Battered by weather, wheat crop declines as harvest nears

By JUDD WEIL

Staff writer

What once appeared to be a promising wheat crop has deteriorated across parts of Marion County as harvest approaches.

Hail damage, difficult spring weather, and declining yield expectations have clouded outlooks for local producers.

Some crops already have been abandoned.

“In some places it’s going to be a complete loss,” extension agent Rickey Roberts said. “We’ve already seen that wheat destroyed, and we’re probably planting soybeans and whatever in those fields.”

Surviving fields are likely to produce only average yields at best, Roberts advised.

“If you just want to put a gun to my head, well, I suppose we’re probably looking at a lot of wheat that’s going to cut somewhere in the 30s — maybe, maybe 40 bushel,” he said.

That would mark a notable drop in yield per acre from earlier expectations.

“I thought we were cutting probably, maybe 50 bushels of wheat,” Roberts said. “It certainly is going to be quite a bit less than what we probably cut last year for sure.”

The assessment follows severe hailstorms that swept through parts of Marion County earlier this spring.

The hail damaged not only homes, vehicles, and roofs but also crops.

According to Roberts, the Hillsboro area appeared among the hardest hit agriculturally.

“There are places in the county that I have not been, and so I could be wrong on that, but it appears to me that the areas right there around Hillsboro got hit pretty hard,” he said.

Some producers are shifting damaged acres into other crops after insurance adjusters release fields.

“What we see going on is that we’re planting, I would guess in most instances, soybeans,” Roberts said.

Although recent rains have improved moisture conditions in parts of the county, Roberts said the rain likely arrived too late to significantly improve wheat prospects because many fields already are turning.

“I’m just not very optimistic about this particular wheat crop,” he said.

There is little producers can do besides harvest what remains, Roberts said.

“We’ll cut what we can, for what is there,” he said. “That’s kind of the nature of farming. There’s a lot of risk here. We’re at the mercy of Mother Nature.”

Weaker yields come at a difficult time economically for grain producers already facing high fertilizer and diesel costs.

“In rural America, if we want our economy, we need agriculture to be profitable,” he said. “Farming right now, being a grain farmer, is difficult.”