Now a rotational crop | Farmers’ choice of short season, higher yielding crops threatens long-term viability of land
VALLEY CITY, North Dakota — This is how bad it has become for wheat in the eastern Great Plains: it has to sell itself as a rotation crop that has the added benefit of straw.
And it normally doesn’t win that sale.
“I’m afraid wheat will go totally by the wayside, just like barley,” said dedicated wheat loyalist and promoter Greg Svenningsen.
“People think pencilling in just the beans and corn is going to make the highest profit, but they have to look at the long-term viability and what’s best for the land.”
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In Western Canada, many farmers say wheat is becoming a rotation crop, something that farmers grow because they need a cereal grain in the rotation to break up the disease cycle and maintain the soil, but it’s not what they expect to make their best margins on. However, few farmers ever consider abandoning the crop entirely.
But that’s exactly what has been happening in eastern North Dakota, other parts of the eastern Great Plains and the northern Midwest of the United States. Short season corn and soybean varieties have raced up from the heartland and exterminated much of the local wheat industry.
Wheat’s unique challenges and problems have exacerbated a terrible situation, one that leaves Svenningsen as one of few wheat growers in his area.
“(Soy)beans are simple. You plant ’em, you spray ’em, you’re done. There are no discounts. Beans are beans,” said Svenningsen, a crops and beef cattle producer.
“Corn’s easy too, although there are test weights. With wheat, it’s tougher to grow, there can be big discounts, and there’s head blight.”
The evolution of short season row crops occurred after North Dakota and Manitoba farmers had been grappling for years with crippling losses from fusarium head blight. Svenningsen saw his yields drop from an average of 40 bushels per acre pre-1994 to two years of 18 bu. per acre, and that was a quality-damaged crop.
“That makes you tighten your belt a little,” said Svenningsen.
Until that time, about 80 percent of local crop production was wheat, often wheat-on-wheat.
With severe price discounts given to quality-damaged wheat, and corn and soybeans offering much less risk of downgrades and the promise of ever-higher yields, it’s hard to convince young farmers to grow wheat at all. Most don’t bother.
Svenningsen, a board member of the North Dakota Wheat Commission, said his main argument to convince farmers to grow wheat is that it is good at breaking up the disease cycle in corn and soybeans. A two-year rotation leaves a lot of disease potential and yield losses, but adding in wheat creates higher yields for all three crops.
Generally the argument doesn’t work because in any one year a farmer will make more money growing corn or soybeans.
For Svenningsen, wheat works well because he is an experienced grower who can get high yields from his sandy, hilly fields of about 60 bushels per acre. The straw left by wheat helps with the 200 cow-calf pairs he raises and the 100 pairs his son has.
But even to him, a wheat loyalist, the economics are disappointing. This spring he could forward sell soybeans at $12 per bu. and hard red spring wheat at $7 per bu.
“Unless I get twice the bushels (of wheat), which is no guarantee, the soybeans look better on price,” said Svenningsen.
With the threat of discounts looming over wheat, corn and soybeans look to many like a no-brainer.
Better varieties would help close the yield gap, he hopes. And more commitment from grain companies to buy wheat aggressively would help. A major problem is the frequent downgrading farmers face from complex contracts with multiple specifications that lead to serious price discounts if a single spec is missed.
“A contract doesn’t mean anything if they’re going to pick it apart,” said Svenningsen.
But right now, there’s not much making eastern North Dakota farmers want to grow wheat if they can grow corn and soybeans, so buyers, breeders and processors need to help convince farmers here that wheat can make sense to grow again.