Drought 2012: What it means for Morrow County

By Randa Wagner –

This year will be remem­bered for many rea­sons: the Olympic games, the fall of a sports icon, and a mas­sacre in a movie the­ater. It will also be remem­bered for the drought.

A record amount of corn was planted in the coun­try this year — 96.4 mil­lion acres — and farm­ers were exul­tant. Then it got hot… and stopped raining.

As of August 9, a full one-third of the con­ti­nen­tal U.S. was in extreme or excep­tional drought, includ­ing 69% of Iowa, 81% of Illi­nois and 94% of Mis­souri. On August 1, more than half of all U.S. coun­ties (1,584 in 32 states) were des­ig­nated pri­mary dis­as­ter areas for this grow­ing sea­son, accord­ing to the USDA.

At that time the USDA’s National Agri­cul­tural Sta­tis­tics Ser­vice reported nearly half of the U.S. corn crop was rated poor to very poor, 37% of soy­beans were also rated poor and nearly three-quarters of U.S. Cat­tle acreage is in drought-affected areas. This prompted Agri­cul­ture Sec­re­tary Tom Vil­sack on July 26 to open up 3.8 mil­lion acres of con­ser­va­tion land for ranch­ers to use for pastorage.

Where does this leave Mor­row County and cen­tral Ohio?

How Mor­row County farm­ers are doing as a whole depend partly on when their crops were planted, Mor­row County OSU Exten­sion Agent Jeff McCutcheon said Friday.

“Pol­li­na­tion is the crit­i­cal time,” he explained. “I’ve had some dis­cus­sions with farm­ers about mak­ing silage if it was planted late or there are other issues. If it was pol­li­nated at the time when it was hot and dry, there’s not much ear.”

Mor­row County farmer Anthony Bush, who is also vice pres­i­dent of the Ohio Corn and Wheat Grower’s Asso­ci­a­tion, put his corn in May 5.

“I chose not to go out real early,” he said in an inter­view July 12. “It was cold when guys were plant­ing and I just didn’t think plant­ing corn in my Carharts was the right thing to do. Guys did it, it looked good early on and it’s tas­seled out. It might be okay. Time will tell.”

He said corn planted May 5 should have tas­seled out in mid-July. In the case of the field that bor­dered his yard, the tas­sel­ing was spo­radic, and Bush pointed out a lot of the tas­sel­ing that was vis­i­ble was over the tile string.

At that time, north cen­tral Ohio needed almost 5 inches of rain just to get it out of drought con­di­tion, and cen­tral Ohio needed 7.5 inches.

“So much depends on the weather,” McCutcheon said. “Last fall things didn’t dry down fast enough because it was wet and we didn’t have the sun­light. Last year was wet­ter than nor­mal and this year was drier than nor­mal. I’ve been in Ohio 17 years and they keep telling me ‘in a nor­mal year…” I haven’t seen it!”

Don’t be fooled by the hun­dreds of rows of green stalks and golden tas­sels atop them as you drive through the countryside.

“Some of the corn that has tassled has no ear under it to pol­li­nate,” Bush explained. “The tas­sel shoot, ear shoots and silks – each silk is attached to what even­tu­ally becomes a ker­nel of corn. The pollen comes down from the tassle and fer­til­izes the silk to make a ker­nel. If there’s no silk for the pollen from the tas­sel to fer­til­ize, you’ve got nothing.”

And what does it take to get the silk?

“Water.”

Bush said the plants will do every­thing they can to pro­duce an ear: they will even ‘can­ni­bal­ize’ them­selves to get the nutri­ents out of them­selves to get those nutri­ents, mostly from the stalk.

“That results in prob­lems with stalk qual­ity,” Bush said. “In the fall, you might have pro­duced an ear, but the stalk has no strength left and it will fall right over.”

Mid-July was the crit­i­cal make-or-break period for corn and soy­beans weren’t far behind when rain returned to parts of Ohio. For some areas out­side Ohio, it was too lit­tle too late.

