by Tracy McCue, Sumner Newscow — A cloud front hovered over Sumner County this morning, and dumped just enough rain to delay what could have been the first big day of the 2018 Wheat Harvest.

Elevators are gearing up for an onslaught of wheat trucks in what is being projected as a very average wheat harvest in Sumner County.

2018 appears to be an unremarkable wheat harvest. It will neither knock anyone’s socks off, nor be out-and-out terrible either.

“I’m hoping we will make our county yearly average,” said Randy Heim, Sumner County Extension Agent. “Our average from 2005 to 2013 is 35.18 bushels per acre. That sounds like the kind of wheat we are going to cut this year.”

The Wellington Area Progressive Ag Coop, which consists of 13 elevators throughout Sumner County, has taken in around five loads. The first one came in on Sunday evening. On Monday there were three or four loads. All of the loads were in the South Haven-Caldwell area. 

Heim said he said someone was cutting north of Wellington.

Weather has held off future activity.

Once the weather gets dry enough, farmers are expected to see a crop that is average in test weight, average in protein, and the yields will follow suit. Heim said one of the positives with this future crop is it appears to be trouble free.

“I don’t think there is any rust or wheat diseases out there this year than what we have seen in the past,” Heim said. “It was so cold last winter that the insects never had time to develop.”

The issue this year was the wacko weather. The freezing winter turned searing hot in early May without any time in between during the critical maturation process of the wheat plant. It has been a dry year.

When wheat develops, it is important to have strong tiller activity. They are lateral shoots that eventually form the head. A good tiller has three or more leaves. The more tillers, the more heads. The more heads, the more wheat kernels. The more wheat kernels, the higher yields.

Heim’s worries because of the chaotic weather, the late freezes combined with the instant hot days thereafter, caused the plant to produce less tillers and focus its attention on one just one head.

“It is just so hard to predict,” Heim said. “I think we will see some farmers cut something around 50 bushels an acre and others who will see a crop in the lower 20s.”

Heim said the cooler than normal temperatures the past two weeks, will most certainly help.

Mike Morlan, manager of Progress Ag Coop, said he thinks area farmers will be pleased with the yields considering the weather circumstances. He said the wheat in the South Haven area looks a little better than in the northern Conway Springs area.

Of course, there are the indirect circumstances. Custom cutters may be in short supply. Wheat is still being cut in southern Texas. There appears to be no flow to this year’s harvest which normally starts in the south end of Texas and migrates north in an orderly fashion. Fields are maturing at different times everywhere.

Even here in Sumner County this could be a lengthy harvest. Some wheat is ready to go, but other wheat acres are still two to three weeks away.

“I think when you have rains like this morning it will even things out a bit,” Morlan said.

While the prognosis is average for Sumner County, farmers in other parts of the state would love to have such rosy projections.

According to a 2018 Wheat Quality Council after its “Hard Winter Wheat Tour” across the state of Kansas, the three-day average yield for the fields that were calculated at 37 bushels an acre. While an estimated 7.8 million acres of wheat were planted in the fall, most of Kansas has been in a severe drought since October. Tour participants saw wheat that was significantly behind schedule, with most areas three or more weeks behind normal development. Not only that, but the wheat is short, which will make harvesting it difficult.

Head size is determined right after the wheat comes out of dormancy, and most of the heads were small, which will negatively affect yields the report said. Abandoned acres will likely be higher than normal, but how much depends on the next few weeks.

The official tour projection for total production of wheat to be harvested in Kansas is 243.3 million bushels. If realized, this would be about 90 million bushels less than last year’s crop and the lowest production in Kansas since 1989, the report said. This number is calculated based on the average of estimated predictions from tour participants who gathered information from 644 fields across the state.

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