The 2018 winter wheat harvest is underway and some local producers have been seeing better than expected results.
“It’s been going real good,” said Dan Higgins, manager of the Farmway Co-op in Leonardville. “I think everybody is kind of surprised that the wheat is a little better than they actually thought it was going to be after all the dry weather.”
Higgins told KMAN Tuesday Farmway is about 50 percent done with the harvest and averaging test weights of 60 pounds per bushel and yields averaging close to 40 bushels per acre.
“That’s fairly typical for this area,” he said. “Hopefully you can have better, but year after year that’s probably a pretty good average.”
According to Higgins, prices have dropped off somewhat since the harvest began. Where they were pulling in more than $5 per bushel before, they’ve “dropped back to about $4.70-something this morning.”
The Frankfort branch of Farmers Cooperative is also experiencing a pretty typical harvest, according to Site Location Manager Mark Swanson.
“It’s about right [for]what we were looking at,” he said.
Swanson said that they don’t have much wheat production in the area this year, but what they are getting in is averaging test weights “anywhere from 59 to 61” pounds per bushel. He also said the Frankfort location hasn’t got enough wheat in yet to provide a perfect estimation, but what they have seen ranges from 40 to 50 bushels per acre.
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