“There are areas in south­ern Illi­nois where they’re already tear­ing up the corn,” Bush said at the time. “The insur­ance adjusters have been out and there’s no point in har­vest­ing. Once that hap­pens and it’s deter­mined it’s a total loss, there’s no point in leav­ing it out there to con­tinue draw­ing the nutri­ents out of the ground. Till it under.”

Even for some parts of Ohio, the rain didn’t come soon enough.

McCutcheon said infor­ma­tion from other coun­ties and some crop adjusters are assess­ing 25 bushels an acre, when the aver­age is 150+.

“We’re not there,” said McCutcheon of Mor­row County. “Those rare sto­ries I hear might be a field that was chal­lenged any­way.” Where a field might have had drainage or fer­til­ity issues, the stress of the drought just pushes the crop ‘over the top.’

“If we hadn’t got­ten the rain, the stalks would be dry­ing out and mak­ing silage would be dif­fi­cult,” McCutcheon said. “You need mois­ture to make silage and, depend­ing on the silo or stor­age method, you need some mois­ture to allow silage to fer­ment. Silage requires stalks that are still green.”

Silage is cut, chopped and dried down to deter­mine how much water is in it because, ide­ally, a stalk should be 80 per­cent water while the stalk is developing.

The qual­ity and con­di­tion of the corn won’t be known until it’s har­vested, but there’s two meth­ods of deter­min­ing qual­ity and yield, McCutcheon explained. One is to mea­sure a sec­tion of a row and count the num­ber of ears, then every so many ears you count the num­ber of rows on the ear. The other, more accu­rate method is to take 1/1000 of an acre and hand-shell the ears and weigh the kernels.

“We’ve been dry, and prob­a­bly the biggest crop this year that’s been affected is hay and pas­ture,” McCutcheon said. “The sec­ond and third hay cut­ting are greatly reduced. A third cut­ting may pro­duce only a tenth of what the grower usu­ally gets.”

For­age crops like cooler weather and more con­sis­tent rain, he explained. Ninety-five degree weather has a ten­dency to shut it down. With poor hay cut­tings and dry pas­tures, cat­tle pro­duc­ers are forced to turn to grain to fill the need for feed. Grain prices are up already because local prices are based on prices at the Chicago Board of Trade, which bases its prices on what hap­pens in Iowa and Illi­nois. Given the gloomy crop fore­cast in those states, local pro­duc­ers benefit.

“Marketing-wise, the ideal sit­u­a­tion for local farm­ers is to have an abun­dant year here with a drought in Iowa and Illi­nois,” McCutcheon said. “The mar­kets in Chicago look at the top pro­duc­ing areas in the coun­try – which are Iowa and Illi­nois – and base every­thing off of that. Weather events in those areas will move the market.”

“Nation­wide, we planted 5% more corn acres this year than last year – almost a record num­ber of corn acres,” Bush said. “Min­nesota – the Dako­tas, most of Iowa and Nebraska are all in pretty good shape. The yield is hurt nation­wide — there’s no deny­ing that, but it may not be all doom and gloom.”

Ohio isn’t where Illi­nois and Indi­ana are with the drought.

“We’re really just on the edge of it,” McCutcheon said. “If you go toward Mar­ion County there are some field in the west­ern part that didn’t get the rain and look dif­fer­ent than the rest of the county.”

Can soil come back after a cou­ple of years of drought?

“That’s where a good fer­til­ity and crop rota­tion pro­gram come in,” Bush said. “That’s a man­age­ment (issue.) There are some things you can’t con­trol but some that you can. Skimp­ing on your fer­til­ity pro­gram in a dry year is not always the wise thing to do. Pro­duc­ers might do that to save money. It’s an indi­vid­ual situation.”

