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Ohio crops prevail after limited rain

An Ohio farmer says he’s been surprised by how well crops are doing following this year’s dry growing season.

Matt Aultman tells Brownfield some fields only a few miles apart have varied by up to two inches in rainfall and that’s showing up in soybean yields.  

“We have fields that are doing in the 70s and we’ve got fields that are in the high 40s, and they’d be right beside each other and only a couple days difference in planning,” he shares.

Aultman says corn harvest hasn’t started in earnest but silage production in his region on the east side of the state was phenomenal.

“Exceptional forage yields on tonnage, we got stuff overproducing, so we have some dairy farms that never sell corn that are going to have that ability this fall had to harvest and sell shelled corn out to the market,” he says.

He says corn has not seen a significant dry down over the past few weeks but yields in the high 190s to low 230s are expected.

Aultman says the entire growing season has seemed delayed and he thinks it’s likely connected to the haze from Canadian wildfires and limited sunlight.