South-central Indiana farmers who planted soybeans in the spring probably had a pretty good year.

But for corn and wheat producers, the nearly completed harvest will neither be memorable nor very profitable, said Jason Newton, owner of Richards Elevator in Taylorsville.

Newton summed up crop prices for farmers in a nutshell: soybean prices are good, but corn and wheat prices have been average.

However, average is not what it once was.

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Since 2013, there have been a series of bumper crops for most of the United States.

Another nationwide record harvest is anticipated this year, with two billion more bushels of corn and soybeans compared to 2015, The Wall Street Journal reported this week.

That has benefited supermarket shoppers. Over the past year, a government index measuring grocery prices has fallen 2.2 percent, the largest decline since December 2009.

Excluding the height of the Great Recession, 2016 has brought the largest streak of food-price deflation since 1960, Bloomberg reported.

For local farmers, the crop surplus translates into a fourth consecutive year of low grain prices. The massive supply of wheat brought prices to a 10-year-low earlier this fall, according to the Hackett Money Flow Commodity Report.

“I don’t see much relief coming for farmers for another two to three years,” said retired Columbus farmer Lynn Glick, 87. “It’s tightening the belt and hanging on.”

For grandsons Trevor and Brett Glick, who have taken over the Glick family farming operations near Hartsville, belt-tightening means maintaining their current combines and tractors, instead of investing in newer, more expensive equipment, Lynn Glick said.

He has also reduced rent payments for his grandsons, as well as agreed to wait until December to receive payment, Glick said.

Details on the local 2016 harvest won’t become available until after the National Agriculture Statistics Services conducts its end-of-season surveys during the first two weeks in December.

However, it does appear that factors such as soil types, scattered precipitation and planting dates worked considerably better for some south-central Indiana farmers than others, Newton said.

For example, with 180 bushels per acres considered an acceptable average for corn, yields from individual Bartholomew County farms ranged from 140 to 235 bushels per acre, Newton said.

But yield isn’t everything. Investment is another factor that plays into a farmer’s profit picture.

It costs a farmer about $700 per acre to plant corn, compared to $500 for soybeans. That level of cost makes it more difficult for farmers to reach what many consider to be a common goal of a $40 an acre return on their investment, Newton said.

“Corn is a lot more expensive to grow,” said Will Swope, who farms with his father-in-law, Evan Clouse, south of Hope.

In addition, raising corn has gotten a bit risky in the Hoosier state.

While Diplodia ear rot has become a common disease in Indiana corn, Newton said the mold has been far more prevalent in the northeast part of the state than in Bartholomew County.

Most of the disease was limited to crops that were planted early in the season, so the ear rot did not have a significant impact on local corn yields or prices, Newton said.

But the warmer-than-normal spring, as well as above-normal precipitation this fall, did reduce yields from what many farmers had hoped, Newton said.

More grain is produced when there are alternating periods of moisture and heat, he said.

It wasn’t until harvest time that it became evident that expectations by Swope and Clouse for an exceptional corn yield wasn’t going to happen, Swope said.

On the bright side, the laws of supply and demand greatly benefited soybean growers in 2016, Purdue University agricultural economist Chris Hurt said.

Now used for a variety of non-food products ranging from bio-fuels and solvents to plastics and emulsifiers, soybeans are globally in high demand, he said.

China buys almost two-thirds of the world’s soybeans every year from two main markets: South America in the spring and North America in the fall, Hurt said.

But after bad weather caused South America to experience a lackluster soybean harvest this year, U.S. soybean prices experienced a late-season rally, the Purdue economist said.

While Hoosier farmers are expected to plant even more soybeans in the coming years, higher prices will end if South America has a good harvest in the spring, Hurt said.

A number of commodity firms report the Chinese soybean market may be softening, while demand for animal feed corn in developing Asian countries is growing, Barron’s financial magazine reported this week.

With uncertainty about demand, Swope said he and Clouse will likely hedge their bets again next year by maintaining a 50-50 split on corn and soybeans.

A Noblesville woman is telling her story of heroin addiction in the hopes of helping others learn there is a way to get clean.

Laci Giboney, who started on a path to heroin addiction in high school, was the keynote speaker for an Indiana Youth Institute session about teen heroin use at YES Cinema.

Now 11 years clean from heroin addiction, she is in the process of setting up a faith-based alternative sentencing recovery center in Hamilton County.

