Kansas will reap its smallest winter wheat crop since 1989 and neighboring Oklahoma will harvest half of its usual total because of a months-long drought in the Plains, crop scouts said on Thursday at the end of a flying tour of the hard winter wheat belt. Kansas traditionally is the No. 1 winter wheat state, and Oklahoma vies with Washington for second place.
The USDA will announce its first estimate of the winter wheat crop on May 10. It will be based on interviews of thousands of growers and on USDA spot checks of fields. Last year, the crop totaled 1.27 billion bushels.
Crop scouts said their samples of Kansas wheat indicated a crop of 243 million bushels, compared with nearly 334 million bushels last year. The crop is three or more weeks late in development, stalks are short, and heads are small, all indicators of poor yields. Oklahoma was forecast to harvest 58.4 million bushels, compared with 98.6 million bushels last year. Growers are likely to abandon four of every 10 acres of wheat in the state as not worth harvesting. Production in Colorado was forecast to fall by 23 percent, to 70 million bushels, while Nebraska would see a small reduction from 2017.