ROSS TOWNSHIP, Ohio — Burwinkel Farms, a small retail and wholesale produce farm in Ross Township, has had its fair share of challenges over the past 100 plus years but the family said this year has been unpredictable.
Every year the Burwinkels grow close to 100 acres of corn, but this year that wasn’t the case due to cold weather.
“In May we had a really hard freeze and that was detrimental to our crops at the beginning of the season,” said Kate Burwinkel of Burwinkel Farms.
Close to 25 acres of corn were affected, and they had a loss of about 8 acres.
“We were getting about a tenth of the crop from the field so you still have to maintain the entire field, but not all of the ears are filled out and it just makes for a difficult start to the season,” said Burwinkel.
This along with a lack of rain over the past couple of weeks impacted sales.
“Our biggest weekend is usually the end of July and we didn’t have enough corn to be able to sell to our markets,” she said. “So we were running out of the corn at our local stand and trying to keep that up and picking a little each day.”
According to the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation, the Burwinkels aren’t the only farmers who are dealing with this corn issue.
“We’re seeing more and more of the corn crop across Ohio get from the excellent and good category down to the fair category and into the poor and very poor categories so starting to see that corn slip as far as far it’s coming along,” said Ty Higgins, Ohio Farm Bureau Federation director of media relations.
And the lack of rain is changing the way corn looks.
“You won’t see the corn getting as tall, you won’t see the ears getting as full and that equates to a small number of bushels when it comes to harvest time,” said Higgins.
Despite the decline in corn, Higgins said other crops like soybeans are doing well because of U.S.-China trade deal and the economy has reopened.
“We hope that we can keep those restaurants open, keep businesses open and keep schools opening up here in the fall safely so we can continue to supply those businesses that farmers rely on for their bottom line in order to get the demand that we are used to across the state for these products,” he said.
And as for Burwinkels, things are beginning to look better.
“It was hard to start the year off that way,” said Burwinkel. “The fields are definitely better because we’re later in the season and when we plant in the spring we plant we plant every couple of days so once we got past that big hard freeze in those couple of fields we’ve been doing better.”
The Link LonkJuly 27, 2020 at 04:00PM
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Lack of Rain Causes Decline in Corn this Farming Season - Spectrum News 1
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