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Halfway there: Wheat quality varying in area
Published 7/1/2009 in Local News
By MONICA SPRINGER
Harvest is progressing in Finney County and the surrounding area, and the wheat that didn't receive hail damage is in good condition, according to local grain elevators and farmers.
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Laurie Sisk/Telegram — Vita De La Rosa weighs in a truckload of wheat on Tuesday at the Garden City Wolf Elevator.
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Laurie Sisk/Telegram — A truckload of wheat is analyzed for test weight on Tuesday at the Garden City Wolf Elevator.
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Laurie Sisk/Telegram — Joe Varela takes a sample off a truckload of wheat and analyzes it for test weight on Tuesday at the Garden City Wolf Elevator. Workers at the elevator said the range of weight is from 52 to 64.7 pounds so far this harvest.
Finney County is about 60 percent done with harvest, with some farmers completely finished cutting their wheat and others still waiting for wheat to mature.
Ken Jameson, vice president of the grain division for Garden City Co-op, said yields on crops range from 20 to 80 bushels an acre, depending on the location and the extent of hail damage the wheat received. He said the wheat so far has been good quality.
On Tuesday night, Boyd Lear had just started cutting his irrigated wheat after finishing with the dryland wheat. The dryland wheat had hail damage, Lear said, with some areas getting harder hit than others.
Lear said he's getting anywhere from 25 to 50 bushels an acre, with test weights ranging from below 59 to 65 pounds per bushel.
"It's about what I expected," said Lear, who farms 900 acres of wheat in south Finney County. "We went from October to March with no rain. Most of the wheat benefited from the cool spring. The cool spring helped grain fill, and that's why we have those good test weights."
In a report issued Monday by the National Agriculture Statistics Office, 87 percent of the wheat in Kansas is ripe, compared to 81 percent last year and 93 percent for the five-year average. Forty-seven percent has been harvested, compared to 32 percent the previous year and 61 percent for the five-year average.
The wheat condition is rated as 4 percent very poor, 13 percent poor, 31 percent fair, 39 percent good, and 13 percent excellent. The office releases a report on the progress of harvest on Monday afternoons.
Additionally, Kansas Wheat, a cooperative agreement between the Kansas Association of Wheat Growers and the Kansas Wheat Commission, releases a daily report highlighting how harvest is progressing in the state. On day eight, Tuesday, Kansas Wheat said northeast Kansas is wrapping up harvest with yields around 50 bushels per acre. Harvest is nearly complete in north central Kansas averaging 45 bushels per acre.
In Wichita County, Gary Fletcher, manager of ADM Grain, said the county is about halfway done with harvest, and yields on dryland wheat range from 25 to 65 bushels per acre. The irrigated wheat is good, he said, but he hasn't heard talk of yields on the irrigated wheat much.
"It's a good harvest for Wichita County and surrounding counties," Fletcher said.
In neighboring Greeley County, test weights are about 61 pounds per bushel and yields are "all over the board" depending on where the field is located within the county, said Dan Hild, manager of Tribune Grain in Leoti.
He said the county is seeing an average crop.
Grain elevator managers in Grant, Haskell, Hamilton and Scott counties reported similar results, saying yields vary by location but the wheat overall is in good condition. The price for a bushel of wheat varied from $5.10 in Garden City, Grant and Hamilton counties, $5.07 in Scott County and $5.13 in Greeley County.
How is harvest progressing in your area? Talk about it at SWKTalk.com.
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