A lot of farmers will be glad to see wheat harvest 2014 in the rear view mirror.

Drought, freeze, excessive hot temperatures have all ganged up on the wheat harvest and done extremely severe damage to the wheat crop.

Much of the wheat in the county is only about a foot tall. That is going to make it very difficult to harvest, said Mark Ploger, Pratt County Extension agent.

Combine drivers will have to go slow because with wheat so close to the ground it will be easy for a header to get into the dirt and sand.

Some may have to use a draper header designed for cutting short wheat while others may get the appraised and just have it swathed.

While wheat fields may look flat, they have lots of bumps and dips that will make it very difficult to harvest

“This is not going to be an easy task. It’s going to be an ordeal to say the least,” Ploger said. “Short wheat is not conducive for fast harvest.”Because the wheat is so short and it will cost so much to harvest, some farmers will opt to dig out older machines from sheds that they normally use for cutting out mud holes.

Farmers haven’t had to deal with mud holes for several years so the combines will be getting a workout.

“I think we’re going to see a lot of older machines coming out,” Ploger said.

It may be a harvest where a farmer sets a truck at the side of a field then goes and cuts for two or three hours then unloads. Combines today are designed to harvest much faster than their predecessors but with the short wheat, not much will be harvested fast.

Tractor drivers on grain carts may want to bring something to read because it may be a long time between dumps.

Ploger is hoping for 20 bushel an acre but it might be difficult for some fields to get into double digits.

“We may have a lot in the teens and low 20s,” Ploger said.

Some insurance companies may make the farmer harvest some or all of a field to recover the loss while others may give up on the crop and advise the farmer to swath the field and use if for feed or just graze it off.

Farmers may have a ray of hope in all the doom and gloom. Wheat that gets stressed has a strong tendency to produce high protein levels.

Higher protein means a higher quality flour and millers covet high quality wheat because it makes an excellent flour for baking and they will pay a premium price to get it, Ploger said.

Also on the plus side, all varieties of wheat rust have just not shown up this year because of the lack of moisture. Without moisture, rust just hasn’t been an issue at all.

Everything hit at just the wrong time this year. Back in March the wheat looked pretty good, then the area had no precipitation, there was a late freeze and just when the area needed cool, moist air, the weather turned off excessively hot with temperatures into the mid 90s.

Freeze damage is visible in some fields while drought damage is visible all over. Some wheat has actually died and won’t produce anything.

Even irrigated fields suffered. They had water available but it takes time for those systems to get around the field so those fields also have short crops.

Even with all this, Ploger said the extension office was still going to conduct their wheat market show for the fair. Farmers wanting to participate just need to tell the elevator when they take a load into dump.

Wheat is a tough crop and will work hard to produce as many bushels as possible. Depending on where and when a crop was planted and if it happened to a little moisture at just the right time, some fields might be a surprise but everyone will just have to wait until the trucks bring the harvest to the elevator.

Source - http://www.pratttribune.com/