CIRCLEVILLE, Ohio — Farms are critical and the job isn’t easy, but working in extreme heat doesn’t make the job any easier. 

“With heat. It doesn’t matter if it’s humans, animals or plants. We all get stressed,” said the vice president of W.D. Farms, Megan Dresbach.

Megan Dresbach is a farmer and vice president of W.D. Farms, a family-owned business based out of Pickaway County. As part of her job, she travels to farms across the state and has seen first-hand the toll that the recent hot temperatures are taking.

“This corn could really use a drink. It’s starting to curl up. A common term we use is going to look like a pineapple. That’s not good,” said Dresbach. 

Dresbach says the heat could impact the number of crops that harvest this fall, but experts from the Ohio Farm Bureau say there’s no need to panic just yet, in part because of when this heat wave got started.

“The plants are very young, very resilient. They’re going to come through this heat wave just fine, still a decent amount of soil moisture. So we may be dry on the top, but there’s moisture and moisture underneath that soil and the roots are going to reach for that moisture,” said Ty Higgins, the senior director of communications and media relations for the Ohio Farm Bureau.

But it’s not just the crops Dresbach says we need to be concerned about. It’s the farmers too.

“The most important factor on any operation, especially AG operations, are the humans behind it,” said Dresbach.  

That’s why keeping them safe is Dresbach’s top priority, which she says she does by providing the farmers air conditioned tractors and making sure they drink lots of water. 

“And so us and agricultural do everything we can to minimize the impact of heat, stress or the cause of heat strokes or anything like that,” said Dresbach. 

Ensuring the safety of both farms and farmers to prevent any harm to Ohio’s critical industry caused by the heat.