US wheat farmers are expected to write off portions of their winter wheat acreage after a recent freeze in key growing areas struck fields already suffering from drought, wheat experts said Friday. "We've got a significant amount of damage out there," Travis Miller, agronomist with Texas A&M University, said in an interview.
A plunge in temperatures in late March in parts of Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas damaged an as-yet-unknown portion of the new hard red winter wheat crop, delivering another blow to farmers whose fields were already suffering from an extended drought. Producers and state and county agronomy experts met this week to assess crop damage, and many farmers will soon be meeting with insurance adjusters to write off lost wheat fields, wheat experts said.
"We're looking at some pretty serious damage," said Texas wheat farmer Albert Sulak, who has farmed in north-central Texas for more than 40 years. Sulak said a good portion of his 1,700 acres of wheat was damaged from the freeze coming on top of the drought. He expects 300-400 acres will be a total loss. Overall he expects his total average yield now to be less than 30 bushels per acres, 50 percent of what he produced last year. Sulak said he expects to be meeting with his insurance adjuster next week to determine how much of the crop to write off as a loss.
The worst-hit area in Texas was the Blacklands region, which typically accounts for about 20 percent of the Texas crop, according to Texas wheat experts. Last year Texas produced about 96 million bushels of wheat. "We had two nights that got below freezing," said Ryan Collett, county extension agent in Hill County, Texas. "It is a concern for most of the producers."
Oklahoma wheat fields also suffered freeze damage and damage was noted to a lesser degree in top producer Kansas, as well. Combining freeze damage with drought damage will be too much for many fields, wheat experts said. Fields in the western third of Kansas are facing significant loss, Justin Gilpin, chief executive of the Kansas Wheat Commission, said in the Reuters Global Ag Forum chatroom. Producers have been meeting with crop adjusters and some producers are expected to abandon their wheat fields and plant sorghum this spring, he said.
The US Department of Agriculture, in its first national crop progress report of the year, on April 1 rated only 34 percent of the new winter wheat crop as good or excellent, down from 58 percent a year earlier. Thirty percent was rated poor to very poor.