By Julie Ingwersen
JETMORE, Kansas, May 3 (Reuters) – Yield prospects for hard red winter wheat in western Kansas were uncertain after a major weekend storm buried some fields under heavy snow, scouts on an annual crop tour said on Wednesday.
Much of the wheat was flattened in the fields hit hardest by snow, and some stalks snapped or bent under the weight, according to scouts on the Wheat Quality Council tour. But those crops may be able to recover.
“There are still a lot of unknowns with the wheat that is laying over,” said Justin Gilpin, chief executive of Kansas Wheat, a trade group. “Trying to judge the yield potential is an almost impossible task.”
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Scouts were assessing fields between Colby and Wichita, Kansas, including areas that bore the brunt of the weekend storm. Snow lingered on roadsides and fields in the region. Surplus moisture left by the storm may threaten the quality of the wheat crop and raise the risk of disease, especially for crops that were knocked down.
Before the storm, Gilpin said he anticipated an average to above-average harvest in western Kansas.
“You’re probably looking at half a crop. Those broken stems won’t finish; we know that,” said a farmer near Leoti, in west-central Kansas.
Scouts in one car traveling through Thomas, Logan, Wichita and Kearny counties calculated an average yield on three fields of 36.3 bushels per acre (bpa). Scouts were unable to calculate yield prospects on at least five fields where most of the crop was knocked over and stems were broken.
A year ago, the tour average on the same route was 54.4 bpa.
Scouts in a second car traveling slightly farther east, through Scott City, were unable to make any yield calculations by midmorning due to bent stems and uncertainty about the flattened crop’s ability to recover.
A third car traveling through Scott, Lane and Ness counties made six stops and calculated an average yield of 52.2 bpa, above the tour’s year-ago average for the same route of 46.3.
The Wheat Quality Council tour is scheduled to release a final yield estimate for Kansas, the top U.S. wheat state, on Thursday. The tour on Tuesday projected an average yield of 43.0 bpa in the northern portion of the state.
Kansas produced a record-high state wheat yield in 2016 of 57.0 bpa, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
