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“Last year we didn’t turn a wheel in the ground until Memorial Day weekend,” Bumgardner said.
That was unusually late as a result of nearly unrelenting rain throughout the spring, and a wet March could be reason to fear a redux.
Already poor commodity prices took a dive after the onset of efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus last month added another layer of uncertainty to the farm economy, but experts say farmers are likely to approach this planting season like any other.
“It’s wet out, and I think they’re predicting it to continue to be wet,” said Amanda Douridas of Ohio State Extension in Champaign County. “I think the positive ahead of not being a complete repeat of 2019 is that our soils are warmer than they were at this point in 2019, so once the weather starts to warm up I think we’ll be able to dry out a lot quicker than we were able to in 2019.”
Bumgardner sounded optimistic in that regard.
“We needed to get some water in the ground,” he said. “Most of us don’t start planting until mid-April anyway. If we have dry weather and get some sunshine then I think our planting should be right where we ought to be as far as planting dates.”
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Fremont-based Sunrise Cooperative has a location in South Charleston that supplies local farmers with seed, fertilizer and other planting needs in the spring and purchases grain when the harvest rolls around.
That company’s president and CEO, George Secor, said most farmers appear to be planning for a “normal” year.
“Now out west, I would say this isn’t true, but here in Ohio how many acres get planted to corn doesn’t really change whether corn is going for $3 or $6,” he said. “Ninety-eight percent are gonna stick with whatever corn-bean-wheat rotation they thought they were going to do.”
Technological advances help in that farmers can work with businesses such as Sunrise to apply the right pesticides and fertilizers – in the right amounts and in the right areas – to enhance their chances of success.
“The technology curve is huge in agriculture right now,” said Secor, who also noted a USDA report published last week that projects the U.S. corn crop to check in at or exceed the all-time record.
Of course, that isn’t necessarily good news for a market already depressed by excess inventory created by the two-year trade war with China. The resolution of that dispute along with the reworked trade deals with neighbors in North America had provided some hope for a bounce-back for farm income this year, but instead the coronavirus pandemic has kept crop prices low.
“Long term that demand will turn around,” Secor said. “It will definitely turn around. The new trade agreement that President Trump has done here in North America with Canada and Mexico, and with China and Japan, I mean when we get out of this slump, you can see what’s coming, so we’ve just got to do a great job for our customer-owners in helping them market their grain in these tougher times.”
Price problems also have been exacerbated by the threat of the coronavirus (and an oil price war between Russia and countries in the Middle East) drastically cutting the demand for gasoline, which is blended with ethanol derived from corn.
However, Secor suggested the market impact could be less severe in Ohio compared to other parts of the country where ethanol production plays a more prominent role in the price of corn.
The latter is another reason Ohio farmers are less likely to change their planting plans this spring.
“We are going to feel in Ohio the negative effects of the demand destruction of ethanol, but in Ohio we have the positive effect of much more livestock industry moving to Ohio (recently), so the farmers in Ohio, while it will be a negative effect, that negative is going to be buffered by the increase livestock demand for what they produce.”
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