Not the Year to be a Wheat Farmer!

2023 was not the year to be a wheat farmer.

The old timers always say that wheat has nine lives. However, this year, the first eight of those lives were spent like a parched and thirsty traveler looking for an oasis in Death Valley. By the time we started getting some rain in late May and June, the crop was already on life support.

I saved a Kansas drought monitor map at the end of April. It showed how much of Kansas was in exceptional or extreme drought. It wasn't the first or last time for that red to "bleed" over much of the state.

 

Usually, there is great anticipation and excitement as wheat harvest arrives. This year, there was no sense of urgency. People in our area still aren't done, but intermittent showers have made it hard to get over the ground.

Painting filter on photograph

As I mentioned before, Tye and Todd (who farm our ground) hire custom cutters rather than having their own combine. Frederick Harvesting from Alden arrived with four combines on June 28. By late the next day, they had cut the majority of our acres.

Since I began blogging in 2010, I've had a handy record of finish dates for our wheat harvest. They've been all over the board in the past 14 years:

2010: June 25

2011: June 20

2012: June 9 (an anomaly)

2013: July 6

2014: July 7

2015: July 1

2016: July 13

2017: June 28

2018: June 29

2019: July 22

2020: July 7

2021: July 12

2022: June 28

2023: June 29(four custom machines make it go quickly!)

 

The blog also made it easier to keep track of the average bushels per acre over our farm ground. Yield averages in the years since I've been blogging have been:

2010: 37.2 bu/acre

2011: 36.7 bu/acre

2012: 45.5 bu/acre

2013: 52 bu/acre

2014: 24.5 bu/acre

2015: 50 bu/acre

2016: 48.5 bu/acre

2017: 50.84 bu/acre

2018: 39.2 bu/acre

2019: 23.6 bu/acre

2020: 49.5 bu/acre

2021: 58 bu/acre

2022: 34 bu/acre

2023: 17.7 bu/acre

This year, the bushels per acre on our ground ranged from 4 to 32. 

There will be a lot of insurance adjusters in our area in the coming days because the poor crop was universal. Back in June, it was predicted that Kansas farmers would reap their smallest harvest in more than 60 years. For decades, Kansas has led the nation in wheat production. For the last two years, a drought has withered a lot of the crop.

While the final numbers aren't in, this year’s wheat harvest in Kansas is shaping up to be the smallest since 1957. That year, the Eisenhower administration intentionally suppressed wheat production. Last year, Kansas produced 244 million bushels of hard red winter wheat. It remains to be seen what the tally will be this year.

But, this is wheat country. Here's hoping for a better crop next year!

Wheat's Nine Lives

You know the old cliche, "Rain, rain, go away. Come again another day."?

Unless you're planning an outside wedding in Kansas, no one is buying into that sentiment. (And, if you're planning an outside wedding in Kansas in early March, what do you expect anyway?)

We got about 0.80 inches of moisture about a week ago. While we appreciate every drop, it didn't do much to alleviate the drought conditions in the Wheat State.

However, right now, Kansas' wheat farmers are wondering if there will be much of a 2023 crop this summer at all. Tye, who took over our farm ground after last year's harvest, called Randy after touring wheat ground over the weekend. So we went out for our own perusal.

It's not looking good. But Tye is not alone. The National Ag Statistics services released an update on crop conditions for the week ending February 26. The winter wheat condition is rated:

25 percent very poor

26 percent poor

30 percent fair

17 percent good 

2 percent excellent

 

There is certainly not 2 percent excellent in our part of the state.

 

It varies from field to field, too. What we call the "home quarter" (directly above) looks better than the 80 acres south of our house (photo earlier in this post).

In our area, we are ranked at in the D3 or extreme drought category. My childhood farm in Pratt County is even worse - ranked in D4 or exceptional drought category, along with most of western Kansas. Only the northeast portion of the state is without drought conditions.

Graphic from Kansas Wheat

The USDA's Ag Statistics says that subsoil moisture supplies are rated 46 percent very short, 32 percent short, 22 percent adequate and 1 percent surplus. 

“You never want to count a wheat crop out; we talk about it being the crop with nine lives,” said Jeanne Falk Jones, a multi-county specialist with K-State’s Northwest Research-Extension center in Colby in a news release from K-State Research and Extension. “But some would say we ran through a few of those lives trying to get to this point in the growing season.”

Much of the Kansas wheat crop was planted last fall in extremely dry conditions, creating variability in wheat stands in the late fall and into this spring. With limited rain and snow fall this winter, those dry conditions haven't changed.

In the past year, precipitation in Kansas was about 10 inches below normal.

At this point, wheat is in a dormant period. Last week's rain did help green up some fields, but time will tell whether it can recover enough to harvest. 

Tye - like most farmers - is trying to weigh the options. Should fertilizer be applied when the outlook looks sparse? If you apply a herbicide, it reduces the options of what you could plant after a crop failure. So, what's the best management decision?

A crystal ball would be helpful in farming. So would some rain. 

Kansas is the nation’s leading wheat producer, known for hard red winter wheat that is used for whole grain white bread and other whole grain products. According to the Kansas Department of Agriculture, the state’s growers harvested 7 million acres with an average yield of 52 bushels per acre in 2021. This accounted for 10.4% of the state’s total agricultural receipts and 22.1% of the nation’s crop.

KDA estimates the direct impact of wheat production in Kansas at $1.3 billion in output and 3,231 jobs.

Weekly crop reports from USDA Ag Statistics begin this week as the countdown begins toward wheat harvest 2023. At least, we hope there's a 2023 wheat harvest.  

Harvest 2022