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| "Toast" was the word used most often to describe
wheat fields toured during the second day of the Wheat Quality Council's annual
hard red winter wheat crop tour, which covered some of Kansas's driest regions.
Wheat conditions deteriorated as scouts moved south of Colby. Spring
emergence, or lack of emergence, became a common sight south of Garden City and
eastward, as expected. Scouts saw fields already sprayed with Roundup and
several instances of farmers planting corn directly into wheat fields. As
scouts moved closer to Wichita, yield estimates improved but much of the wheat
was shorter than average with smaller heads.
Based on 264 stops, the tour estimated the second day's average yield at
33.4 bushels per acre, compared to last year's 40.3 bpa. The tour estimated
that wheat along day one's route from Manhattan to Colby would yield 40 bushels
per acre, just slightly lower than last year. The two-day average yield
estimate is 36.7 bpa.
"Let's just cut to the chase, Kansas really needs some rain. They really
need some rain," said scout Brian Harrington, who works for Horizon Milling,
during his report on his tour route's results.
Oklahoma's yield estimates came in at 25 bpa to make 67.65 million bushels
across the state, about half of last year's total production. Mired in drought,
much of the crop in the southwest died after about 100 days without moisture.
The state received varied rainfall in the past week and Mike Schulte of the
Oklahoma Wheat Commission said it needs more rain -- not more days like
Wednesday with 70 mph winds -- to meet the production estimate. Texas is likely
to produce 40 million to 50 million bushels compared to 128 mb last year, Maury
Brannan said, based on his conversations with elevators. The official estimate
is a bit higher.
"It's just serious in our part of the world. We are getting calls from many
foreign buyers, and they're looking at us right now," Schulte said. Given
Russia and Australia's crop issues last year, he's gotten calls from China. He
usually gets calls from Mexico and South America, but never China. The world is
drawing on wheat stocks faster than they're being replenished and with the HRW
wheat crop the next to be harvested, it's drawing international attention. Ben
Handcock, the tour's organizer, said he did an interview with the London Times
newspaper, a first.
Yields in Kansas were variable, with scouts seeing fields destined to be
abandoned and other fields with yield estimates in healthy territory. The
variety was due to moisture difference, production method and stage of the
crop. Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma are looking at much higher than average
abandonment acres.
"Conditions today could rival the drought conditions we saw in early 2000s
and so could abandonment," said Kansas Wheat Commission CEO Justin Gilpin.
"Because of the short moisture conditions we saw a difference in crop potential
in fallow systems versus continual system." Average abandonment in the
southwest Kansas, the most drought-stricken region the tour surveyed, is about
10% but this year that number could be "way above average." One tour veteran
said abandonment could easily be 20% to 25%.
The national rate of abandonment could be higher than in 2002-2003 when
harvested acreage was 29% less than what was planted. In a typical year,
abandonment runs about 19%, according to DTN Senior Analyst Darin Newsom. The
2002-2003 growing season was similar to this year's, with an August and
September that were much drier than average and little improvement into May.
"Unfortunately, both the 2002-2003 and 2011-2012 crops seem to run counter
to the old adage, 'plant in the dust and the bins will bust,'" Newsom said.
Although this crop year shares characteristics with 2002-2003, unaccounted-for
differences could result in very different outcomes.
"Taking the shortcomings of the analogous-year analysis into account,
projected estimates using 2002-2003 results are sobering," Newsom said.
"Instead of yield seeing the normal 0.6 bpa increase, the national average
dropped 5.2 bpa from 2001-2002. Using similar numbers for 2011 puts harvested
acres at 29.2 million, which would be the smallest harvested winter wheat area
since 1917. Furthermore, if yield sees a like percentage decrease, the average
could be close to 41.2 bpa, putting total production at just over 1.2 billion
bushels, the second-smallest production level over the last 40 years and
trailing only the 1.14 bb in 2002," he said.
On both days of this year's tours, scouts observed that wheat planted into
wheat fallow had higher yield estimates than wheat planted behind corn or
soybeans. Gilpin said fallowed fields act as a moisture bank -- since nothing
is growing, moisture stays in the ground and is available the next time the
field is planted. One car stopped at a test plot that compared types of fallow
and yield. They found that wheat planted after wheat fallow yielded 5 bpa
higher than wheat planted after corn fallow.
"It's a year where production practices matter," Gilpin said. His leg of the
tour did not go to the test plot, but toured the northern tier of Oklahoma
counties.
On Gilpin's route, scouts found wheat that started heading but some of the
estimates were higher than what they expected. The tour uses different formulas
for wheat in early and late stages of development. As the scouts moved
southward on the second day, they switched formulas. The early-season formula
uses the number of wheat stems in a foot and accounts for sloughing off of
tillers. The late-season formula takes a count of heads in 12 inches of a row
and uses numbers related to the size of the head.
Many scouts noted that heads were smaller than average, with 8 to 10
spikelets instead of 12. Others said wheat was shorter than average in many
places, an indicator of a shallow root system. Scouts on Gilpin's route saw
conditions that would negatively affect grain fill, like freeze damage, making
the average eyeball estimate lower than the calculated estimate.
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KS. wheat tour
