Early wheat harvest braces farmers, firms

Saturday, May 26, 2012
Fair Haven farmer Wade Rapp, center, checks the maturation of his wheat Friday with his sons Layne, left, and Nolan. Rapp said the warm winter and early spring will lead them to harvest their 1,000-acre crop three weeks earlier than usual, starting next week. Fair Haven is in northeast Vernon County.

Starting about three weeks earlier than usual because the warm winter and early spring greatly advanced its maturation, the Vernon County wheat crop will be at least a third bigger than last year's and will assume added importance in the aftermath of the county's 2011 corn crop failure.

Many farmers like Wade Rapp at Fair Haven on the northeast side of the county planted wheat instead of corn and helped increase the county's wheat acreage from 16,307 acres last year to 24,290 this summer, according to the federally affiliated Farm Service Agency.

After cutting a test swath with his big Case combine at the southeast edge of his 1,000 acres of wheatland Friday afternoon, Rapp said he began noticing the effects of the unseasonably warm weather in February. "We never had a freeze," he said.

"Everything is early -- grass, fruit trees, anything you can think of."

Rapp and his sons Nolan and Layne planned to start the harvest with their two combines within a few days and finish in a week to 10 days if the weather stayed dry.

Area corn producers reported last fall that they had had a disastrous year because months of extremely hot, dry weather had kept that crop from developing.

Producers Grain Merchandiser Janeta Larson of Walker, eight miles south of Fair Haven, said the wheat price per bushel, standing at $6.05 Friday, is about $1 down from when the crop was planted last September and October. "The price typically goes down during harvest, but if the feed market stays in it will stay up here," Larson said.

"Murphy's and Tyson's have been buying wheat for their hogs and chickens because corn was so far off. They don't grade it for milling quality like Archer Daniels Midland at Carthage does for flour and bread."

Larson said at least 90 percent of Vernon County's crop each year is "soft wheat," used for products like pastries and crackers, while 10 percent or less is "hard wheat," which is used for bread.

Missouri Extension Agronomy Specialist Pat Miller of Nevada said winter wheat is grown uniformly throughout the county. She said wheat will probably never rival corn, soybeans or livestock in importance here, but it was a logical alternative for a good deal of the corn acreage last fall because the soil had a significant carry-over of unneeded nitrogen fertilizer.

"A lot of people will double crop with soybeans after wheat harvest," Miller said, meaning farmers will plant soybeans where the wheat was because it will be early enough in the growing season to raise both crops.

"Some may delay planting soybeans because of a lack of moisture. You take a risk if you plant in dry soil."

Miller said dry conditions are necessary to cut wheat because elevators like Producers Grain and Johnson Grain in Nevada, Deerfield Grain and Farmers Ag Grain at Deerfield and Metz Grain, 17 miles north-northwest of Nevada, will not accept it if its moisture content is too high.

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