The 2023 hard red winter wheat harvest has been one for the record books in the southern great plains- and not particularly in a good way. Oklahoma Farm Report’s Ron Hays talked this past Friday with Oklahoma Wheat Commission Executive Director Mike Schulte about the OWC’s final harvest report of the season released last Thursday- and how the rains that started in May and have continued into early July have made it difficult to harvest the smaller wheat crop expected because of dry conditions in the majority of the growing season.
Schulte says “we did start getting rain the third and fourth week of May when the crop was ready (to harvest) and in all instances producers across the state have been so thankful for it have not been complaining about it- it did allow us to harvest some things that we never even thought would make a crop at all so in those instances, it did help us in central Oklahoma but there was just so much loss to begin with.
“Once we got into the fields, farmers have had to struggle just getting it out- it seems like we were able to get on the combines and cut a half a day and then overnight- we would get a half inch to an inch to halt things- and that has been happening from Memorial Day all way to the Fourth of July and now even into week after the Fourth.”
Schulte says we are still right around ninety percent complete- but he simple does not know if in locations where the rains have continued to fall- where the fields are muddy and have rapidly growing weeds- those locations may not be able to complete the harvest of those fields- and that could add up to thousands of acres that are abandoned. Schulte adds that those acres being abandoned won’t be reflected in the next Crop Production Report from USDA due out this coming Wednesday.
Schulte is pleased with the quality given all the challenges we have faced this harvest season. He believes that the first fifty to sixty person of the crop that was harvested was mostly brought in with the 60 pound test weight or better- and while the numbers have likely declined with the later wheat harvested because of the rainy conditions- he thinks we may end up with a 59 pound test weight average this year “and that’s pretty remarkable because of the challenges that we have had.”
The Wheat Commission Exec is not certain what the total production numbers may end up looking like- he believes that USDA was pretty close with their June estimate of 54 million bushels with a 25 bushel per acre yield- but that with the acres that could end up being abandoned because of the rains of late June into July- that may prove to be a little too optimistic for the final 2023 stats.