But during her Nov. 10 talk in Columbus, Giboney painted a grim and detailed picture of her own descent as a teenager into addiction.

“I had been stealing from my family. I was in a huge downward spiral that nearly killed me,” she said.

In and out of rehab centers and jail, Giboney said her drug addiction was fueled by a sexual assault when she was 15, leading her to bury her shame and pain in alcohol and drugs. She started off with alcohol and marijuana and then moved on to experiment with opioids.

“I made some really bad choices,” she said.

When she reached bottom, she was a 20-year-old active heroin user who was homeless, living on park benches at 25th and Keystone in Indianapolis, she said.

She eventually was arrested, convicted and served two and a half years in prison for her drug abuse, something that led her to get clean, get a degree in social work and eventually start a family.

But her story is illustrative as to how many young people start down a path of drug abuse early in their lives, and only through intervention by law enforcement or concerned family members find their way out.

The Indiana Youth Institute, which sponsored Giboney’s talk, reports heroin use among high school and middle school students peaks in 11th grade among students in southeastern Indiana. During their junior year of high school, 0.3 percent of students said they were using heroin, the study found.

The statistics came from a survey provided to the institute by the Indiana Prevention Resource Center.

Goboney said in the past 15 years, heroin overdoses have killed more people than car crashes for those between 18 and 25.

After a short tutorial on how prescription opioid abuse leads some patients to seek out heroin as an alternative when the patient can no longer get a painkiller prescription from a doctor, Goboney said addicts have no choice but to seek some sort of alternative on the street.

And for young people in particular, the easy availability of heroin, and the fact that it is cheaper than many other drugs, leads teens down that path, she said.

“Now I’m told by some that people can buy heroin for 5 bucks,” she said. “For teenagers who are partying, that’s cheaper than a case of beer.”

But, she warned, heroin is far more deadly than most teens realize.

“It’s coming into the United States from Mexico, and it’s being cut with fentanyl,” she said.

Fentanyl is a powerful painkiller that can kill with just a small amount, depending on potency and how much of it is in the heroin.

Goboney said she remembers not wanting to use the heroin, but had to because of the fear of the physical side effects of withdrawal. After going through treatment seven or eight times, she was finally able to completely detox from the drug, a process she said took nearly six months.

She advocated that counties establish long-term recovery centers to address the physical, spiritual, emotional and family components for those who are addicted, including having programs for families to learn about addiction and the manipulating, stealing and lying behaviors that come with it.

During a question-and-answer session after the presentation, Columbus Police Department Sgt. Jay Frederick, a recent presenter at the Desperate Households conference hosted by the Bartholomew County Substance Abuse Council, was asked what people in Bartholomew County should do if they suspect a loved one has an opioid addiction problem.

Bartholomew County does not have a residential treatment program but social service agencies do refer residents to addiction programs offered through Centerstone, which is located in Columbus among other communities.

“We’re not looking for added clientele,” Frederick told the group, referring to taking drug abusers to jail. “But sometimes, if criminal activity is occurring, the best thing to do is let the criminal justice system be engaged. What the judicial system can do is put some teeth into the recovery process,” he said, referring to consequences if a drug abuser does not fulfill requirements that a court might order as a sentence.

Goboney put photos of her jail mug shots on the large screen at YES Cinema, saying she felt like it was important to really see the person staring back from the photo.

“I show these because I clearly didn’t care about what I looked like,” she said of her years in addiction. “I think it’s important to look at this. It’s so easy to judge and be judged. People tell me all the time I don’t look like a heroin addict,” she said, looking back at the photos.

“As a professional in the field now, I now know we have to be so careful when talking to people who are addicted — being careful of being judgmental,” she said. “They need someone to fight for them. They need someone to tell them ‘You are valuable. Your mistakes do not have to define you.”

Goboney said she remembers thinking at one point she would be a junkie forever and that she would die as an addict.

“So when I travel to share my testimony, I now say you can get sober, you can beat this,” she said.

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Healthy Communities at Columbus Regional Health is sponsoring a community awareness presentation about heroin abuse next spring when a noted author will speak in Columbus.

Sam Quinones, an author and journalist who wrote “Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic,” will speak at a session from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. April 19 at The Commons in downtown Columbus.

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Mental Health First Aid, a public education program introducing participants to risk factors and warning signs of mental illness, will have a session from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Dec. 8.

