The SRW is averaging 85 bushels per acre with test weights averaging right at 60 pounds per bushel. The beginning of wheat harvest was delayed for the Felts family due to rain, finally starting around June 15. Now, Rich’s son and son-in-law are involved in the operation and Larry’s grandson is running the grain cart - the fourth generation on the family operation. Richard has farmed in partnership with Larry since they came back from college to partner with their father. From here you don’t have to go very far before you run into some bad stuff.” “That’s why we needed a decent wheat crop - because we didn’t have anything for fall crops. “When it quit raining this time last year, that was the end of it until this spring,” Larry Felts said. But, the area also suffered from a long stretch without rain. In Montgomery County, where Richard Felts farms with his brother Larry, the SRW wheat - which makes up 80 percent of their operation - looked good all winter long. Despite the successful wheat crop, no moisture is now to be found and the soybeans going in behind the combine are being planted into dust. Combined with a near-perfect growing season - he’s one of the few producers in the state that would call it so this year - Armstrong said this was “the best wheat we have ever planted.” His Pioneer 25R74 averaged 94 bushels per acre for a farm-wide yield with test weights between 60 and 61 pounds per bushel.Īrmstrong binned the bumper crop for later delivery to mills near Kansas City that are looking for SRW this year. He has finished his wheat harvest near Muscotah in Atchison County, where it’s normally too wet for high wheat yields, but this year was the exception.Īrmstrong put on 160 pounds of nitrogen, fungicide and seed treatments on his SRW crop. Jay Armstrong is one of those eastern Kansas wheat farmers who plants SRW. Presley said they’ve been sending some samples to Kansas Grain Inspection Service for hardness tests, so “wheat can be labeled correctly, and we can tell our domestic and international markets, ‘this is as advertised.’” It’s important to know your customers and work with your FSA office to get an idea on the percentage of each class of wheat grown in the area.” “End users rely on us to provide wheat with the characteristics they need, and we don’t want to jeopardize that. “I feel it’s especially important this year for all segments of the industry to work together to protect the integrity of both the hard red winter and soft red winter markets,” he said. Troy Presley of CEA discussed the importance of keeping the two classes of wheat segregated. SRW typically yields higher than HRW but has lower protein content (8.5% to 10.5%), soft endosperm and weak gluten, making it targeted for different end products than HRW, universally known as the bread wheat. SRW is commonly used for specialty products such as sponge cakes, cookies, crackers and other confectionary products.ĬoMark Equity Alliance (CEA), headquartered in Cheney, Kansas, and Enid, Oklahoma, has several locations in the southeastern part of Kansas, extreme south central Kansas and north central Oklahoma, that handle both soft red winter and hard red winter wheat. In pockets of far southeastern Kansas and parts of northeast Kansas, wheat farmers plant soft red winter wheat, as those areas have climate conditions annually more suitable for SRW than HRW. According to USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service in the 2023 Wheat Varieties Report, SRW makes up only about 4% of the state’s wheat acreage, with hard red winter making up the majority of the balance. Soft red winter (SRW) wheat has been a bright spot in Kansas’ otherwise challenging wheat harvest this year. This Soft Red Winter Special Edition of the Kansas Wheat Harvest Reports is brought to you by the Kansas Wheat Commission, Kansas Association of Wheat Growers, Kansas Grain and Feed Association and the Kansas Cooperative Council.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |