The wheat harvest is underway and some areas of Kansas, such as Atchison County are seeing a bumper crop, while others are experiencing very poor crops due to the extended drought across the region. In Franklin County, Ottawa CO-OP General Manager and CEO, Clark Wenger, says the harvest should wrap up by the end of this week for most farmers. He says the area planted twice as many wheat acres this year and combined with an uncommon set of great growing conditions, the harvest is better than expected in the county. Thirty percent of the acres planted are soft red winter and 70 percent are hard red winter wheat. He says Ottawa CO-OP has taken in both classes of wheat for several years without issue because their elevator crew could visually distinguish between the two. This year, however, certain hard red varieties started to look more like soft red. As a result, Wenger says they submitted samples to the state for grading and talked with farmers to make sure they were segregating the two classes. Wenger says end users want either soft wheat or hard, not a mix. If it is a mix, it causes a problem and they are left to try to market the mix into a feed market that isn’t profitable, so it’s important that what they take in is what it’s supposed to be.
