Conditions can change quickly in the wheat fields of Kansas.

Rewind to the white Christmas of 2023 when Saline County posted 1.53 inches of moisture during December. Standing water and ice graced the greening landscape just after New Year’s Day, and by the state’s birthday on Jan. 29, patches of snow were everywhere.

But when tax day arrived in mid-April, wheat crop conditions in Kansas ranged generally from hopeful to doubtful.

“A month ago, I had high expectations for this crop. My optimism has diminished immensely,” wrote Gary Jorgensen, a seed salesman from Alliance Ag & Grain of Spearville, Kansas, in an April 16 email to a friend.

“Oh there are good fields. Some look great,” he continued. “Yet, with the growth they have and no significant rain in the forecast, it’s only a matter of time. We all hurt to see someone suffer and succumb to a slow, but inevitable, death. That’s how I’m feeling about this crop.”

Making it worse, Jorgensen added that he is seeing some fields with evidence of barley yellow dwarf and wheat streak mosaic viruses.

Crop ratings plummeted as conditions became more dusty.

“This isn’t a pessimistic outlook from me, but a realistic observation,” Jorgensen wrote.

As April came to a windy and stormy end, the prognosis only changed in places lucky enough to receive a proper spring drenching, such as a number of southeast Kansas cities being placed in flood warnings on the 27th and parts of Clay County that were gifted with 3 to 4 inches of rain.

“That would’ve been great around here,” said Jason Gans, who farms in southern Ottawa County with his father, Billy, and brother, Jacob Gans.

“It’s still bone dry,” he said. “You could track a person in the dust. We got just a sprinkle, maybe 10 to 15 hundredths. Friday it was 35 of 40 hundredths, but it was dry by noon,” he said Sunday, April 28. “The wheat’s still hanging in there, but it needs a long drink. That wheat’s pretty dang resilient.”

Fields most everywhere else have the blues, a common description for an outbreak of chronic thirst.

“My kids have a 4-H wheat plot near U.S. (Highway) 24 and U.S. 81 (in Cloud County),” said Jay Wisbey, agricultural Extension agent for Saline and Ottawa counties. “We got an inch and a half there late last week, but we still have cracks in the soil. When we got that rain, most of Ottawa County got less than three quarters, some less than a half inch.

“It’s worse out west, said Vance Ehmke, a farmer and seed dealer in Amy, near the Lane and Scott county line.

“There’s some good wheat around, but it’s getting worse,” he said. “April is normally our wettest month of the year, and we got absolutely nothing. North Lane and north Ness (counties) are really, really bad.”

Even with moisture, the crop is beyond much repair.

“Two inches of rain wouldn’t do it a bit of good; maybe increase yield one to two bushels (an acre), up to three or four,” Ehmke said. “The die has been cast.”

Photos submitted for this report are telling. One scene of a lush field roughly a mile north of Interstate Highway 70 on Old Highway 81 shows healthy plants with wheat heads rising above the foliage.

“We’ve got a whole variety of wheat fields, some better than others, where they’ve had more moisture,” Wisbey said. “There is some great looking wheat, but even that field’s gonna need rain. We haven’t gotten enough yet.”

Forecasts have provided decent chances for precipitation every seven to 10 days in north-central Kansas. Case in point was that on May 2, the online Weather Underground posted a 70% chance for rain in Minneapolis, Kansas, and an 80% chance for Glasco in Cloud County.

Rain is crucial, the Extension agent said, especially for farm and ranch ponds.

“We need every rain that can come through at this point,” Wisbey said. “There is not a farmer around who is going to complain about rain.”

In Lane County, “Eighty percent of the wheat looks fine for now, and 20% looks terrible,” said Louise Ehmke, Vance’s wife.

The wheat price rallied about 60 cents a bushel as April wrapped up.

“It’s a little better; still kind of discouraging,” Gans said.

As the Monday, April 29, markets neared closing, the price bounced from $6.26 to $6.31 a bushel at grain terminals in Salina, while the country elevator price at Delphos Co-op was from $6.10 to $6.11.

“It’s still more than two dollars a bushel less than a year ago at this time (2023 new crop wheat price: $8.50 a bushel),” Wisbey said. “Price always matters, but if you don’t get any rain, you don’t get any bushels.”

The latest edition of the Wheat Quality Council’s Hard Red Winter Wheat tour gave nearly 70 people from all aspects of the industry an opportunity to get a peek at the crop’s potential.

After three days of touring Kansas’ traditional wheat production region—by consensus—they put the wheat crop at 290.4 million bushels with an estimated yield of 46 bushels per acre. Tour attendee Aaron Harries, vice president of operations at Kansas Wheat, said the 2024 crop is drought-affected.

An average Kansas crop produces about 310 million bushels, he said. A year ago, fewer than 200 million bushels were produced. A picture of central Kansas wheat near Hutchinson.

“It’s certainly light years ahead of what we had last year,” Harries said. “The difference is there won’t be nearly as many abandoned acres. We approached 30% (abandonment) last year. “The other key difference is that more of it will be harvested this year because we were in a much better starting point last fall.”

The drought was so pronounced in late 2022 the crop did not come up. “This year we started with good stands in a lot of places,” Harries said. “Unfortunately, it’s just gone downhill this spring, but it looks like we’ll have a better harvest.”

Winter moisture helped

Wheat growers have some optimism because of winter moisture, but they know the lack of moisture in recent months hurts other crops they are planning to plant this spring.

“They think beyond wheat crops, obviously, and in central Kansas, and a lot of places, there’s just no subsoil moisture,” Harries said. “From Lindsborg west over toward Great Bend and northwest, that’s some of the worst of the drought conditions.”

Pockets of good wheat

The best wheat appears generally to be along the U.S. Highway 36 corridor in northern Kansas, from the reports filed by the observers on that route, he said. Another notable area was the Interstate 135 corridor in central Kansas. That looked decent, he said, but he noted that in pockets of Saline County and Ottawa County, farmers have in past years produced yields of 70 to 80 bushels per acre. Unfortunately, 2024 won’t be one of those years.

Harries noted that on the second day of the tour he took the path of Kansas Highway 27 that included Syracuse and Johnson City and other southern counties, and although it was drought-impacted, it was notable that a year ago those were areas had high abandonment.

“Some of it looks better than it has any business looking,” Harries said. “Another common theme throughout the tour was a tip of the cap to the wheat breeders because we’ve got some pretty good genetics out there that are holding up to the pressure of what we’ve been through.”

Pest pressure

Stripe rust has been widespread but has not appeared to have impacted the crop like it could have. Some producers opted to spray, while others were hesitant because of the costs in comparison to the income potential. Wheat streak mosaic was not as prevalent as most on the tour thought it might be. Where it was showing up was in localized areas and not on a regional basis, he said, and growers were treating it.

“A bit of a surprise there was quite a bit in north central Kansas,” he said.

He added that those on the tour did see a lot of freeze damage in almost every part of the state. Temperatures were cold enough March 25 and 26 that it did impact the crop. Normally that would not have occurred, but the crop was probably seven to 14 days ahead of schedule  and, because it had entered an advanced growth stage, it made fields more susceptible to the cold.

“It’s going to shave a little bit off the yield, and it’s hard to calculate that kind of damage yet,” he said.

Harries said the tour was a success because of diverse representation from multiple sectors in the industry and included officials from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.