USA TODAY International Edition
Corn is in trouble, and it matters to all of us
Ohio farmers are treading water after record rainy season
GREENVILLE, Ohio – Scott Labig spotted Larry Campbell’s tractor from the seat of his John Deere, just on the other side of their shared fence.
These neighbors and friends have been planting side by side for 40 years in Darke County, one of Ohio’s leading producers of corn and soybeans.
But this recent June day was different than any other day in those past four decades, and Labig had to call his friend about it. He needed reassurance, connection, encouragement. And it couldn’t wait to talk until they were both done for the day.
Labig was doing something he had never done in his career. Something his father and his grandfather never did either in their time working this same land for the last century.
“I am ashamed of how I am planting corn today,” Labig told Campbell on the phone. “This is terrible.”
He was putting seeds into mud. How could things actually grow in this mess? It didn’t feel like he was doing his job properly. It didn’t look like a garden, he thought.
Campbell knew what to say because he was telling himself the same thing as he plowed the mud on his side of the fence.
“Close your eyes and keep driving,” he said.
Those dire conditions are actually what good luck looks like for farmers this year. Labig and Campbell were, after all, able to plant something during the few days when the skies closed. Others in Ohio haven’t planted a single
seed in 2019 because of the unrelenting rain, particularly in the northwest corner of the state.
In a terrible twist, this also is the area most dependent on sunny skies and warm weather this time of year: These farmers typically produce 45% of all of Ohio’s corn.
Still, the record-breaking deluge has put thousands of acres – and farmers – underwater across the state.
This time of year, Ohio’s farmland should be alive and brand new again, peppered with the pop of bright green corn stalks already reaching the height of a tall man’s shins. Instead, standing water comes up to the knee in some fields. Plots are more like muddy swamps where the only thing that’s growing is mold and disease and mosquitoes.
Unseen and unprecedented
The planting reports confirm this. On June 11, when almost all of Ohio’s corn should have been planted, only 50% of the crop was in the ground, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Farmers should have had 89% of their soybeans in the ground then, too. Instead, they reported about 39% of their crop in the fields.
This is, of course, not a problem that stops at the Ohio border. The planting season, overall, is at its slowest pace in 40 years. There have been extreme weather events across the Midwest and the Great Plains during this year’s planting season, one that typically ends by early June for corn and mid-June for soybeans.
At the beginning of June, 31 million acres of America’s farmland remained unplanted. There has been flooding in Missouri, tornadoes in Indiana and Ohio and heavy rains pretty much everywhere else. Farmers across the country are taking to Twitter to share shocking images of unplanted fields, seeking advice, community and comfort from others facing similar trials. It’s a trending topic, and the hashtag says it all: #Noplant19.
It already is the wettest yearlong period in Ohio since 1895. For the first six months of the year, the state has seen about 10 inches more than the mean for the last decade. It already has been called disastrous. In June, Gov. Mike DeWine’s requested a USDA Disaster Designation for Ohio farmers affected by heavy rainfall. And according to the forecast, the rain isn’t stopping any time soon.
Among the number of suffering states in America’s corn belt, Ohio’s planting progress is the worst anywhere. The reason for this goes beyond the rain.
When the downpour has stopped for a day or two, cloudy skies and cooler than average temperatures have ensured that the water on the ground isn’t drying up. Even if the sun is out, farmers can’t plant in a puddle.
The effects of unplanted fields for the farmer is immediate and obvious. Fewer plants mean lower yield means less money in the bank. All of this also means more hardship and heartache for a position that already has the highest suicide rate of any job in this country, double even that of veterans.
This isn’t just about the farmers, though. These crops – corn and soybeans – are tied up in a lot of what we all eat and how much we spend on it. So the long-term and less obvious effects of today’s rain and mud could show up as higher grocery bills tomorrow.
An uncertain future
That’s how economist Matthew Pot sees it, and he sees a lot. He was raised on a farm in the Canadian province of Ontario, and he also studies grain markets. He’s got a company dedicated to it, Grain Perspectives.
Pot can’t say exactly what will happen with the price of corn and soybeans after this wet season, if it will affect prices listed on grocery store shelves.
It won’t affect the corn we buy. That’s because the corn grown in Ohio is not the kind that we eat. However, it is eaten by animals we do eat. It’s mostly raised for livestock feed and for use in ethanol.
There’s still hope, too, that the farmers and the fields aren’t totally doomed. So much of this crop’s fate will be determined by the weather in the next few months, Pot said.
If there are enough sunny, warm days – but not too warm and not too sunny – the shorter season corn that’s been planted in the last couple weeks still has enough time, technically, to grow before the first frost. That is, of course, if the first frost doesn’t come early this year.
The list of potential complexities behind what farmers will grow and sell and what others will buy really could go on and on, and they are even coming from thousands of miles away. Pot, for instance, considers the influence on prices of all the corn coming from a huge harvest in Brazil and Argentina.
And if farmers are trying to avoid corn altogether, the No. 1 substitute – soybeans – also is newly complicated.
Farmers have long rotated soybeans and corn in their fields to keep the soil healthy. But many are turning to soybeans instead of corn this year because soybeans have a shorter grow time.
But the current U.S. trade war with China has created a tumultuous climate for soybean prices. China is the largest buyer of America’s soybeans.
It’s a lot to take in, things are moving quickly and they are changing daily. Uncertainty has been a part of these markets, but even the experts are noticing that the current chaos is unprecedented.
Little things are happening that just don’t happen, like how the USDA is changing bushel yield estimates in June. That’s later than normal.
“2019 will be a year that will be an analog year where people will talk about for the next multiple decades in the industry for sure,” Pot said, “because it stands out that much.”
Most farmers also can’t avoid these worries. They live where they work and work where they live. The Labigs can see the water in their fields from the front windows of their house. It’s so high that wind causes ripples on the surface. Close up, it could be a lake.
Scott Labig processes all of this with a simple focus. He says he takes it one day at a time. Every night before he goes to bed, he writes down what he needs to do the next day. The next day is often just an hour away: These days, he can’t start his list until 11 p.m.
For Campbell, there have been even more sleepless nights. “It’s been one of those years, you want to wake up and forget about it,” he said.
“2019 will be a year that ... people will talk about for the next multiple decades.” Matthew Pot Economist