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Wheat crop outlook a double-bummer

By ROWENA PLETT, SUSAN MARSHALL, and GRANT OVERSTAKE

Staff writers

During last year's wheat harvest, Christian farmers in Marion County were singing Amen! and Hallelujah!

But when the 2007 harvest begins this week, there'll be no rejoicing bringing in these sheaves.

"Yuck, yuck, and yuck," sums up the anticipated quality of this year's harvest, according to Lyman Adams, president of Cooperative Grain and Supply in Hillsboro.

"Usually it's an exciting time with everybody anticipating the wheat harvest and all that. But this year it's more like, 'Let's get with it, and get it over with.'"

Frozen by cold, drowned by rain, diseased by rust, and plagued by worms, this year's once-promising wheat crop has seen more mayhem than a Cecil B. DeMille movie. While results won't be fully known until weigh-ins at the grain elevators, experts are using the D-word to describe this year's harvest.

"When we looked at it before the first week in April, it looked like a potential bumper crop," Adams said. "But to look at it today, it would definitely be a considered a failure or a disaster."

Phil Timken, manager of Mid-Kansas Cooperative in Peabody, thought harvest could begin for some of his customers by the end of the week.

"If we have several days of sunshine and some 90 degree temperatures we could be close," he said. "Given those conditions, I would expect to see some cutting at the end of the week or over the weekend."

Timken said his assessment of the quality of the wheat considered lots of variables.

"I think it will run from near nothing, five bushels an acre, up to 30 bushels an acre," he noted. "It will depend on when they (the farmers) planted, when they fertilized, what brand they used. Lots of variables."

He said he has worked for the cooperative for 34 harvests. "I expect this will be the worst one," he said.

As the harvest rolled north into Kansas, along with it came more bad news. Not only is the crop yield low, It's got poor quality to boot.

"I had an opportunity to visit with an agent in southern Kansas, where cutting had begun, and the biggest problem they're having is low test weights," said Marion County extension agent Rickey Roberts .

Test weight is a rough estimate of quality. Since wheat is bought and sold partially on a quality basis, low test weights could result in severe discounts to the producer, he said.

After last year's harvest, grain was pressed down and overflowing. Two and a half million bushels of wheat filled the county's five co-op grain elevators. Farmers were praising the Lord of the Harvest for one of the most valuable wheat crops in recent memory. Wheat sold for $4.46 a bushel, the highest harvest time price since 1996. Excellent quality yields hit 40 bushels per acre.

Adams said farmers would be hard-pressed to bring in 20 bushels per acre of mediocre grain this year.

"I talked to a producer today who thought he had one wheat field that looked pretty good, but when he went out and looked at it, the kernels were all shriveled up," Adams said.

He added that lightweight grain is often dirty with chat and difficult to get into combines; and elevator operators have difficulty handling it, because lighter grain doesn't flow like it's supposed to.

"This may be the year that that's all we really have," Adams said. "The industry is definitely nervous about the crop and how we handle it.

"We could have an elevator full of stuff nobody wants."

The gloomy harvest forecast along with drought conditions in many growing areas worldwide, caused the price of wheat to soar over the past two weeks, to more than $5 per bushel.

"It's like a double-whammy, that this is the year when there's record prices," Adams said.

"Last year, with 40 bushel wheat, $5 wheat would have made $200 and acre. This year, with 20 bushel wheat or less, the same field will pay $50 to $100 an acre. And that's not counting the discounts for low test weights.

"If we have low quality like you hear south of us, $5 wheat suddenly becomes a lot less than that."

Last year, the prevailing attitude was gratitude from Hillsboro to Peabody, Canton to Canada. The growing season had been nearly perfect, with just enough rain and just enough heat at just the right time, with none of the drought, none of the blight, and none of the hail.

Looking ahead to this year's crop, optimistic farmers sold yet-to-be-planted grain on forward contracts at better than $4 a bushel; they plowed hedge row to hedge row, drilling about 20 percent more wheat in Marion County than the year before.

Things continued to look good through March, the second-warmest on record, with plenty of rain. The green wheat looked so good, even the elders were tempted to tear down their barns and build bigger ones.

But the first week of April, the county's wheat crop suffered several nights of crop-killing cold. Suddenly numb, local farmers wondered if the frozen-stiff stalks slumped over in the fields would revive and, if so, if they survive in their weakened conditioned for the June harvest.

But the weakened wheat suffered May floods, then rust, and then worms. As they prepare to start their combines, farmers are being realistic about what they'll find.

"[Farmers] look at their wheat fields and see stands that are thin and heads that are empty or partially-filled with shriveled kernels, so expectations are pretty low," said Stan Utting, manager of Agri-Producers, Inc., Tampa, who added that some of the damaged wheat already has been harvested for hay.

Farmer Willard Hett of Marion examined his wheat and found long heads only partially-filled whereas shorter heads tended to be full of grain. He wouldn't estimate what his crop might yield.

According to Paul Klassen of Lehigh, his area was hit by army worms so thick they could be seen crawling across country roads.

Klassen already swathed and baled much of his wheat and is considering more of the same instead of running a combine through the thin fields.

Jerry Cady of National Farmers Union Insurance in Marion said it's too early to tell how bad the yield will be.

"A lot of the wheat in a lot of the fields has deteriorated the last couple of weeks," Cady said. "In the ideal conditions which followed the freeze, the plants tried to develop good heads, but rust developed and a few dry days followed.

"Healthy plants could have withstood the stress, but these didn't have enough reserve energy to continue to develop."

He noted some of the stands look good but looks can be deceiving.

"What you see standing in the fields right now may not make it into the combine bins," he said. "The shriveled kernels could go into the bin or blow out the back."

If little wheat makes it to the bins, Cady expects his agency to process a lot of crop damage claims, he said.

Adams may have summed it up best when he said, "Everybody says wheat has nine lives, I think it used 12 of them up this year.

"It's going to be an ugly one."

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