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Ohio soil moistures vary greatly

Ohio farmers are experiencing mixed field conditions ahead of planting.

Heather Bryan tells Brownfield the northwest has had heavy rain in recent weeks.

“We had some big rain events recently in this past couple of weeks, so I would say just getting to the point where we were able to get dry to get into the field and planting the temperature seems really warm right now.

Meanwhile, Drake County’s Matt Aultman says western Ohio is dry.

“And was digging and fixing tile this earlier this week very low top soil moisture there? It got below 6 inches. It’s really dry. So how do you adjust your crop planting? How do you adjust you know? How long do you leave cover crops on to absorb the moisture out? Do you do an early termination on cover crops?

Depending on the results of this month’s acreage report, Aultman says he has some fields that could change.

“If I can see a little bit more benefit to raising corn and soybeans, I can flip a few acres,” he says. “But if things stay where they are, it’s really tight on production numbers on where we’re going to be in profitability.”

Ohio State University is reporting soil temperatures across the state ranging from 40 to 50 degrees over the past week. More than 13 percent of Ohio is listed as abnormally dry in the latest Drought Monitor report, mainly in the northwest region.

Brownfield interviewed both during the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation’s recent County President’s Trip to D.C.