The course uses role playing and videos to teach people how to offer help in a mental health crisis and connect people with ways to get care. The course is not about participants taking on the role of professionals or diagnosing a problem. It’s to answer the question: “What should I do if I see someone in emotional distress?”

The program teaches common risk factors and warning signs, including anxiety, depression, risk for suicide, substance abuse, bipolar disorder, eating disorders and schizophrenia.

Cost is $20, but scholarships are available. The session will be at Centerstone, 720 N. Marr Road.

To register or request a scholarship, email Melissa Newland at melissa.newland@centerstone.org.

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Saturday’s Class 5A championship football game will be a chance for one Columbus East player to fulfill a six-year-old promise to his older brother.

Westin Cordier was a senior on the 2010 Columbus East team that ended its year with a loss to Whiteland in the second round of sectionals, marking his final game as an Olympian.

That season, parents Ira and Kathryn Cordier had a tradition of meeting their son at the 30-yard-line after each game. But after that game, Westin was greeted by his younger brother, Clayton, who was 12 at the time, with tears, hug and a long embrace.

“Westin apologized to him, saying he was sorry that he couldn’t win a state championship for him,” Ira Cordier said. “There was definitely a lot of emotion tied to it.”

Cordier said Clayton looked up to his old brother and said he would one day win a championship for him.

Westin Cordier, who graduated from Columbus East in 2011, will be flying in from Rexburg, Idaho, to attend the state championship game with the hopes that a promise his brother made six years ago will come true.

“He always looked up to his big brother,” Cordier said of his younger son, Clayton.

The brothers were six years apart in age and had little in common until football bonded them together, their father said.

But when Clayton got involved with the Central Middle School Chargers in the seventh grade, he received guidance from Westin, their father said.

Growing up, Westin spent time working with his younger brother on offensive and defensive drills.

And Clayton aspired to be just like his older sibling, Cordier said.

“There’s definitely a bond that was created because of football,” he said.

When Westin’s team lost six years ago, “it crushed me and it crushed my whole family,” said Clayton Cordier, now 18 and a starting defensive lineman for the Olympians.

“I want to go out there and play the best game of my life,” the senior said. “Hopefully I get to fulfill that promise and celebrate with him.”

Clayton said he is excited that his brother will be at Lucas Oil Stadium to watch the game, one that Westin said he wouldn’t miss.

“I want him to hug me and tell me that he kept that promise,” Westin said. “It’s incredible to see it go full circle.”

Ira Cordier said he knows Saturday’s game between the No. 4-ranked Olympians and No. 5-ranked Westfield Shamrocks will be one to remember regardless of the outcome.

“I promise you there will be emotion, win or lose,” Cordier said.

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Interest has been so high for tickets to the Class 5A state championship football game between Columbus East and Westfield that the Columbus school ordered an additional 750 tickets — beyond the initial 1,500 — to make available for local fans to purchase in advance.

Tickets for the game, which starts at 7:05 p.m. Saturday, can be purchased at the following times:

• 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Friday inside the main entrance of Columbus East High School, 230 S. Marr Road.
• 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday before the Franklin Central at Columbus East girls basketball game.

Cost: $15 for all students and adults; children who are not school-age are admitted free. Columbus East gets to keep $1 of each advance ticket sold.

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A Columbus East fan caravan is planned for Saturday, with participants asked to arrive at the high school’s bus lot no later than 3:15 p.m. The caravan will depart from the high school at 3:30 p.m. and follow the football team bus to Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.

The Columbus East Quarterback Club has organized an Olympian Tailgate Party at the Gate Ten Event Center, located across the street from Lucas Oil Stadium.

• Parking, with 700 spaces, opens at 10 a.m. Saturday, with a $15 parking fee for autos and $30 for a bus or recreational vehicle, payable with a credit card. Reserve parking online by visiting this address: https://squareup.com/store/GateTen

• The Gate Ten Event Center, at 343 W. McCarty St., opens at 3 p.m. It is a 7,500-square-foot indoor event space that offers the opportunity to purchase food or drinks at its bar and food court, with tables for seating and restrooms available.

The East faithful is invited to set up their own tailgating in the parking lot, or come inside the building.

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Win or lose, the Columbus East football team will celebrate its 2016 football season when it returns to Columbus after Saturday night’s Class 5A championship game — about 11:30 p.m. in the main gymnasium.

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