Matt Reese

By Matt Reese

“As I travel around the state, I have the great pleasure of working with some of the best people in the world — the farmers of Ohio.”

These are first words of the first Country Crossroads published in September of 1999. Since then, there have been many memorable happenings.

Crop genetics, biotech, and biologicals

The drought of 2024 made it very clear that the seeds planted in the ground last spring were a combination of a long series of miracles and agricultural innovations. Despite very tough growing conditions last year, those seeds still managed to produce strong — even excellent — yields in some cases. Without exception, every farmer I talked to said the same conditions 20, 10 or even just 5 years earlier would have had very different yield results. Plant breeding, biotech, and biologicals paid off in 2024 and have changed the world of row-crop production.… Continue reading

By Matt Reese

Comfort is among our greatest desires, and our greatest enemies.

We each have a set of values and beliefs and we tend to be most comfortable when those values align with the people around us and are reinforced by the information we gather. This environment is often referred to as an echo chamber, which can feel very comfortable, familiar and safe. But there are some dangers.  

Melanie Wilt is a Clark County Commissioner with a career spent in the field of public relations, largely involving agriculture. She found herself in the global spotlight as a spokesperson for now world-famous Springfield, Ohio after comments about the Haitian immigrant population were made in debates leading up to the 2024 Presidential Election.

“What I witnessed was people feeding off of information that supported their own bias. If their bias was: ‘we don’t want people who don’t look like us in our community,’ then I’m going to go out there and look for information that will feed that bias.… Continue reading

By Matt Reese

A lot has changed in 25 years.

Some of the biggest changes in my time with Ohio’s Country Journal involved the biofuels industry. Since the rise of ethanol, largely enabled by efforts from Ohio corn growers, biofuels have gone from a promising new use to a vital (and often controversial) market for corn and soybeans. On one hand, biofuels just make good sense — a renewable, domestic source of energy. Yet, political whims, inconsistent policy and opposition from varied stakeholders have consistently challenged biofuels.

“The status of biofuels is still relatively uncertain because we’re still looking for policy guidance across the number of areas, but we’ve seen a lot of development on the oilseed processing side. There’s been a number of new crushing plants. We had three ribbon cuttings just this past fall,” said Michael Reginelli of Illinois-based Advance Trading. “In Ohio, Cargill had an expansion at Sidney and Louis Dreyfus has plans to build a plant in Upper Sandusky.… Continue reading

By Matt Reese

I was scrolling through social media recently and saw a scene of a peaceful snow-covered woods with the quote from famous (and known for being odd and sometimes unpleasant) artist Andy Warhol: “I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anyone could ever want.” 

While the snowy forest was nice, I immediately began pondering just how many different land use definitions there are for “not ruining it.” Land use policy seeks to strike the right balance of incentivizing these societal definitions while recognizing the legal rights of the landowner. This is an impossible task.

While some immediately see the snowy forest as the best possible land use, others would favor a productive field of corn or maybe a dazzling urban skyline. So how is policy supposed to help with all this? And what is the proper balance?  

Now zoom in to Ottawa County, in the heart of one of the most scrutinized watersheds in the world.… Continue reading

By Matt Reese

Millions of farmer dollars, thousands of farmer trade missions and countless farmer hours have gone into building relationships with international buyers of U.S. agricultural goods. Similar relationships exist between farmers and input suppliers. Those relationships do not develop overnight, but they can be quickly broken and difficult to repair.

With this in mind, many in agriculture are a bit leery as the nation kicks off its second Trump Administration with new tariffs on Canada and Mexico announced over the weekend. With agriculture accounting for significant U.S. exports, more often than not, tariffs leave U.S. farmers and agribusiness — and the relationships they’ve built — caught in the middle of international politics.

