Despite traveling through areas that had wheat fields suffering from drought and facing a wide spread Wheat Streak Mosaic virus- crop scouts on the first day of an annual three-day tour of Kansas projected an average yield for hard red winter wheat in the northern portion of the state at 50.5 bushels per acre (bpa).
That estimate was above the Wheat Quality Council tour’s five-year average of 45.1 bpa for the same area from 2019-2024, and above its estimate of 49.9 bpa last year. The estimate was the tour’s highest day-one yield estimate since 2021. Tour scouts surveyed 196 fields on Tuesday between Manhattan and Colby, Kansas.
Oklahoma Farm Report’s Ron Hays talked about the first day of the tour with the President of the Oklahoma Wheat Growers, Dennis Schoenhals of Kremlin, Oklahoma. Listen to Ron and Dennis by clicking on the Listen Bar below:
Schoenhals says that the care he is in traveled through some very prooductive wheat country- and ended up with a 57 bushel per acre average for their 12 stops. They did see Wheat Streak Mosaic in many of the fields they were in- and as they got west of Russell, Kansas, drought became more of a concern.
Day two of the tour on Wednesday will see routes traveling from Colby into southwestern Kansas and then east to Wichita. Several scouts will dip into Oklahoma and survey wheat conditions in the northern tier of counties that border Kansas. The tour is scheduled to release on Thursday a final yield forecast for Kansas, the top U.S. winter wheat producer.
