Agricultural News
Rain Slows Early Harvest Season, But Yields and Test Weights Look Good
Fri, 11 May 2012 16:32:17 CDT
Harvest season has gotten off to an early start in the southwest part of the state and Mike Schulte, CEO of the Oklahoma Wheat Commission, says "This is the earliest harvest that has ever been seen from what I'm hearing from a lot of producers. Thursday, May 3rd, for the first load of wheat to be hauled in the state, that's really almost a month ahead of schedule."
Harvest was in full swing Wednesday and Thusday before rains brought everything to a screeching halt on Friday. Elevators used the down time to load rail cars and make room for what is expected to be a heavy week.
Test weights have been running slightly on the low side and Schulte says there were early concerns that may be a problem "in parts of the state just because of the really hot, dry conditions that we had early on this year, but as we've gotten into south central Oklahoma this past week, I was talking to a person who was out in the field yesterday and he was saying test weights were running 60.4 pounds on a truckload he had just hauled in and he felt like the yields were averaging in the mid-40s. And we're kind of seeing those reports consistent with what we're seeing in the elevators in the south central part of the state so we're hoping as we do move on north that test weight is really not going to be an issue."
As far as overall yields were concerned, Schulte said the USDA's estimate of 155.8 million bushels seems to be a pretty good number. He said the estimate of attendees at the Grain and Feed Association conference a couple of weeks ago of 165 million bushels appears to be on the optimistic side especially since "we've had some significant hail damage in southwest Oklahoma where wheat looked really good down by Grandfield and then up in the northern part of the state There's some wheat that was laid down by the tornados up by Cherokee and then went on up through Medford and on into Ponca City.
"Also in the southwest part of the state the straw strength just hasn't been there this year because we've just had large amounts of rain with high winds and that's had an impact on the crop and we're seeing some lodging down in those regions."
All in all, Schulte says, given last year's drought, there is tremendous room for optimism.
"When you drive through all the state, though, I think things still look really good. I think in the far western part of the state where I was this past week, out by Clinton and Elk City, on that poor ground that's extremely thin, some of the wheat out there off the interstate looked beautiful as we were driving through. I was thinking we had wheat in the mid-40s and possibly 50 bushels on the dry land poor land out there. There are some extremely good looking fields."
In his travels through the state, Schulte says the dry land wheat in the Panhandle is looking pretty thin as they just have not had the rains seen in the rest of the state. The irrigated wheat, however, just looks "absolutely phenomenal," he says. "And I think that's going to be a real surprise to us, too."
While the Oklahoma crop appears to be in the ball park with estimates from the USDA, the wheat commission and producers across the state, Schulte says it's not the same in Kansas.
"I was a little bit surprised when they came out with their estimates for Kansas because they came in at 387 million bushels on the USDA estimates- On the Kansas wheat tour they came in at 403 million bushels- I thought that 387 number was maybe a little lower that what I had expected from USDA."
As he turns his sights towards marketing, Schulte said early concerns over test weights may not be a factor after all, but low protein is always a concern. So far, however, he hasn't seen a lot to be worried about.
"We've seen data ranging all over the board but, we've seen a lot of high proteins from the data coming in from this crop so far. I think it's way too early to tell right now what the protein levels are going to be to try to estimate anything on that, but based on some of the numbers that we've seen coming in, I don't know that that is going to really be that much of an issue as we might have thought it would be like two years ago."
With planted acres up in practically all commodities, Schulte says prices are dependent on a lot of factors. He says a lot will depend on what the corn crop does. Despite that, he says there is great potential for this year's wheat crop.
Click here for the latest harvest progress report from the Oklahoma Wheat Commission.
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