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| Kentucky ’08 wheat crop at critical weather phase |
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By TIM THORNBERRY
Kentucky Correspondent PRINCETON, Ky. — Last year’s weather woes still are prevalent as Kentucky wheat producers approach a critical time in production with weather still playing a role in how the 2008 harvest will turn out.
Wheat prices are at record highs, and no producer wants a repeat of the devastating freeze that claimed much of the 2007 crop. However a rain-soaked winter and early spring has many on guard as they look to make necessary applications of nitrogen to their crop.
Jim Herbek, ex-tension grains specialist with the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture and a UK Wheat Science Group member, said this year’s wheat crop is on track to become a high-yield crop so long as farmers are able to get that nitrogen down and nothing out of the ordinary happens.
“At this point there’s still opportunity for a good crop, but we need to get nitrogen on as soon as field conditions allow,” Herbek said. “Saturated soils are not to the point of having a detrimental effect on the crop. But the crop is in need of a string of warm, dry days.”
Herbek added that two applications of nitrogen is generally the rule and some fields had already received their first application.
If necessary, producers could apply all the nitrogen at one time up until the plant begins to joint and still see good yields.
There’s at least two more weeks for optimum benefit, he said.
Herbek also said the crop came through the winter in good shape and with 520,000 acres planted last fall up 20 percent from the previous year. The thing now is to get through the wet weather, which he said has been good for recharging last year’s drought stricken ground.
Some producers have resorted to aerial applications, but Herbek emphasizes it’s not too late as long as we get some dry weather soon.
“If everything holds, and we get the nitrogen on in time, we’re shaping up to have average yields of 60 bushels per acre,” he said.
A release from the UK College of Agriculture noted, “The March supply/demand report by the USDA shows U.S. wheat supplies to be tighter than it previously reported based on higher projected food use and exports.
“The USDA report lists ending stocks (wheat on hand) at the end of the 2007-08 marketing year to be the lowest since 1946-47. Global wheat stocks are at a 30-year low, according to the report.”
Joe Sowers, a senior market analyst with U.S. Wheat Associates echoed those views in his March 14 report in the National Wheat Growers Assoc. newsletter.
Sowers said, “In its World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) release this week, USDA raised the U.S. export forecast to its highest level in 12 years, exceeding domestic use for the first time since 1995-96. The U.S. harvest was slightly below average this year, exports surged and domestic mill use was higher than last year. As a result, stocks will end the year at their lowest level since 1948. With stocks so tight, importers are quickly covering needs for the 2008-09 marketing year with the highest level of new crop sales booked since 1982.”
Last year at this time, the weather had been unusually warm and the wheat crop had advanced in growth more than where the crop is now setting the stage for the damage after the Easter freeze but Herbek said that did not seem to deter producers from planting last fall as evident with the increase in planted acres.
“Right now prices are good and I would expect it to stay that way for the short term with supplies at their lowest points in many years,” he said.
So as producers proceed cautiously and even with the wet conditions, this year’s weather has been more favorable to wheat farmers so far with the only concern coming from some flooded fields in western portions of the state after heaving rains from a couple of weeks ago left some fields under water. Herbek said there is some concern that those crops did not survive but it is not known at this point if that is the case nor how much wheat was affected.
This farm news was published in the April 2, 2008 issue of the Farm World, serving Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee. |
| 4/2/2008 |
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