Imagine if you had just won the lottery, what a great day. But, unfortunately, the Ohio Lottery Commission imposed a new rule. You get a lump sum of money right up front in a huge stack of one-dollar bills, but you have to put that massive stack of money out in a field somewhere. Once in place, the lottery officials mandate that you have to dig a shallow moat around the money and you can only remove it from the pile one shopping cart at a time when the moat is completely dry.
You are so thrilled about winning the lottery, you don’t worry too much about this minor inconvenience at first, but then it starts raining. It rains for three days in a row and you have only had the chance to get just couple of shopping cart loads out of the field. The moat is overflowing and it rained so hard that some of the money washed away.
The sun finally comes out and the wind picks up, blowing more of the lottery winnings out of your grasp. After long days of waiting, you can finally get back over your dry moat, racing to get as many cartfuls of money out before it starts raining again.
After another day of showers, you are forced to sit and watch as a pair of deer and a fat raccoon shred dozens of dollars and trample many more in the muddy ground. You’re beside yourself as the winds pick up again. Finally the ground dries up and you rush out to get as much as you can and run it to the bank to make a deposit only to find that the bank is closed for the day.
As you can imagine, this process would be pretty frustrating, but it is not much different from the challenges farmers are facing this fall. The extended cool, wet summer that most of Ohio experienced this year produced strong yields in both corn and soybeans, but the resulting slow development has held up harvest. Even once the crops mature, the cool, wet harvest season is keeping farmers from harvesting those good yields. To make matters worse, every rain that re-wets the drying crops can hurt their quality and condition; winds that come through can blow the crops over and make them unharvestable. In addition, the longer the crop stands out in the field, the more opportunities pests have to destroy it.
According to the National Agricultural Statistics Service, as of Oct. 26, only 90% of the state’s corn crop was mature, compared with the 99% average over the last five years. Just 17% of the corn crop was harvested by Oct. 26 compared to over half at the same time last year. Soybeans are typically ready for harvest before the corn crop and 75% of soybeans were harvested by Oct. 26 compared to 87% last year.
In general, farmers are fairly pleased with their crop yields this fall, but frustrated about the challenging harvest conditions. Many farmers aim to be finished with harvest by Thanksgiving, but it looks like there will be plenty of Christmas corn stalks left standing this year.
Mark Kemp, who farms in Union County, had just about finished up with soybean harvest by Oct. 26, but was just getting started with corn harvest.
“I’m still quite a bit behind where we normally are. I think I finished [harvest] in late October or early November last year, so I am really behind this year,” Kemp said. “I shelled corn over the weekend to get it started. I don’t know anyone else who really has much corn off. I had 180 or 190 bushels in the high ground and 220 to 230 in the low ground or better. It is good corn, but I’ve only [harvested] 20 to 25 acres.”
Kemp’s soybean yields are also very strong at a farm average of around 59 bushels per acre. But, as harvest drags on through this month, concerns about crop loss from pests, diseases and the weather will increase.
Farming is quite a bit like the lottery, but it is more expensive to play. The chances of success are higher with farming, but even hitting it big is no guarantee of success until the crop is out of the field and sold at a profitable price, which will be challenging this year. Hopefully for consumers, the farmers and weather will end up with a winning combination this year.
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