Recent rains revive Kansas winter wheat crop

WICHITA, Kan. — Recent rains have helped revive parched winter wheat crops in western Kansas but farms elsewhere are still waiting for relief, industry experts said.

About 45 farmers and other industry leaders fanned out this week across Kansas to inspect fields during an annual tour by the Wheat Quality Council. The group’s forecast for the 2009 crop was scheduled to be announced Thursday at the end of the tour on the floor of the Kansas City Board of Trade.

The forecast is anticipated each season, because it usually is the first industry barometer of the expected size of the Kansas winter wheat crop. The Kansas Agricultural Statistics Service will issue its forecast on May 12.

Tour participants were heartened about how the crop was recovering in western Kansas.

“For the most part, we have seen some very good wheat,” said Dusti Fritz, CEO of the Kansas Wheat Commission. “From my perspective it is better than expected, given how dry it was earlier in this area. The rains in April have helped this crop.”

Kansas State University Extension wheat specialist Jim Shroyer said that so far participants were finding the wheat crop to be quite good, with no diseases and good soil moisture.

But in Smith and Phillips counties, where rain was sparser, the wheat was looking “a little tougher” than fields elsewhere in the state, Shroyer said.

Estimated wheat yields have hovered around 42 bushels an acre or more, he said.

“If they had seen the wheat in this area three weeks ago, they would have been sorely disappointed. This rain we had in April was very important,” Shroyer said.

Dana Peterson, the producer policy specialist for the Kansas Association of Wheat Growers, said those on her route on the tour also saw adequate moisture all the way from Manhattan to Colby.

But tour participants on that route found some poor wheat fields from Abilene to Russell that “weren’t quite coming out of the drought” and showed some crop diseases.

Early calculations have ranged from the mid-30 bushels per acre to mid-40 bushels per acre, she said.

“What we found was fields looked really, really great from the road, but once you get into them, they are a bit thinner than what they look like from afar,” Peterson said.

Still to be determined is how the crop is faring in southern Kansas counties along the Oklahoma state line, where crops were more mature and vulnerable when a freeze hit earlier this spring.

ABERDEEN, S.D. (AP) — South Dakota officials say complaints of Canada geese eating crops have tripled during the last few years in the northeastern part of the state.

Scott Lindgren, regional wildlife manager for the state Game, Fish and Parks department, said most of the complaints are from mid-May to mid-July. Some landowners say they’ve lost more than $10,000 worth of crops in previous years.

Lindgren said his agency’s management goal is 60,000 pairs of Canada geese, but spring counts indicate more than 100,000 pairs in the area. Hunters have not been able to shoot enough geese to control the population, he said.

Lindgren said geese numbers have increased due to high water, which is an excellent habitat for the birds.

The agency may use a special Canada goose permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that lets the state destroy up to 500 nests and up to 1,500 adult geese, Lindgren said.

“We always use that as a last resort because we’d rather have hunters harvest the birds,” he said.