Putnam County鈥檚 Vennekotter Farms is more than five thousand acres. It鈥檚 been in owner and operator Dennis Vennekotter鈥檚 family since his great-grandfather founded it in 1906.
But, times have changed since then, Vennekotter said.
"My dad would've worked this field, would鈥檝e tilled it, there would have been nothing grown until next ... May," he said. "So that's the difference [between] what my father did versus what we're doing is now we have something green out here growing."
The crops Vennekotter is growing in mid-August are part of his nutrient management strategy. The effort, which includes measuring fertilizer and preventing stormwater runoff, wasn鈥檛 something Ohio farmers thought much about just a few generations ago, Vennekotter said. But on his farm, it鈥檚 a priority.
"It's just a good practice," he said. "Today things are very tight margins and no farmer wants to apply anything extra out in that field that they don't have to."
Vennekotter, along with about a third of Putnam County鈥檚 farmers, rely on to offset some of the cost. The program reimburses Vennekotter for the price of the cover crops that he uses in between his corn, wheat and soybean plantings to help draw out phosphorus left in the soil from fertilizers.
"A cover crop will try to be over there during the winter and it will try to lessen that runoff to try to slow the water down," he said. 鈥淲hat we're trying to do out here is slow the water down so the nutrients will not wash off of the field."
Phosphorus runoff from Ohio' s agricultural sector is a major contributor to harmful algal blooms in Lake Erie. In 2014, a severe bloom left half-a-million Toledo residents without access to safe drinking water for days.
The H2Ohio program began five years later to improve and protect the state鈥檚 freshwater resources through its nutrient management program and others that support the creation of wetlands, sewer system upgrades and lead line replacement projects.
H2Ohio provides farmers with the financial support they didn鈥檛 have before, the Ohio Farm Bureau鈥檚 Director of Water Quality and Research, Jordan Hoewischer said.
"They do everything, the farmer does, and then upon proof that that thing was done, they get reimbursed by the state," he said. "A lot of times the farmer's paying for, like, cover crop seeds, or maybe they'll pay somebody else to apply fertilizer and do all this stuff, and they have to hold that money themselves. They have to pay for that."
While it can take as long as nine months for farmers to be eligible for reimbursement, Hoewischer said the promise of money helps many farmers justify participating.
But in June, the state legislature approved just over half of what Governor Mike DeWine requested for H2Ohio鈥檚 . That funding would have guaranteed progress toward meeting the state鈥檚 40% phosphorus reduction target, Hoewischer said.
"Half measures are not going to cut it," he said. "We need to make sure that everything's in front of us and available to our farmers, and to have some sort of backslide or setback right now would take away from decades of effort."
H2Ohio representatives declined requests for an interview, saying the program is still navigating how to continue its work under these budget constraints.
For Dennis Vennekotter, work will continue regardless of the cuts, but he said he expects established farmers who are used to working without concerns for runoff, and emerging farmers with limited funds to be more hesitant to work with the program now that financial support is questionable.
"I think that progress of hitting that mark will slow down," he said. "I'm not saying we're not gonna hit it, I just think it's going to slow the process of farmers adopting something new."
But it's still possible to leave a positive mark on Lake Erie, Vennekotter said, so long as Ohio鈥檚 farmers are willing to try.