IL Wheat Producers Harvest Small Bounty On Record
www.agrinews.com
Nat Williams
2010-07-06
MT. VERNON, Ill. — Illinois wheat growers are harvesting a small and damaged crop, but it isn’t their fault.
The late corn and soybean harvest last fall was followed by a wet period, which resulted in the planting of only 350,000 acres of wheat, the lowest total since records were first kept, in the 1860s.
And much of the crop that got planted didn’t do well. Yields and test weights are all over the board, according to Dennis Epplin, a crop systems educator with University of Illinois Extension.
“It’s highly variable,” he said. “There was a wide range of planting dates. In this region, some of the wheat was planted in November.”
Few wheat producers are reporting high yields in Illinois.
“Some yields are in the 30s,” Epplin said. “More common are yields in the 40s, 50s and 60s."
Terry Dagg, manager of Mt. Vernon Elevator Co., hasn’t seen much wheat at all this season.
“We’ve taken only about 15 percent of the wheat that we took last year,” he said.
High yields are rare in Jefferson County and the surrounding area. Dagg said he has heard of only a handful of high-yielding fields.
“I’ve had one or two customers who made over 80 bushels an acre,” he said. “But that was the exception. I don’t think there were any outstanding yields this season.”
An unusually wet fall in 2009 drastically delayed harvest of corn and soybeans, which pushed wheat planting so late that, on many farms, there was no point in putting a crop in.
“It was just too wet last fall,” Dagg said. “Little wheat was sowed around here.”
The record-low 350,000 acres sown was a severe drop from the 850,000 acres the previous season.
The low acreage is apparent to John Boeker of Effingham-Clay Service Co. in Effingham.
“There’s very little wheat,” he said. “The quality has been relatively good. We’ve had test weights in the 58-pound range and up.”
Boeker said yields have been “highly variable.”
“The wheat grown in well-drained fields is pretty good,” he said.
“But for the most part, a lot of the guys are going to struggle to average 50 bushels.”
Epplin summed it up succinctly: “It’s just hard to say anything positive about this crop."
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