The saying goes, “oats knows,” and last week, the crop knew it was cold.
According to USDA Meteorologist Brad Rippey, “Another impact from the freeze, we’ve seen a sharp decline in oat condition. No surprise there since a portion of the crop was already heading out across Texas. Currently now in Texas, we see out conditions 62 percent very poor to poor; that’s a big jump from last week, 42 percent and 41 percent very poor to poor at the end of January. Where the crop was not as far along in Oklahoma, not as much of a decrease, in fact just 4 percent very poor to poor, although that is an increase from zero percent at the end of January.”
Last year, U.S. oat farmers planted nearly 3 million acres of oats, but only one-third of that was able to be harvested.
A dairy market analyst says that the winter storm will weigh on milk production through April.
Sarina Sharp with the Daily Dairy Report tells Brownfield Ag News that the reduction in milk per cow could reduce the need to do some supply management through the impacted region.
Some southern states had very strict milk production limits last spring because of pandemic processing disruptions.
According to Sharp, some cattle were added to the herd over the last year. She says that we will have plenty of milk this spring, but there may be a need for some dumping to occur.