In his first term, President Donald Trump used tariffs as an instrument to try to gain leverage over trading partners and address other issues beyond international trade. Trump’s first trade war tariffs (most of which were maintained and added to by the Biden Administration) led to an agreement with China that ultimately addressed some international concerns.… Continue reading

By Matt Reese

Awhile back, I had couple of free hours and a long list of jobs to do around the house. I got my laptop out and clicked on my music list to enjoy some tunes while I worked. A few weeks prior I had plugged my phone into my computer to transfer a file and I unknowingly transferred many of the audio interviews I’d recorded over to my laptop. They intermingled with my music list. As a result, my randomly selected mix of songs included random interviews I had conducted with countless farmers and agribusiness professionals over the years.

The first interview started playing over my laptop speaker and I sort of groaned. I stopped what I was doing (I think caulking the shower) and went to skip to the next song. It wasn’t more than two songs later that another interview came on, and I repeated the process.… Continue reading

In a year many farmers are happy to put behind them, 2024 was a year of incredible beauty and terrible devastation courtesy of Mother Nature — both extremes were reflected in the top 10 posts of the year at ocj.com. Here is the list of the stories generating the most web clicks in a year that will long be remembered by Ohio agriculture.

1. Ohio’s historic drought of ‘24

Farmers in the hardest hit areas of the drought of 2024 were already painfully aware of the realities when this article was posted in early September, closely following Ohio’s first-ever designation of D4-Exceptional Drought by the U.S. Drought Monitor. At the time, 1.32% of the state was in D4-Exceptional Drought. Ultimately, most of the state experienced some degree of drought in 2024, but the hardest hit areas faced the driest conditions in recorded history and a year they will never forget.

2. What’s the plan for April 8 on your farm?… Continue reading

By Matt Reese

Ohio’s historic farms have been a favorite topic of Ohio’s Country Journal since the very beginning of this publication. The first editor, Tim Reeves, began work highlighting these farms in cooperation with the Ohio Department of Agriculture and Ohio History Connection in 1992. Since that time, it has been a privilege and a pleasure for Ohio’s Country Journal to highlight Ohio’s historic farms each year (which we did this year in the Mid-September issue).

To follow up on that, I wanted to share a little about my Reese family history as well. My brother currently lives on our home farm where I grew up. It was designated a Century Farm a few years ago in Hancock County. I currently live about 120 miles to the southeast in Fairfield County, but I regularly make the roughly 2-hour drive back to work on the farm.

In just the last couple of years, a historian in our extended family, Judy Shick, shared with me some interesting family history that shows my regular journey from Fairfield to Hancock County is nothing new, nor is the penchant for writing about agriculture in our family.… Continue reading

By Matt Reese

With taxes, the floundering farm bill and the increasingly challenging regulatory environment at the federal level, the next president and Congress will have significant implications for agriculture moving forward.

Taxes will be a particularly hot topic early on for the next presidential administration.

“This current tax policy is a carryover from Trump’s first presidency and a lot of those key positions with the Internal Revenue Code are set to expire here at the end of 2025, so the next Congress and the next president are really going to have a key role in shaping that,” said Ryan Conklin, with Wright and Moore Law Co. “Leading up to the election, we haven’t heard a whole lot of conversation on the Trump Tax Cuts and Jobs Act sunsets. I think the democratic conversation has been putting some proposals out there that I’d say don’t look very good for agriculture, but I would add to that back in 2021 when President Biden went in and a democratic Congress took over, there were a lot of proposals and a lot of ideas that came out on the tax code, and really none of them went anywhere.… Continue reading

By Matt Reese

There are big dollars behind the idea of Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) being driven by demand from airlines seeking to lower their carbon footprint. Many questions remain, though, regarding the ability for corn and soybean growers in Ohio to get a share of those dollars. There has been plenty of talk about the massive potential market of SAF for crops, but federal policy gobbledegook is making a bureaucratic mess of the matter.

A federal tax credit to incentivize the production of SAF requires lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions of the fuel to be reduced by at least 50% compared to standard petroleum-based aviation fuel. There is no particular recipe or feedstock requirement, just the required reduction in greenhouse gas. Note, this is not a tax credit for the farmer, but a tax credit for the fuel producer.

