Ohio
‘Off by quite a bit’: Ohio farmers nearly done with meager harvest weeks ahead of schedule
Drought in Ohio: How farms, ecosystems will be hurt by ongoing drought
A dried-up wetland is just one sign of the drought plaguing Ohio farms and ecosystems.
Ohio’s corn and soybean harvest is ahead of schedule and much smaller than farmers would have liked.
Some drought-stricken fields barely produced 20% of their potential, according to Amanda Douridas, the Ohio State University Extension Educator for Madison County who is also part of the state’s agronomic crops team.
“They’re really all over the board,” Douridas said. “It’s hard to put a finger on it because different areas held up really well, considering the drought, and others, depending on the soil type, did not.”
An Oct. 28 USDA crop weather report predicted that Ohio’s harvest would “wrap up in the next coupleweeks,” about 14 days sooner than normal.
As of Oct. 27, the state’s corn was 72% harvested, which was well ahead of the five-year average of 38% for the same timeframe. Soybeans were 90% harvested, compared to the five-year average of 74%.
Drought forced Ohio’s harvest to start two weeks early
Ohio’s lack of rain stressed crops to the point they stopped getting bigger and instead focused on making sure their seed would be complete enough to germinate this coming spring.
Of the Buckeye State’s 88 counties, 87 were highlighted as parched on the U.S. Drought Monitor map throughout most of the summer.
Crops withered in August and were so dry by the first week of September that many of the state’s farmers began their harvest two weeks early.
An early harvest for corn and soybean producers is never a good sign, especially in an age of modern genetics in which crops are designed to grow for as many days as possible.
‘It wasn’t even worth harvesting’
The state’s fields have not been affected equally by this year’s drought.
“You get into some pockets where it was off by quite a bit,” Douridas said.
West of Columbus, in Madison County, timely rains allowed many crops to flourish at crucial points in their growing phase.
“I’ve talked to farmers who didn’t really see that much impact at all with corn,” Douridas said. “Soybeans, maybe a little bit lower.”
But growers less than an hour away in Pickaway County, which is south of Columbus, are bringing in the worst harvest they’ve seen in their lives.
“Some of their sandy ground, they were harvesting 50 bushels of corn per acre,” Douridas said. “In a good year, and they’re irrigating, they’re averaging 250 bushels.”
Soybean yields have also varied drastically statewide from one field to the next.
A few farmers have chosen not to harvest their double crop, or second crop, of soybeans, which were planted over the summer after the wheat harvest.
“They were expecting severely low yields,” Douridas said. “It wasn’t even worth harvesting.”
‘Farmers are seeing less profit’
The reduced yields have come while farmers are seeing a decrease in commodity prices and an increase in inputs like fertilizer, herbicide and about everything else it takes to produce a crop.
Despite the financial hardship, most operations will likely turn just enough profit that they can afford to do it all again in 2025.
“I don’t see a lot of people going under from just this one year of drought,” Douridas said.
Once they put their equipment away at the end of autumn, growers statewide will likely turn their attention to land-rental contracts that are expected to increase by about 3% ahead of spring planting.
“Land owners are paying more taxes, but farmers are seeing less profit,” Douridas said. “That’s going to be something we need to figure out how to balance.”
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Cincinnati Reds legend and well-known gambler Pete Rose was possibly more than just curious about Ohio State football’s 2012 season when he texted Buckeyes coach Urban Meyer.
Appearing on “The Triple Option” show with Alabama running back Mark Ingram May 6, Meyer told a story about his relationship with Rose.
After OSU hired Meyer, the Reds asked him to throw out the first pitch at a game. Meyer threw to his son, Nathan, and walked into the dugout, where Rose, MLB’s all-time hit leader, was waiting to greet him.
“I couldn’t get enough talking about ‘Big Red Machine,’ and he wanted to talk college football,” Meyer said on the podcast, explaining how the two spoke for hours and exchanged numbers.
Meyer said that during his first season, Rose texted him early on. He wanted information about the team, like news on Braxton Miller’s shoulder injury.
“I told that to someone, and they said, ‘You’re an idiot. Do you know he’s trying to get information from you for gambling, and you could get in trouble?’ ” Meyer said.
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Though Meyer asserted that he never disclosed much, he started to steer the conversations clear of college football after he realized Rose potentially wanted information for gambling.
