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Hard winter wheat tour is underway
Scouts estimated this wheat field near Eads, Colorado will yield around 20 bushels per acre. (Photo courtesy Colorado Wheat)
Participants in the Wheat Quality Council’s annual tour of winter wheat fields in Kansas and surrounding states are describing crop prospects as highly variable.
Ben Handcock, executive director of the Wheat Quality Council, scouted fields in north-central Kansas on Tuesday.
“We’ve seen just about everything you can think of. We saw 65 bushel yields in one field and down to 11 in other fields,” Handcock says. “But the further west you go, it gets much, much drier and the wheat is shorter and the heads are smaller. So the yield goes down as you go west and that’s what we figured was going to happen.”
Hancock says that, overall, he expects a “below-average” Kansas wheat crop.
More than 90 grain traders, government officials, reporters, millers and farmers are participating in this year’s tour. They’ll issue their final estimate of the hard red winter wheat crop on Thursday.
AUDIO: Ben Handcock
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