2021 Ohio Crop Tour
By Matt Reese, Editor, Ohio’s Country Journal
Like most things 2021, our Ohio Crop Tour will be a bit different this year. Last year we had great success with our Virtual Tour with tremendous response from participants. At the same time, we wanted to get back to our in-person tour in fields around the state. With this in mind, the 2021 Ohio Crop Tour includes both virtual and in-person components. 
The Tour is sponsored by Ohio Field Leader: a project of the Ohio Soybean Council and soybean checkoff.
The in-person tour will be held Aug. 9 and Aug. 10 with one group heading north and one group heading south. Each group will sample a representative corn and soybean field in 12 counties.
This year’s in-person participants in the north are:
- Harold Watters, Ohio State University Extension agronomist
- John Schumm, Seneca County farmer
- Leo Shininger, Defiance County farmer
- Jed Bower, Fayette County farmer
- Dusty Sonnenberg, Ohio Field Leader/Ohio Ag Net.
This year’s in-person participants in the south are:
- Greg LaBarge, Ohio State University Extension
- Ross Black, Pickaway County farmer
- Brent Pence, Miami County farmer
- Cory Atley, Greene County farmer
- Matt Reese, Ohio’s Country Journal.
We will be reporting our findings as we go and are looking forward to what we may find out there after what has been a fairly solid growing season so far statewide. Be sure to follow along on Aug. 10 at http://www.ocj.com to stay tuned to our county-by-county updates.
Starting Monday Aug. 9 through Thursday Aug. 12 at 6 p.m. we will also be conducting our Virtual Crop Tour in which anyone with an interest (and permission to go in a corn or soybean field) can participate. Just visit ocj.com to find procedures at https://ocj.com/virtual-crop-tour/ to follow and submit your findings and photos. Also let us know if you’d like to do an interview about your findings by emailing mreese@ocj.com. We’ll draw a random participant as a winner for a $250 Visa gift card.
For the Virtual Tour we will update the results from Wednesday through Thursday at ocj.com and have a recap of all the findings on Friday Aug. 13.