Winter Wheat has had a terrible year with almost one-third of the crop left abandoned. Even recent rains in Kansas and further south were not enough to save it.
USDA Meteorologist Brad Rippey says these are numbers we have not seen since the First World War.
“That 32.6% abandonment number for 2023, is the highest number in the United States since World War One, the year 1917, when we saw a record-high abandonment number that year. The only other time we’ve surpassed this year’s number and the abandonment number in 1917 was 34.4%. 70% is the abandonment number for Texas; Oklahoma, 53 percent is the expected abandonment number; Colorado comes in at 27%; and the official number from USDA NASS is 19% abandonment in Kansas.”
Those four states, plus Montana and Washington, hold nearly 70 percent of all winter wheat planted last fall.
