Seven dozen crop scouts are to begin a hectic three-day motorized sprint across Kansas today, with the goal to sample roughly 500 fields and produce an estimate of the crop in the nation’s No. 1 winter wheat state. Their estimate, expected at midday Thursday, will be the first in a shower of crop forecasts that will run through the fall harvest.
USDA is set to make its first estimate of the winter wheat crop on May 10, based on a survey of growers and spot checks of fields across the Wheat Belt. Winter wheat plantings are down 8 percent from last year, in Kansas and nationwide. Recent, beneficial rains are expected to push up yields and offset the effect of fewer wheat acres in Kansas, said DTN.
Ben Handcock of the Wheat Quality Council, which organizes the tour, told DTN that despite pockets of frost damage and wheat disease, “I think for the most part it is a pretty darn good wheat crop.” Since the crop tour is the first comprehensive assessment of the Kansas crop, it will be followed closely by traders and farmers, said DTN.
Kansas grew 322 million bushels of winter wheat last year, nearly a quarter of the U.S. crop, with an average yield of 37 bushels an acre. The winter wheat crop is in better shape nationwide than a year ago, with 61 percent in good or excellent condition vs 43 percent at the start of last May, and it is advancing more rapidly toward maturity. Some 42 percent of the crop is headed, compared to the five-year average of 34 percent at this time of year, says the weekly Crop Progress report.