Agricultural News
Crop Scouts on Day Two of Kansas Wheat Tour Find 2022 Crop in Trouble Due to Drought
Thu, 19 May 2022 04:35:44 CDT
Wednesday saw 83 people on the Wheat Quality Council's 2022 winter wheat tour make their way from Colby to Wichita, Kansas, stopping in wheat fields along six different routes. One of those routes took scouts into northern Oklahoma.
Wednesday's wheat tour scouts made 254 stops at wheat fields across western, central and southern Kansas, and into northern counties in Oklahoma. The wheat in Southwest Kansas looks very rough, and the drought conditions aren't just isolated to southwest Kansas, but into south central Kansas as well. Wheat behind corn provided some of the lowest yields, while wheat on fallow had some of the highest yields.
The calculated yield from all cars was 37.0 bushels per acre. Similar to Day One- that was twenty bushels under the estimated 57 bushels an acre seen in 2021 along the day two routes.Scouts were able to mainly use the late season formula provided by USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service, which includes counting wheat heads, number of spikelets and kernels per spikelet. The calculated yields were based on this formula, but many tour participants remarked that those yields seemed high. The wheat is so short that some of the heads will not be able to be picked up by the combines at harvest. The yield formula doesn't take disease, pests or weed pressure into consideration. Scouts saw some instances of wheat streak mosaic virus, into areas farther east than expected or typical, but western Kansas didn't have many instances of WSMV because of the drought.
Chris Kirby from Oklahoma Wheat Commission reported that the state's production was estimated at 60 million bushels this year, down from 115 million bushels last year, according to USDA/NASS. She said that harvest started on the southern border of Oklahoma on Wednesday. With temperatures of 107°F today and forecasted 109°F tomorrow, harvest will move quickly. USDA/NASS estimates the Oklahoma crop will yield 25 bushels per acre, compared with 39 last year. Harvested acres are estimated at 2.4 million acres. She also reported that the Oklahoma Grain adn Feed Association had estmated the Oklahoma crop at 57 million bushels a few days ahead of the USDA extimate release.
Kirby is one of the drivers on the 2022 Wheat Crop Tour this week- and she offered the Oklahoma Farm Report the following observations from Day Two of the trek from Colby to Wichita:
1) many total white stalks and heads in a lot of the fields due to drought stress
2) heads where the bottom portion is filling but not enough energy to fill the entire head
3) wheat berries sloughing off within the heads
4) Fields that were fallowed after harvest are showing better conditions and yield potential
5) right before we headed north to Wichita, the wheat started looking better due to rainfall received as you moved further east.
5) no disease seen on our route today just tremendous drought stress.
6) measured fields ranging from predicted 9 bu/acre to 40 bu/acre with the determining factor being rain or snow. Many fields being grazed out, abandoned and a little hay.
7) with heat and wind- crop has come from behind and appears it will be ready to harvest early.
8) one producer we spoke to today really summed up their crop -
"Not only did we not get rain but we didn't ever have a spring for the wheat to fully develop. We went from cold straight into constant high winds and heat."
Credit- this report prepared from the news release from the Kansas Wheat website, Twitter and observations provided by Chris Kirby of the Oklaholma Wheat Commission.
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