The feds say the use of soybeans as a feedstock for the production of SAF meets the greenhouse gas reduction requirements, which qualifies the fuel producer for a minimum level Clean Fuels Production Tax Credit.… Continue reading

By Matt Reese

We kicked off the 2024 harvest in an unfortunate way this year with our Cab Cam Series.

John Settlemyer, who farms in Warren and Clinton counties, was kind enough to take me up in a plane to get a bird’s eye view of see some of the worst drought areas in Ohio. Our flight path took us from Lancaster in Fairfield County over Circleville in Pickaway County, then southeast through Hocking, Vinton, and Athens counties on Sept. 5. We flew in a 1973 Cessna 182P, originally with a 235-horsepower motor, upgraded to 300-horse.

“For me this is extreme drought and it’s dangerous. There are so many possible fire locations. There’s fuel everywhere looking for reason to burn and there’s no rain in sight,” Settlemyre said. “It’s just amazing how dry it is for this early in September. We are just at the start of September here and we did see a few combines running today, including down in that Pickaway County area, which shows how far ahead of schedule are we for some of these folks in southern Ohio.… Continue reading

By Matt Reese

As of the end of August, the U.S. Drought Monitor described around 1.32% of the state in D4-Exceptional Drought. This is the first time that D4 has been depicted on the U.S. Drought Monitor map in Ohio since it was created in 2000.

By early September this area expanded from Pickaway County and to the east. At the same time, the level of D3-Extreme Drought increased to cover about 15% of the state, with 25% of Ohio experiencing D2-Severe Drought conditions or worse and almost 75% of the state is experiencing at least abnormally dry conditions, according to Aaron Wilson, an Atmospheric Scientist at The Ohio State University holding a joint appointment as a Research Scientist at the Byrd Polar & Climate Research Center and Ohio State University Extension.

“This has been a long-term thing. About 55% of the state was abnormally dry back on June 18. That was right after that extreme heat wave where we had about 8 days above 90 degrees there.… Continue reading

By Matt Reese and the CFAES News Team

Families and farming just go together. Raising families on and around farms has incredible lifelong benefits for the parents and the children involved, but it can also create significant challenges.

The difficulties of having young children on busy, modern farms has become more of a discussion in recent years and will be a topic of note at this year’s Farm Science Review.

I can remember, when we first started selling Christmas trees on our small farm in Hancock County, the farm operation WAS the childcare. My brothers and I were all old enough to be out working on the farm helping customers and cutting trees. By the time the next generation came along, though, the farm had grown too large and busy during the sales season to accommodate young children in the same way. We had a significant challenge and learning curve to figure out how to be parents running a busy operation with a safe place for the young children.… Continue reading

By Matt Reese

We love to highlight all the amazing things going on in Ohio’s farming community. But sometimes, especially when it’s hot, you just have to let off some steam with a summer rant about some of the more irksome issues of Ohio agriculture.

Corn and soybean prices

Joe Everett farms with his family in Shelby County and had to vent about the frustrating corn and soybean markets.

“Even though we’re only halfway through this year’s growing season, our farm is already making plans for next year,” he said. “With corn going below $4 here lately, input costs will probably be pretty high compared to the commodity prices. As farmers, we’re going to have to definitely buckle down going into next year. On a lot of farms, your guidance and your wisdom comes from your family…The other day, I was having a great conversation with my dad. He brought me back to reality, saying this is how agriculture works sometimes.… Continue reading

By Matt Reese

Over the last 10 years, it seems almost as certain as the likelihood of a green hue in parts of Lake Erie in late summer. If Jamie Farr loves Tony Packo’s, there is a pretty solid chance the good folks of Toledo are trying to sue someone regarding water quality in Lake Erie and are directing their emerald-water ire at Ohio agriculture.

“In the 10 years since Toledo experienced a drinking water crisis caused by harmful algal blooms in the Western Basin, there have been four federal lawsuits demanding a plan for improving water quality in the lake and a legal battle to protect the lake with a ‘Lake Erie Bill of Rights,’” said Peggy Kirk Hall, director of agricultural law, Ohio State University Agricultural and Resource Law Program in a recent article. “The current litigation arises from a 2023 settlement agreement that led the Ohio EPA to create the TMDL for the Maumee River Watershed.… Continue reading

By Matt Reese

Ohio farmland is a long taken-for-granted resource providing the very basis for our society, economy and culture; and we continue to rapidly pave over it with dreams of improving our society, economy and culture. 

