Wheat Tour figures Kansas wheat crop will be below average

Kansas Wheat Tour participants wrapped up their trip across the state Thursday, and then compared notes before arriving at an estimate for the 2015 harvest.

That estimate puts production at 288.5 million bushels, with an average statewide yield of 35.9 bushels per acre.

Dozens of people examined hundreds of samples from wheat fields across the state over three days. The event, coordinated by the Colorado-based Wheat Quality Council, finished up Thursday afternoon and organizers made the final calculations.

The harvest is still four to six weeks away. The U.S. Department of Agriculture will release its own estimate soon.

The 2015 estimate puts the harvest considerably above 2014’s 235 million bushels, but it still would be below average for the state.

Daryl Strouts, CEO and President of the Kansas Wheat Alliance, who was on the tour, said he wasn’t surprised by the overall estimate.

“I was really thinking it would be 10 to 20 percent better than last year, and that’s where this puts it,” he said.

He said the eastern third of the state, which has received adequate rain, has pretty decent wheat. It helped make up for the drought-ravaged far western counties, where wheat tour members found yields of 10 to 20 bushels, and central counties where wheat was averaging 25 to 45 bushels per acre.

This story was originally published May 7, 2015 at 4:29 PM with the headline "Wheat Tour figures Kansas wheat crop will be below average."