Milling & Baking News - June 30, 2020 - 16

Business

Kansas winter wheat harvest
advances after pause for rain
KANSAS CITY - Weekend rains initi- difference we've seen in a long time."
Yields and quality in south central
ated a harvest pause in central and eastern Kansas June 19-21 after two weeks of Kansas were as expected based on cenhot, dry weather afforded a strong start to tral Oklahoma conditions and testing.
harvest in the nation's top winter wheat Harvest moved at a rapid pace in southwest Kansas, where there were fewer
production state.
About a third of the state was nearly acres to combine. Drought stress last fall
completed when precipitation hit, pro- meant only 30% to 40% of planted acres
viding a cooldown period that kept emerged before dormancy. Continued
high temperatures and strong winds drought conditions during key spring
from potentially lowering test weights development phases led to widespread
in wheat ready to harvest. Rain was abandonment, and numerous acres earbeneficial to later-planted fields where lier were zeroed out by insurance adjustthe crop still was in the latter stages of ers. Yields in the stressed region thus far
development, such as northern areas of have been lower, as expected, but wheat
Kansas, as well as in Nebraska, South quality was encouraging, traders said.
Plains Grains, Inc. on June 19 released
Dakota and Montana.
The US Department of Agriculture, in its first results from the 2020 hard red
its weekly update on crop progress and winter wheat crop with 42 of an expected
conditions, said harvest
completion by June 21
was 25% in Kansas (compared with 4% a year ago,
24% as the recent fiveyear average for the date);
85% in Oklahoma (35%,
65%); 85% in Texas (53%,
66%); and 7% in Colorado
(0%, 1%).
Wheat harvest through
Kansas thus far did not
advance as expected. Numerous factors had harvesters scouting fields to
check for readiness, rather
than moving north from
field to field. Whether or
not a field was ready to be
cut depended on which
variety was planted and
when, as well as timing of
KANSAS WHEAT COMMISSION AND KANSAS ASSOCIATION OF WHEAT GROWERS
fungicide treatments.
At the same time, two freeze events in 500 samples tested. PGI said the average
April impacted fields differently based protein was 11.1%, average thousand keron development stage. Come harvest, nel weight was 33 grams, average grade
some fields where plants' primary tillers was No. 1 hard red winter and test weight
were killed by freezing often had second- was averaging 62.7 lbs per bu.
"Hot, dry and windy weather domiary tillers coming up that needed another
week to go from green to brown and dry nated the weather pattern in the central
and northern areas of the US where the
off enough to collect.
There was also a big temperature and crop is still anywhere from a few days
moisture differential between north-cen- to weeks from harvest," PGI said at that
tral and south-central Kansas, with the time. "Drought continues to worsen in
former staying cooler and drier, Justin those same areas and is negatively affectGilpin, chief executive officer of Kansas ing wheat in the final stages of development and will likely affect the final yield
Wheat, said in a weekly update.
"There was more than three weeks' and quality in those areas."
The USDA's latest assessment of the
difference in development between Republic and Sumner counties," Mr. Gilpin winter wheat crop's condition indicatsaid, noting by example the crop "jointing ed improvement in the northern Plains
in Republic the same day it was heading where the wheat crop was in the later
in Sumner. It's the biggest developmental developmental stages, and a decline in
16 / June 30, 2020

Milling & Baking News

the southern Plains, parts of which had
wheat growing in drought conditions.
Overall, conditions of the hard red winter
crop were holding steady, with beneficial
rains soaking some lower production
states in the Pacific Northwest.
The USDA pegged good-to-excellent
ratings in principal hard winter wheat
states with 50% or more left to harvest in
the week ended June 21 at 42% in Kansas
(45% a week earlier), 29% in Colorado
(31%), 62% in Nebraska (43%), 80% in
South Dakota (77%) and 85% in Montana (82%).
Harvest continued unabated in dry
southwest Kansas after the recent rain
event mostly skirted the region. Parts of
Stanton County, Kan., along the Colorado border, received a mere 1½ inches of
rain since June 2019, and the other five
counties in the southwest corner of the
state were similarly short on moisture,
as are their counterparts in southeast
Colorado and the Oklahoma panhandle.
Western areas of Stanton County, Kan., were
expected to wrap up a
10-day harvest period by
June 27 in the absence of
rain disruption, Kansas
Wheat said in its Day 7
Harvest Report.
Matt Overturf from
Skyland Grain in Johnson, Kan., said acreage in
the area was down 15% to
20% from 2019. With dryland yields ranging thus
far from 15 to 30 bus an
acre and irrigated fields
from 45 to 50 bus, the
grain company was expecting only a third of the
bushels received in 2019.
Fall crops also are
struggling in the absence of healthy soil
moisture profiles, leading Mr. Overturf to
suggest an increase in seeded wheat acres
was possible this fall.
"If Mother Nature gives us a little help,
we can grow a good crop," he told Kansas
Wheat.
In Hamilton County, situated north
along the border with Colorado, yields
have varied widely, some as low as 5 bus
an acre, though the average looked to be
closer to 30 bus, grower Jason Ochs of
Syracuse, Kan., told Kansas Wheat.
"Where the rains didn't hit, yields
won't be as good," he said, predicting
the crop will be about half of last year's,
which was a record-high for the county.
But test weights there averaged about
60 lbs per bu, and proteins were testing
around the mid-11% range, higher than
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Milling & Baking News - June 30, 2020

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