Grainnet

Kansas Wheat Tour Shows Improved Crop Probable

Wheat producers are invited to attend the Kansas Wheat Day at the Hays Experiment Station on Wednesday, May 21.

Key information about wheat markets, commercialization opportunities and K-State varieties will be presented.

The noon lunch is provided free of charge.

Afternoon speakers will begin at 1:00 pm with Willis Kidd, Louis Dreyfus Corporation, who will cover the "Current global wheat supply and demand picture." Dr. Vincent Amanor-Boadu, KSU will then look at the "Future Commercialization opportunities for Kansas Wheat Producers."

New information regarding the Kansas Wheat Alliance license agreement for the K-State varieties will be provided by Daryl Strouts, Kansas Crop Improvement Association.

All are invited to the tours of Hays research plots at 3:30 pm.

The Hays Research Center is at 1232 240th Avenue on the south side of Hays.

Fourteen cars with 63 crop scouts surveyed and evaluated the potential of the Kansas wheat crop the week of May 5-8, 2008.

The total number of field stops was 388. This number is down slightly from past years due to rain and very muddy conditions in some areas.

Day one saw the fourteen cars traveling on six different routes from Manhattan to Colby. The wheat seemed pretty good in all areas of this route.

It was obvious that the crop was behind normal maturity in most areas, and fall planted wheat that did not emerge until this spring was found in a lot of places.

This would be the concern for the Kansas crop this year in areas where this phenomenon occurred, especially if the weather turns hot.

Yields for the day ranged from 15-94 bushels per acre with the day average on all routes of 45.4 bushels. The day one average in 2007 was 40 bushels.

Day two the cars traveled from Colby to Wichita going into the far Western counties and two cars went farther south into Oklahoma.

As expected beforehand, the far west and south are in the drought areas of Kansas.

The worst areas appeared to be in the far southwestern corner and correspondingly south into the western Oklahoma panhandle.

The stands were much poorer in the southwest, and yields responded accordingly.

As the cars moved east toward Wichita, the yields improved dramatically. The day two average was 40.9 with a range from Zero to 108.

The day two overall average last year was 41.6 bushels per acre.

Day three concluded the trip with the cars traveling from Wichita to Kansas City.

This smaller wheat production area does not have a large impact on state-wide averages, but is usually a fairly high yielding area.

Yields ranged from 28-64 bushels with a day three average of 43.3 compare to 32.4 last year. There was a lot of freeze damage in this area in 2007.

The calculated average for the entire tour was 43.3 bushels per acre compared to 41 bushels one year ago on the same routes.

The scouts use a formula provided by KS Ag Statistics to arrive at their calculated average.

The formula is based on a 10-year rolling average and changes slightly from year to year.

The estimated production for the entire crop by 48 participants who joined the pool this year is 379.1 million bushels.

These people base their estimates on yield estimates and acres expected to be abandoned for some reason.

On May 9, the official estimate from Kansas Ag Statistics was 357.2 million bushels.

They did their official survey about a week ahead of the Wheat Council tour.

Oklahoma gave a report in Wichita that listed 5.7 million acres planted with a yield estimate of 32.4 bushels per acre and total production of 157 million bushels.

Oklahoma only produced 98 million bushels last year.

Methods used by the estimators on the Wheat Quality Council’s annual Hard Winter Wheat Evaluation Tour are available on the Kansas Wheat website at here.

For more information, call 866-759-4328.