U.S. winter wheat is over 50 percent harvested after a challenging growing season, but USDA Meteorologist Brad Rippey says that is still behind schedule.
“The winter wheat crop harvest passed the halfway mark during the week ending July 16th. The number on that date reached 56%. Now the harvest has been running behind schedule and the five-year average is 69%. We were also at 69% harvested on July 16th, 2022. We have seen a number of storms in some of the production areas, hail, high winds that have been holding back harvest at times. We’ve also seen some rain in some of the midwestern production areas as well. So, overall, a little bit of a slow harvest at times in some areas, but we are finally getting into the northern areas. At this point, we see some harvest progress in all eighteen production states. The slowest at this point is Montana, 1% harvested, but the five-year average is only 3%.”
The Kansas Wheat Commission says growers there should be wrapping up harvest in the next couple of weeks.
