Agricultural News
Hard Red Winter Wheat Crop Tour Underway- Day One Sees Smaller Crop Than 2012
Wed, 01 May 2013 05:55:56 CDT
Day one of the 2013 Wheat Quality Council's Hard Red Winter Wheat Crop Tour is in the books- and while the tour scouts have come in with a smaller expected yield versus their estimates of 2012- 43.8 bushels per acre estimated in 2013 versus 53.4 bushels per acre predicted in 2012- a lot of the yields they counted as they drove west will be dependent on ideal weather conditions now until a very late harvest this summer.
One of the crop scouts in 2013 is Debbie Wedel with the Oklahoma Wheat Commission- and she provided us an update on Tuesday evening after the report session in Colby, Kansas. You can hear Debbie's comments by clicking on the LISTEN BAR at the bottom of this story.
Scouts found some really good wheat in north central Kansas as they left Manhattan on Tuesday morning, with some fields projected to yield in the high 70s and low 80s (Bushels per acre). However, as they traveled towards Colby in northwest Kansas, the soil mositure profile got drier and drier- and projected yields dropped. However, the pictures being posted on Twitter and the yields the scouts were counting suggested that the only way the numbers would work is with cool, wet weather combined with enough sunshine between now and late June- and with farmers being proactive in applying fungicides since the weather would then be positive for the development of leaf and strip rust moving up from the south.
There were several tweets that suggested skepticism by folks within the wheat industry- one tweeter commented "Saying the wheat crop will make if it rains is like saying the Jets would have won the Super Bowl if they had kept Tim Tebow." Another tweet made reference to the picture seen above- saying the Wheat Crop Tour Scouts "just pegged this wheat at 21 bushels/acre. If that's the case I am pegging mine at 210."
The 2013 HRW tour continues today from Colby southward into southwest Kansas with at least one route dipping into northern Oklahoma before stopping for the next report session tonight in Wichita, Kansas. During the Wichita report session, Mike Schulte with the Oklahoma Wheat Commission will report on the numbers that will be unveiled midday Wednesday by Oklahoma wheat scouts during a report session at the annual meeting of the Oklahoma Grain and Feed Association- being held in Oklahoma City.
Our continuing coverage of WheatWatch2013 is a service of the Oklahoma Wheat Commission- click here for the OWC website to learn more about how they are working hard for the Oklahoma Wheat producer.
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