Day 17, Kansas Wheat Harvest Report

By Marsha Boswell – Kansas Wheat

This is day 17 of the Kansas Wheat Harvest Reports, brought to you by the Kansas Wheat Commission, Kansas Association of Wheat Growers and the Kansas Grain and Feed Association.

Northwest and portions of north central Kansas are still fighting moisture levels on their journey to wrap up wheat harvest, while most of the rest of the state is nearly finished.

Dani Zweygardt with ADM Grain in Goodland, reports that harvest is about half way done. Some of their farmers are finishing up, while others are waiting to get in the field due to high moisture levels. Wednesday night they received one-half to one inch of rain throughout Sherman County.

Harvest near Oakley flew by due to very dry wheat, while Goodland stayed on track with the previous year, taking in their first load on June 28. A majority of the dry land wheat has been harvested, while they’re waiting on the irrigated wheat.

Zweygardt said Brewster has been very slow this year, with a steady flow but no super busy days at the elevator. There has been fluctuation on the load intake of surrounding elevators.

ADM Goodland has been averaging 12.9 protein and seeing yields between five and 50 bushels per acre, with a average of 30 bushels per acre. If there is one thing their farmers are happy with, it’s their test weights. The average has been 62.6 pounds per bushel for local farmers.

Overall, farmers are happier with their crop than they thought they would be. Zweygardt anticipates they still have a couple weeks of harvest left.

Brian Linin of Goodland started four combines up and running in the field last Thursday. Some overcast weather and high moisture have kept them out of the field at times, but they have still been making progress. He estimates they have a week to 10 days left.

While weather hasn’t been in their favor, overall he is still happy with this year’s crop. He said they didn’t have to tear up any wheat, but the crop is not as good as last year. Varieties that have done well for Linin are WestBred’s WB Grainfield, Kansas Wheat Alliance’s KS Western Star and PlainsGold’s Langin.

Linin reports his average yield is 40 bushels per acre. Proteins are 13 to 14 percent, and test weights range from 59 to 63 pounds per bushel.

Erik Lange, Executive Vice President and chief operating officer of MKC, says their more than 50 locations across Kansas are about 95 percent complete with this year’s harvest.

He said, overall harvest has gone really well.

Yields are highly variable throughout their entire trade territory, ranging from zeroed out to 80 bushels per acre on hard winter wheat, with an average of about 35 bushels per acre. On soft red winter, yields were less variable, ranging from 45 to 120 bushels per acre, with an average of 60 bushels per acre.

Harvest began on June 9 and the main area that is still incomplete is near Salina at the northern end of their territory, where they are currently on rain delay for the third or fourth day.

Overall, acres of both hard red winter and soft red winter were up about five to seven percent across the trade territory. With increased acres and decent yields, soft red winter bushels taken in will be similar to last year, maybe even a bit more, but hard red winter bushels are only about 75 to 80 percent of last year.

“Probably some of the biggest challenges were just the variability in crop and trying to figure out what was coming at us on a day to day basis,” said Lange.

He reported the hard red wheat quality was fantastic, with an average test weight of 61 pounds per bushel and a little over 12 percent protein across the trade territory. Soft red winter wheat quality is slightly above average as well.

“There was some disease pressure, not as high as previous years, but those that applied fungicide did see a benefit from it,” he said.

With so many varieties across the territory, Lange said they try to promote finding the right variety for the right acre. They are offering the MKC Grain Exchange Program, which provides an opportunity for farmers to transfer bushels of their 2022 wheat crop to MKC in exchange for Certified seed wheat for 2023.

“We do know that Certified seeds do make a difference in yield, long term,” said Lange.

With an excellent quality crop, Lange said, “We really saw early on there wasn’t a lot of export demand in the early part of harvest, but we have seen that demand picking up.”

He said so far MKC has already bought about half of the crop from their customers, which is about 10 percent more than normal for this time of year.

“Thankfully farmers were taking advantage of the good prices early and getting crops sold,” he said.

The 2022 Harvest Report is brought to you by the Kansas Wheat Commission, Kansas Association of Wheat Growers and the Kansas Grain and Feed Association. To follow along with harvest updates on Twitter, use #wheatharvest22. Tag us at @kansaswheat on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to share your harvest story and photos.