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!