Ohio farms honoured for longevity

Jan 08, 2015

Celebrating farms with 100 and 200 year histories

By Diego Flammini, Farms.com

The Ohio Department of Agriculture and the volunteers of Ohio Bicentennial and Century Farms announced 104 new family farms in the state celebrating their 100^th or 200^th year of operations.

“These historic farms are the foundation of Ohio’s agriculture industry,” said Director of Ohio’s Department of Agriculture David T. Daniels, who along with Governor John R. Kasich signed a certificate for each of the farms. “The families have withstood the test of time, often through adversity, to provide us with life’s essentials. We owe them a debt of gratitude.”

With the 104 new designations, that brings the total number of historic farms in Ohio to over 1,000. There are farms from Adams to Wood counties represented, including Caraway, Eshleman-Warner, Bridenstine, and Vanek.

Ohio’s Department of Agriculture started recognizing farms with 100 years of operations in 1993 and in 2013 expanded the designation to farms with 200 years of family-owned operations.

Ohio’s agriculture sector plays a part in about $93 billion of economic growth and employs one out of every seven residents.

There’s approximately 75,000 farms in Ohio, totalling around 13.9 million acres of farmland across the state. Corn and soybeans are the top crops grown in Ohio, producing more than $2.8 and $2.7 billion respectively.

Ohio is the top producer of Swiss cheese in the United States and the second largest producer of eggs.

Video: LALEXPERT: Sclerotinia cycle and prophylactic methods

White rot, also known as sclerotinia, is a common agricultural fungal disease caused by various virulent species of Sclerotinia. It initially affects the root system (mycelium) before spreading to the aerial parts through the dissemination of spores.

Sclerotinia is undoubtedly a disease of major economic importance, and very damaging in the event of a heavy attack.

All these attacks come from the primary inoculum stored in the soil: sclerotia. These forms of resistance can survive in the soil for over 10 years, maintaining constant contamination of susceptible host crops, causing symptoms on the crop and replenishing the soil inoculum with new sclerotia.