As hot weather dries fields, Kansas wheat harvest starts

The Kansas wheat harvest kicked off this week in counties bordering Oklahoma and, so far, it looks encouraging.

Steve Inslee, general manager of OK Co-op Grain in Kiowa, said he saw the first wheat trucks from local farmers on Monday.

“We’ve been going a little faster every day, but we’re still waiting on the custom harvesters,” he said of the hired cutting crews. “When they come in Friday or Saturday, then we’ll be rolling.”

He reports that quality is good, so far, with yields ranging from 50 to 65 bushels an acre, which is high, but cautioned that farmers tend to cut their best fields first.

The Kansas Wheat Commission reports that other grain elevators are seeing lower yields, but said they are also just starting the season.

Temperatures reaching into the low 90s with good winds have sped the drying out of fields in recent days. Every day makes more fields ready to cut.

Scott Van Allen, a wheat farmer in northern Sumner County, said he’s feeling better about life, right now.

“It’s big relief to see these good yields because we’re got terrible prices,” he said. “And if you got terrible prices, you’ve got to have bushels to sell to make a living. This way at least we’ll be still be in business next year.”

Wheat commanded a cash price of $4.23 a bushel at the Garden Plain Co-op on Thursday.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s May 1 estimate puts the Kansas wheat harvest at 352.6 million bushels, a 10 percent increase over last year despite farmers planting fewer acres of wheat. The biggest increase is expected to come in western Kansas, which has suffered a drought for four or five years.

The USDA forecast is that south-central Kansas will see almost exactly the same amount this year as last, at about 77 million bushels of wheat.

This story was originally published June 9, 2016 at 10:27 AM with the headline "As hot weather dries fields, Kansas wheat harvest starts."