With this in mind, I may be the only person who thinks about farmland preservation every time I hear the classic song “Just my imagination (running away with me)”by The Temptations. Specifically, the second verse of the song shifts my imagination to, in my opinion, the biggest challenge facing Ohio agriculture:

Soon we’ll be married and raise a family (Oh yeah)
A cozy little home out in the country
With two children, maybe three. 

The Temptations beautifully croon about part of the challenge of preserving farmland very clearly. It seems almost foundational to the American Dream to leave the confines of the city to build a home for a better life in the country.… Continue reading

By Matt Reese

Though I can get there if I really think about it, it is hard for me to remember a time when I did not know what the 4Rs stood for. It seems for a while, the program founded on the principles of applying fertilizers at the right source, right rate, right time, and right place was an ever-present staple of just about every story I wrote.

Leading up to the Toledo water crises in August of 2014, the groundwork was already being proactively implemented by the agricultural community to address the role of excess farm nutrient runoff into Ohio waterways. Now commemorating 10 years of the 4R Nutrient Stewardship Certification Program, the simple, science-based 4Rs have proven to be effective as certified retailers have been working with farmers and crop consultants to put those principles into practice.

Among the first retailers to gain 4R Certification was the Legacy Farmers Cooperative with five agronomy locations in the Western Lake Erie Basin.… Continue reading

By Matt Reese

I was recently giving a presentation to a farm group and a question came up about AI. Maybe for the first time ever, my mind immediately went to the 2024 definition of cutting-edge AI technology in agriculture instead of the 1938 definition of cutting-edge AI technology in agriculture.

In the 1920s and 30s, Russian scientist Ivanovich Ivanov developed the earliest techniques for artificially inseminating horses, cattle and sheep. By 1938 the practice had gotten started in the United States. Ivanov’s AI, of course, dramatically changed the future of animal agriculture. It was not that long ago I could safely assume that a reference to AI meant this one very specific practice in agricultural circles, but that, of course, has changed.

While the new AI has yet to eclipse the agricultural importance of the old AI, Artificial Intelligence is becoming a growing part of daily life for many people, including farmers.… Continue reading

By Matt Reese

I recently saw an old tin sign hanging in a friend’s house that said: Farm — a piece of land and the buildings upon it used for the production of crops and the rearing of livestock.

This simple definition is the base layer building block of our society. Law, order, entertainment, fashion, art, music, organized religion, politics, sports, events, education, and pretty much everything else all fall apart pretty quickly in the absence of food. This makes each farm, and the agricultural industry as a whole, greater than the sum of its parts.

With this in mind, over the winter the U.S. Department of Agriculture released some unsettling numbers. In fiscal year 2023, the United States was a net importer of agricultural products, meaning the country imported a higher value of agricultural products than were exported.

While the United States typically exports more agricultural goods by value than it imports, the value of imports has grown more rapidly than exports over the past decade, contributing to a negative trade balance in some years.… Continue reading

By Matt Reese

On April 8, there will be a rare total solar eclipse visible in the United States from southwestern Texas northeast through Maine. Among the very best viewing locations in the world is a 124-mile-wide swath across western to northern Ohio, which is expected to attract a half million visitors to the state on eclipse trips. 

Some farms are planning on hosting eclipse watchers from afar while others are doing everything possible to deter them.

How are you planning on managing the eclipse on your farm?

What precautions have you taken?

Are you hosting any unique farm specific events?

Let us know how you are spending your April 8 for the rare solar eclipse coming to your farm. Either way, farms need to be prepared for large potential crowds looking to view the eclipse in Ohio’s rural areas. In terms of the specific timeline, the 2024 total solar eclipse in Ohio will last less than five minutes, while a partial solar eclipse will be visible for much longer before and after the total eclipse. … Continue reading