Agricultural News
Post-Harvest Numbers Confirm Quality, Quantity of Oklahoma's Bountiful 2012 Wheat Crop
Thu, 12 Jul 2012 16:16:48 CDT
Wheat harvest is now over and Mike Schulte, the executive director of the Oklahoma Wheat Commission has had a chance to go over some numbers and get a more detailed picture of how Oklahoma producers performed this year. He spoke with Ron Hays recently about his observations.
Obviously, harvest was extremely early this year due to an exceptionally mild winter and heavy rains throughout early spring. Schulte said he has never seen such a year.
"Never have I ever had harvest be three weeks early and still have a great harvest. So, from a lot of accounts it was really great the harvest over with soon, but also have what we would consider a bumper crop for Oklahoma."
He said that in all his travels throughout the state, producers were nearly unanimous in not being able to recall an earlier harvest in their lifetimes.
"May 13th was the real first day of harvest in Oklahoma this year. And talking to a couple of producers in Southwest Oklahoma at those variety trials they had seen some areas where maybe they had cut a field or two-oh, I think it was 20 years ago-and in that instance when they had done that, no doubt, the crop had burned up and there wasn't much to anticipate for a good harvest."
Schulte said the mild winter, abundant moisture at just the right times, and earlier varieties combined to produce a nearly picture-perfect crop.
"It was interesting to see that we could harvest three weeks early and still have those decent yields.
"USDA estimates have us up 85 million bushels from last year. So, they have us at 155.4 million bushels as what they estimate we will come in with in the state this year. Last year, they had us estimated that we took in 70.4 million bushels."
Producer were universally happy with the crop overall, but Schulte said it didn't keep them from speculating on how much better the crop could have been with a little more moisture here or there and without an early-April heat wave which hastened ripening in some areas of southwest and northwest Oklahoma.
Despite sub-optimal conditions at some points in the growing season, Schulte said, test weights remained high from 60-65 pounds. Yields, as well, were high. He said they ranged from 30 bushels to the acre in some areas to as much as yields in the mid seventies in others.
Schulte said there had been worries quality would suffer, but that fear hasn't proven out. Working with Plains Grains, he said, "Protein varied all over the board in the state, but, all in all, protein levels were very favorable for Oklahoma. And as we progressed on up into the northern parts of the state, protein has stayed at 12.5 and 12.6 which is a good average that our buyers are looking for. And then when we got out in the Panhandle region of Oklahoma, no doubt, we had proteins that were even into 13 and 14. So there were some areas that had higher protein levels, but, all in all for us to have an abundant crop there are also a lot of quality parameters you have to look at. And with this being an abundant crop, it was still very favorable on the quality side."
He said producers are already looking to 2013 and trying to make variety selections. He said Duster and Billings were very popular this year and that information from variety trials is flowing in. He encouraged producers to check out www.okcrop.com
Click on the LISTEN BAR below to hear the full conversation with Ron Hays and Mike Schulte. You can also catch them on this week's "In the Field" segment on News 9 Saturday morning about 6:40.
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