KS Wheat Crop Projected As Smallest In Nearly 30 Years, Thanks To Level 3-4 Drought

[hatrack]

MANHATTAN, Kan. (Reuters) - Drought sapped yield potential for the Kansas wheat crop and likely will result in the smallest harvest in the top wheat growing state since 1989, scouts said on the final day of a annual crop tour on Thursday.

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he Wheat Quality Council estimated average yields for hard red winter wheat at 37.0 bushels per acre (bpa), below the five-year crop tour average of 40.98 bpa and the U.S. Agriculture Department’s 2017 actual Kansas yield of 48.0 bpa, reflecting stressful dry conditions in recent months.

The scouts’ average estimate of 2018 Kansas wheat production was 243.3 million bushels, down sharply from USDA’s actual production last year of 333.6 million and the smallest since 213.6 million in 1989.

“The story of this crop is that it’s late and dry,” said Dave Green, the leader of the crop tour and executive vice president of the Wheat Quality Council. “The crop has more of a chance for lower production than higher,” Green said of the production estimate.

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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-wheat-tour/drought-to-shrink-kansas-wheat-crop-to-smallest-since-1989-tour-idUSKBN1I42HM

[quartz007]

1. Global Warming...here we come

same thing happened in 1930's with drought creating infamous dust bowls.

https://livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/water_03.html

[hatrack]

2. And the shelterbelts planted after the Dust Bowl are largely gone . . .

Can't stand in the way of Market Magic, after all.

[quartz007]

3. Yes, nobody cares about the long term

I am sick of actions solely based on the short term.

[TomSlick]

4. The story I've heard from Kansas

is the farmers were paid by the government to plant the shelterbreaks during the dust bowl and the current generation is being paid by the government to cut them down as non-native.

[hatrack]

6. Not even that so much - they take up space that could be planted in crops . . .

Nebraska’s first shelterbelt planted under a federal forestry program during the Dust Bowl went up in flames recently, the trees toppled, stacked up and set on fire by its new owner.

The windbreak in Antelope County had stood since 1935, when it took root as part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s Prairie States Forestry Project. The tree-planting effort spread, ultimately growing to 18,600 miles of shelterbelts in Great Plains states -- including 4,100 miles protecting nearly 7,000 Nebraska farms.

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The farm and the cottonwood, cedar, bur oak, black walnut, willow and Chinese elm trees stayed in his family until about 15 years ago, he said, but have changed hands several times since. The shelterbelt was formally recognized with a Nebraska State Historical Society marker that read, in part: “The area closest to the roadway will remain unaltered as a living reminder of the Prairie States Forestry Project and the efforts of Nebraskans to protect our valuable farmland.”

Monty Shabam helped install the historic marker in the mid-1980s. The county worker returned to the site this week. “It’s all gone,” he said. “There’s nothing there, just a dirt field.” It’s not clear why Brian Smith, who bought the land last year, tore out the shelterbelt; he hung up on the Journal Star and didn’t reply to messages. But the trees likely disappeared to make room for a few more rows of corn, Shabam suggested. The Antelope County community is angry that all of the trees are gone, he said. Because they all didn’t have to go.

The shelterbelt grew to the corner of the field, and the owner could have left even a few trees close to the road, where he likely won’t be able to farm anyway. “They just don’t understand why you’d have to take it all. They could have left a little bit of it right there on the end and the sign could have stayed, so a guy could have seen it.”

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http://journalstar.com/news/state-and-regional/nebraska/ashes-and-sawdust-historic-windbreak-toppled-and-burned/article_8b455abe-49fa-5e9d-a292-e628ee638a0e.html

[TomSlick]

7. It may be a local thing or a tree species thing.

I've got family in Kansas that farm wheat. Two generations ago the feds paid them to plant trees. Now the feds are paying them to take them out.

[NickB79]

5. And that's in spite of crop breeding advancements in those 30 years

The varieties we grow today are not the ones grown in the 1980's. Under identical conditions modern varieties should yield far more than earlier ones.

That they fell below those antiquated cultivars shows just how bad the current drought is.