The 2023 Wheat Quality Council’s Hard Winter Wheat Tour across Kansas wrapped up on May 18. During the three days of wheat scouting, tour participants traveled six routes from Manhattan to Colby to Wichita and back to Manhattan. (The picture here is typical for day three- a field near Goessel, Ks with a calculated yield of 37.4 BPA)

The three-day average calculated yield for the fields that will be harvested was 30 bushels per acre and a total production estimate of 178 million bushels.

That's even lower than the 1963 crop of 185 million bushels for the state- and you have to go back to historic drought in the 1950s to find a smaller crop- 1957 was the low water mark in a period of 1953-57 when Kansas was below 200 million bushels several years in a row- the 1957 crop is the historic low for Kansas (post Dust Bowl) when they produced just 100 million bushels.

While an estimated 8.1 million acres of wheat were planted in the fall, the Kansas wheat crop has suffered from a multi-year drought, which has robbed the state’s yield potential and resulted in many abandoned fields.(The picture above is from day two and shows a field near Lakin, Ks that the scouts were told had been zeroed out by insurance adjusters- got rain and in the last few days has finally sprouted.)

The scouts are suggesting that the final harvested acres number may be around 5.9 million acres, well under the 6.6 million acres that USDA predicted would be harvested in their May Crop Production report.



National Livestock was founded in 1932 in Oklahoma City. National’s Marketing Division offers cattle for sale weekly at the Oklahoma National Stockyards in Oklahoma City. The Finance Division lends money to ranchers across several states for cattle production. The Grazing Division works with producers to place cattle for grazing on wheat or grass pastures. 

National also owns and operates other livestock marketing subsidiaries including Southern Oklahoma Livestock Auction in Ada, Oklahoma, OKC West Livestock Market in El Reno, Oklahoma, and the nation’s premier livestock video sale, Superior Livestock Auction. National offers customers many services custom made for today’s producer. To learn more, click here for the website or call the Oklahoma City office at 1-800-310-0220.

According to the latest Oklahoma Drought Map, Exceptional drought has decreased from last week’s 10.09 percent and is now at 8.88 percent.

Extreme drought or worse has also improved this week, as it decreased from 33.10 percent last week to 30.67 percent this week.

Severe drought or worse has decreased significantly from last week’s 48.07 percent to this week’s 43.81 percent.

Moderate drought or worse has improved from last week’s 52.47 percent to this week’s 50.19 percent.

Abnormally dry or worse conditions have improved significantly, moving from last week’s 60.81 percent to 55.79 percent this week.

According to the 6-10-day precipitation outlook map, the probability of precipitation increases as the map moves west. The far east side of the state stands as a near normal chance of precipitation through May 27, and that chance increases all the way through the far west side of the panhandle, which is leaning above a 50 to 60 percent chance of precipitation.

Click the Oklahoma drought map above the story to view this week's drought numbers for Oklahoma.

OSU’s Morgan Pfeiffer Highlights Beef Industry Progress in NBQA

In this episode of Beef Buzz, I am visiting with Oklahoma State University’s Morgan Pfeiffer about the National Beef Quality Audit.

The National Beef Quality Audit (NBQA) is a comprehensive survey that evaluates beef industry efforts to improve beef quality. Conducted every five years since 1991, the checkoff-funded Audit assesses progress the industry makes on a variety of production issues that ultimately affect consumer demand for beef. Pfeiffer is one of the researchers aiding in the 2022 National Beef Quality Audit.

“Part of the audit is also training graduate students, so that is how I got started,” Pfeiffer said. “In 2016, I was a Ph.D. student at Oklahoma State, and I served as our lead grad student on the audit. During that time, I helped with interviews, implant collections and was able to go to the strategy workshop.”

Now, as a member of the faculty in the OSU animal and food sciences department, Pfeiffer said her role is a little different.

As Pfeiffer has been a part of a few of these audits, she said she has seen the progress made over the years.

“To look back at those documents that were produced and see that they were concerned with increasing quality and making sure the product was exactly what consumers wanted from that aspect, and today we are concerned with more ‘nit-picky’ type of things because the quality of our products has become so expected and it is something we should be really proud of,” Pfeiffer said. “We are producing a product that consumers love because of that quality.”

This Week on SUNUP is Oklahoma State University Extension grain market economist Kim Anderson. During this week’s edition, Anderson talks about the wheat crop all over the world.

This time last week, Anderson said the USDA released the May WASDE report, and NASS released the 2024 crop production report. The news concentrated on the hard red winter wheat crop, Anderson said, which is at 513 million bushels, only three percent less than last year, but significantly lower than the 800-million-bushel average.

“It is the second short hard red winter wheat crop in a row, and hard red winter wheat stocks are tight,” Anderson said. “The market concentrated in on Oklahoma’s crop at 49.5 million bushels- second low crop in a row.”

Texas, Anderson said, has had a short crop as well.

“Kansas had a disaster as well at 1.91 million bushels,” Anderson said.

Looking back to April 1, Anderson said there has been a $1.65 increase in hard red winter wheat prices.



“If you compare hard red winter wheat prices to soft red winter wheat prices, hard red winter wheat prices are about $2.50 higher than the soft prices,” Anderson said.

Seed Must Provide Economic and Environmental Benefits for Producers and Consumers

Associate Farm Editor, Reagan Calk, is visiting with the Vice President of Government Affairs at the American Seed Trade Association, Janae Brady, about a seed industry update and 2023 farm bill priorities.

Brady first talked about the importance of intellectual property protection to innovation.

“Intellectual property is really key for our plant breeders to be able to put forward the most innovative technology available, and it is something that our industry relies on to encourage innovation largely, so we are constantly looking for the next best type of technology out there,” Brady said. “I think often, the general public doesn’t think about seeds in the world of technology, but we really have been able to produce the best seed in the world because of our systems in place for plant breeders in particular.”

Risk management tools such as crop insurance are critical for producers going forward, Brady said, to continue to have those innovations in the seed industry.

“For us, one of the front lines of risk management is the high-quality, professionally produced seed that you put into the ground,” Brady said. “If you are trying to overcome challenges with weather or if you are trying to get the highest yields, or nutritional value, or so many different things that you want in that end-product of food, really does start with that seed you put into the ground.”

OSU Ag Research collaborates with African researchers to combat ticks

An Oklahoma State University researcher recently traveled to Namibia, located in southwest Africa, to establish a relationship with the University of Namibia in hopes of combating one of the world’s most problematic parasites.

“I’ve wanted to get back to Namibia ever since I arrived here,” said Bruce Noden, OSU associate professor of medical and veterinary entomology, who worked at the Polytechnic of Namibia (now the Namibia University of Science and Technology) from 2010 to 2013.

In Oklahoma, Noden has studied the encroachment of eastern red cedar and the tendency of ticks to live underneath the invasive tree species. In the dry climate of western Oklahoma, ticks prefer the humid climate under eastern red cedars.

Namibia faces a similar tick problem with the invasive plant species of thorn bushes and trees.

“The eastern red cedar is providing a habitat that ticks would not normally have in the dry climate, so our question was if it’s happening here with this tree, what’s happening in parts of Africa experiencing woody plant encroachment?” said Noden, who traveled to Namibia for six weeks in January and February through the Department of State’s Fulbright Specialist Program, which allows short-term trips for creating collaborative relationships, teaching courses or helping institutions establish curriculum.

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