Illinois wheat tour scouts are bullish about yield potential
Joel Boeschen (left), previously with Wehmeyer Seed in Mascoutah who’s now with Bayer, shows a wheat head infected with fusarium head blight to Paul Town with ADM (right) and Kevin Graham, also with Wehmeyer Seed, in a Washington County field near Venedy during the Southern Illinois Wheat Tour. (Photo by Daniel Grant)
By DANIEL GRANT
FarmWeek
It looks to be quite a year for wheat in Illinois based on findings of the Southern Illinois Wheat Tour and the latest USDA projections.
The annual tour, hosted by the Illinois Wheat Association (IWA) May 23, projected an average yield of 97.1 bushels per acre, with a weighted average of 94.8 bushels, based on 57 samples from 20 counties mostly south of Interstate 70.
“One thing I noticed on the tour is everything is pretty steady,” said Mark Krausz, IWA president and Clinton County farmer. “We didn’t see that one bad patch.”
Joel Boeschen, of Wehmeyer/AgriMAXX Seed in Mascoutah, reported similar findings.
“Most of the area I cover looks pretty dang good,” he told FarmWeek during a tour stop in Washington County, the state’s largest wheat producer. “I bet there’ll be some yields in the 120s and 130s coming in.”
IWA worked with the University of Illinois to enhance the crop scouting methods on the tour this year with more focus put on spikelet measurements along with tiller counts to make yield projections.
Overall, USDA projects Illinois farmers will harvest the most acres (790,000) in a decade this season and produce the most bushels (61.6 million) statewide since 2008.
“We did not have a hard time finding a field, so that’s an excellent sign,” said Dave Devore, of Siemer Milling in Teutopolis, who scouted fields in Effingham, Jasper, Richland and Clay counties. “Some of the acreage increase is in some of those counties.”
Kevin Graham, a district sales manager for Wehmeyer Seed in Mascoutah, evaluates a wheat field near Coulterville in Randolph County during the Southern Illinois Wheat Tour. (Photo by Daniel Grant)
And what about yield potential in those southeast counties?
“We didn’t see a bad field,” Devore said.
The National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) Illinois field office rated the condition of the crop at 67% good to excellent (up 5 points from the previous week), 24% fair and 9% poor to very poor as of May 22.
USDA pegged the statewide average yield at 78 bushels per acre as of May 12, just one bushel below the record set the past two years. If the production estimates come to fruition, Illinois would rank as the No. 4 producer of wheat in the U.S. this year.
“That’s really unusual for Illinois because we devote so many acres to corn and soybeans,” said Mark Schleusener, Illinois state statistician with NASS, who noted new wheat estimates will be released this month.
However, part of the reason Illinois could move up in wheat rankings is due to crop issues in drought-ravaged portions of the Plains.
“I think the big story for wheat across the U.S. is actually in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. It’s very, very dry there,” Schleusener noted. “It’s bad enough that some people are evaluating wheat fields and saying they look so bad they’re going to kill them and plant corn or beans (which could alter the final acreage mix).”
Nationally, USDA estimates the winter wheat planted to harvested ratio could sink to just 67.4% this season, which would be the lowest since 1917.
In Illinois, tour scouts did find a range of issues from freeze damage, nitrogen deficiency and barley yellow dwarf to some fusarium head blight in the crop. But none of the issues appeared to be widespread.
“There’s not a lot of head scab,” said Aaron Hunsinger, of Bosch BASF Smart Farming in Carmi, who led the tour through White, Hamilton, Gallatin and Wayne counties. “We saw a lot of good wheat fields, which is pretty amazing since we got a lot of rain. When people were getting 2-3 tenths, we were getting 2-3 inches at a time.”
Tour participants predict harvest will begin in early to mid-June in southern Illinois and progressively later in the month moving north.
“All in all, the fields look really good. There was no insect pressure or scab,” said Mark Miller, of Mennel Milling in Mount Olive, who led the tour through Macoupin, Montgomery, Bond and Madison counties. “We’ll see what it looks like in 2-3 weeks.”
The recent warm up should be good for grain fill heading into harvest, according to Boeschen.
“We need one more good rain and I think Illinois will have another good wheat crop,” Devore added.
This story was distributed through a cooperative project between Illinois Farm Bureau and the Illinois Press Association. For more food and farming news, visit FarmWeekNow.com.
