Weather and Wheat

Weather and Wheat

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
Weather and Wheat. Just a look at some wheat farming in northern Idaho. There has been pretty significant heat, a lack of rainfall and the kind of precipitation which farmers don’t want in hail. In Latah County, just 3 miles north of Moscow, combines are rolling everywhere. At farms the harvest is earlier than last year and farmer Craig Kleamer says he is looking at a heat stressed crop. “We’re about a week and a half ahead of where we were last year.I think it’s due to the hot weather this year, so many consecutive days in the 90s. That brought the crop on quicker. We are probably half done with our winter wheat right now and it shows the heat stress. I don’t think it’s good to be a runaway this year. This year’s crop is a function of water. We didn’t get a lot of summer rains and we didn’t get much in the winter either. It’s very patchy with some good places and some very poor places.” Kleamer says 7 miles west, at another of his wheat fields, summer hailstorms took out some of his crop. “We probably have 30% hail loss. That’s on our other place so we did deal with it. That is the first one we have had in my lifetime. Right here, we missed it. We got light hail here but not the big golfball sized that we got 7 miles from here.” With prices hovering at break even, Kleamer plans to wait a while before selling the 2014 crop. “I will probably hold onto it for a little while with the silly hope that maybe something will happen because right now we can only net a little over six dollars which is close to the cost of production.”
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