (660,000).

Most of the corn and soybeans planted in the state are biotech varieties, resistant to herbicides or insects or both, but the percentage planted barely budged this year compared with 2013, Turner said.

Biotech varieties accounted for 85 percent of the corn acreage in Ohio this year, down from 86 percent last year, while biotech soybean acres climbed from 90 percent in 2013 to 91 percent this year.

Turning to grain already harvested, the USDA said that, as of June 1, Ohio corn stocks came to 194.6 million bushels, 9 percent below the same point last year, with about half still stored on farms.

Soybean stocks amounted to just 46.3 million bushels, with 17 million of those bushels still on the farm. But overall stocks were 99 percent higher than in 2013, the USDA said. Wheat stocks on June 1 came to 29.1 million, up 7 percent from last year, with nearly all of it in commercial storage.

The recent wet field conditions, not just in Ohio but across the Midwestern farm belt, have gone a long way toward turning grain prices back upward, following several months at depressed levels, though they still have a way to go to get back to the elevated levels of two years ago.

The USDA said Ohio farmers received an average of $3.71 per bushel for May corn, down 12 cents from April and $1.18 lower than a year earlier. But by the end of June corn was selling for more than $4.00 a bushel.

May soybeans in the state averaged $9.71 a bushel, according to the USDA, 12 cents lower than in August and $5.29 below the year before. But soybeans are now going for well above $10 a bushel. Finally, winter wheat prices averaged $4.90 a bushel in May, 49 cents lower than in April and $1.81 below last May's average price.

Turner's office has released numbers showing that Ohio's hog and pig inventory has recovered very nicely from 2013's porcine epidemic diarrhea virus, which claimed the lives of scores of piglets last year.

As of June 1, the inventory was up 400,000 from a year ago in the state to 2.37 million head. Breeding hog inventory was 12 percent higher than last June while market hog inventory was up by 21 percent.

WOTUS rule

Last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's new Clean Water rule — still referred to as the Waters Of The United States rule by many in the agricultural community — was entered into the Federal Register, setting it on a path to become law 60 days later.

The rule expands the agency's regulatory oversight over what it classifies as navigable waters, but the Ohio Farm Bureau thinks the rule goes too far.

"I'm not sure a ditch that only drains water whenever there's been a heavy rain event should necessarily be considered a navigable water," bureau spokesman Joe Cornely said.

"There are so many consequences of the EPA being able to, in essence, become land managers of this. We're not opposed to the goal. We know we need fishable, swimmable, drinkable water. But these agencies should only have the authority that Congress grants them, and we believe that they've overstepped."

thill3@nncogannett.com

419-563-9225

Twitter: @ToddHillMNJ