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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