The two had another conversation in Las Vegas, where Rose told Meyer he gambled daily after retiring.
Rose was banned from baseball for betting on the sport, something he admitted to in his 2004 autobiography. Rose was reinstated in 2025 and so is considered eligible for the Hall of Fame.
Still baseball’s most prolific hitter (4,256 hits), Rose died in 2024.
GIRARD, Ohio (WKBN) – Over 100 athletes came together for the 5th Annual Trumbull County Special Olympics Invitational Saturday morning in Girard.
These athletes represent five different schools across Trumbull County to compete and spread the message of inclusion, achievement, and sportsmanship.
The Invitational continued its long-standing tradition of honoring the legacy of Randy Suchanek while celebrating the dedication and accomplishments of Special Olympics athletes throughout the region.
“You can hear all the excitement for this, for the athletes that are here today,” said superintendent Bryan O’Hara. “They work hard all year long to participate. We’ve always worked hand in hand with the rotary to get this accomplished is a lot of work behind the scenes.”
Participating schools included Ashtabula, Geauga, Columbiana, Kent-Portage and Trumbull Fairhaven
“There’s a lot of nice participation from girard students as you see behind us, and a lot of participation from the community helping out,” Girard-Liberty Rotary co-president Andy Kish added.
O’Hara added that the event keeps everything in perspective, seeing the athletes compete in the spirit of fun, along with the courage and determination that they show.
Alex Sorrells contributed to this report.
Out of prison, Indiana’s caviar king back on Ohio River to find fishing holes taken
David Cox, of English, Indiana, says once he began setting his nets again after a two-year prison sentence and a three-year ban on commercial fishing, all of his once-secret spots were taken.
Can you eat fish from the Ohio River?
In 1975, future presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, then governor of Massachusetts, bet 20 pounds of New England cod that the Red Sox would defeat the Reds in the World Series. If things went south for Boston, Ohio governor James Rhodes promised to send Dukakis 10 pounds of Lake Erie perch and 10 pounds of Ohio River catfish. The Reds ended up winning and the cod was sent to the Convalescent Home for Children, in Cincinnati.
At the time, people were still eating catfish from the Ohio without too much concern. The fish were also served at several restaurants along the river.
There were warnings in 1977
But two years later, in 1977, The Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission released the results of a study of contaminants found in the tissues of Ohio River fish. They warned anglers in cities such as Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, Wheeling and Gallipolis that man-made chemicals known as PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, had been discovered in the river fish. Later, high concentrations of mercury were discovered in the fish, too.
Thanks to the Clean Water Act of 1972 and the environmental regulations that followed, the river is now cleaner than it was in the seventies. And it’s still teeming with a variety of fish, including catfish, striped bass, drum and black bass, among other species.
But even though PCBs were banned by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1979, they are still found in fish, since they remain in the sediment in the bottom of the river. “Organisms live in the sediment and fish feed on them,” Rich Cogen, the executive director of the Ohio River Foundation told The Enquirer. Mercury is also a big problem, according to Cogen.
So the question is: Can you eat fish caught in the Ohio River?
The short answer is yes. But it depends on what species you are eating and where along the river you caught it.
There are also very strict limitations on how frequently you should eat them, according to the web site for the Ohio Sport Fish Consumption Advisory, part of the Ohio Department of Health.
In areas of the river between the Belleville Lock, located 204 miles downstream from the river’s origins in Pittsburgh, to the Indiana border, the advisory agency currently recommends consuming Ohio River fish no more than once a month max. That area includes Adams, Brown, Clermont, Gallia, Hamilton, Lawrence, Meigs and Scioto counties.
Here’s where to check
Recommendations change throughout the year, but you can keep up by visiting the Ohio Department of Health’s Sport Fish Consumption Advisory page, which provides updated information on when certain fish, usually bottom feeders such as carp, are deemed too dangerous to eat at all.
Here’s who should take a pass on Ohio River fish
The agency also warns that people who are more likely to have health effects from eating contaminated fish, includingchildren younger than 15 years old, pregnant women and women who are planning to become pregnant to avoid Ohio River fish altogether.
Just because you have to limit the amount of fish you eat, doesn’t mean the river is a bad place for fishing, as long as you limit your intake or do catch-and-release fishing. Just make sure you have a proper fishing license before casting your line.
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