Bush, who also has beans and wheat planted, said soy­beans entered a crit­i­cal stage in mid-July as well with their repro­duc­tive stage, when they need to start mak­ing pods — and need rain to fill their pods.

“Soy­beans have defense mech­a­nisms built into them for heat ‚” he said. “They’ll flip their leaves over – the lighter side of the leaf reflects some of the heat off. They’re a very resilient plant.”

He also noted when you see corn all rolled up real tight, that’s also a defense mech­a­nism. “It’s just try­ing to pro­tect itself.”

A corn plant will set its tap roots down sev­eral inches, depend­ing on soil con­di­tions, to pull every­thing from the soil they can and keep reach­ing for water. Bush said tillage prac­tices can affect a root’s abil­ity to get what it needs from the soil.

“If there’s a hard pan under there, the root can’t get through – every field and soil type is dif­fer­ent,” he explained. “It depends on your tillage prac­tices over the years. The more heavy passes you’ve made over that field, the more com­pacted your soil might be. No-till farm­ing and other vari­ables can affect the soil. Com­paction is some­thing I pay a lot of atten­tion to around here. I try to elim­i­nate unnec­es­sary dri­ving across my fields.”

How all this affects all of us

Food prices –

Econ­o­mists reported in late July higher corn prices will affect 75% of what’s sold in the mar­ket. Milk and cheese prices could go up as much as 6%. Beef may be cheaper short term because many ranch­ers are sell­ing early. But next sum­mer when there’s a short­age – expect to pay more. Beef that’s $4 a pound now could eas­ily be $5–6 a pounds next year.

Beef cat­tle eat corn; hogs eat corn; so do chick­ens and dairy cat­tle. Corn oil is pro­duced from field corn. Plas­tics and rub­ber prod­ucts use corn in their pro­duc­tion. Effects from the drought could result in above nor­mal food price infla­tion in 2012 and 2013.

Trans­porta­tion –

Forty per­cent of last year’s corn crop went for ethanol. Aside from that sit­u­a­tion, rivers and lakes are at near-record lows as the heat takes its toll through evap­o­ra­tion. The Mis­sis­sippi River, a major ship­ping lane for the U.S., was 12-feet below nor­mal in late July, caus­ing many ves­sels to stay on inte­rior lanes, which caused major traf­fic back­ups. Time is money, and ship­ping costs are affected.

Ani­mals –

The record tem­per­a­tures this year have had a sig­nif­i­cant effect on live­stock and pets. Thou­sands of fish died in the Mid­west as rivers dried up and water tem­per­a­tures climbed to nearly 100 degrees in some places. About 40,000 shov­el­nose stur­geon were killed in Iowa when water tem­per­a­tures reached 97 degrees. Thou­sands of dead stur­geon, cat­fish, carp, and other species in the Lower Platte River were spot­ted by fishermen.

Insects –

The drought is affect­ing hon­ey­bees, since flow­ers are dry­ing up and there’s not enough pollen. Less pol­li­na­tion affects not only the sup­ply of honey, but also the price. Maple syrup mak­ers are strug­gling with trees shriv­el­ing from the heat.

Nation­ally, there have been reports of insect swarms com­ing into build­ings and homes seek­ing relief from the heat. Increased insect activ­ity has also resulted in crop damage.

Water sup­plies –

Reser­voirs and ponds are at dan­ger­ously low lev­els and water restric­tions have been enforced in some areas. Though many parts of Ohio has had sev­eral rain­falls in the past month, the state is still below nor­mal. In some parts of the coun­try, entire reser­voirs and lakes are now gone.

Where does this leave things?

“It leaves things at the hand of mother nature, as always,” Bush said. “We’ve done all we can – it just depends on the weather now. The yield is hurt. There’s no way around that but how much it’s hurt depends in the weather from here on out. A farmer is at the mercy of the ele­ments: you can’t con­trol the weather. Might as well worry about the things you can control.”

Posted by Randa Wagner on Aug 15 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.