Now let’s take a closer look at the wheat crop in Oklahoma.
The president of the state’s Wheat Growers Association tells us more about what they are seeing.
“We saw a lot of the same thing we saw in western Kansas, a lot of short wheat, a lot of freeze damage, a lot of drought damage, not much disease, it was just a lot of thin strands,” according to Dennis Schoenhals. “The wheat was really short, the heads are small, and the yields are going to be small, too.”
Dennis is a wheat farmer himself and he says that they are struggling like everyone else this year. However, he considers his operation a little more fortunate than those in the western panhandle.
“We have had some rain, we got a good stand early on, January we got a nice rain. Faucet turned off and we didn’t get any rain for 85 days. In March, the whole month of March, it probably was five to fifteen degrees above our average temperature. We had a lot of gusty winds, some days it would blow 25-30 with gusts of 50 or more, and so it dried everything out, we lost approximately half of our yield potential in the month of March,” he explains.
He adds that this is year two of exceptional drought for the state, so the recent rains have been welcomed. However, he does expect a short crop this year.
