KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI, US — Lengthy stretches of drought and uneven rain during development likely have generated a hard red winter wheat crop highly variable in yield and protein.  

Harvest is underway in Texas and Oklahoma but was set back in some areas by rainy weather in the first week of June. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) in its weekly Crop Progress report said the Texas crop was 25% harvested by June 1 versus 17% a week earlier, 31% a year ago and 27% as the 2020-24 average for the date.

The Oklahoma crop was 4% harvested by June 1, up slightly from 3% a week earlier as many farmers waited for fields to dry down, which compared with 9% as the average progress for the date. Test cuttings may begin in Kansas within days if fields are dry enough to enter with combines. Harvest in the top production state for the class likely will shift into high gear by mid-June.

Moisture was lacking during planting. In the USDA’s Oct. 7 crop report, winter wheat was 52% planted in Kansas, slightly ahead of 52% as the average, and topsoil moisture supplies were 28% adequate and 47% short. In the period from Oct. 1, 2024, to April 14, most of the state saw below normal precipitation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) maps show.

Precipitation in March varied widely, the NOAA said. Southeast Kansas, where fewer acres are seeded to hard winter wheat and some soft winter wheat is grown, received as much as four inches of rain. Outside that corner of the state, precipitation ranged mostly from ¼ inch to 1½ inches, though pockets of northcentral and central Kansas received only 0.1 inch, the NOAA said.

NOAA’s departure from normal precipitation map for March indicates the vast majority of Kansas received below-normal amounts of rain. The exception was northwest Kansas along the Colorado border where rainfall was ¾-inch to 1½ inches above normal. In some areas of Kansas and the other major southern Plains wheat states, Oklahoma and Texas, dryness limited tiller emergence and made for spotty stands. Beneficial rains finally fell beginning in late April. By then, some wheat plants in the latter two states already had set kernels, so subsequent rains were helpful only for quality, not yield.

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Participants aboard the Wheat Quality Council’s 67th annual Hard Winter Wheat Tour from May 13-15 projected an average yield of 53 bushels per acre, up 6.5 bushels from 46.5 bushels as the 2024 tour average. The projection compared with the USDA’s yield forecast released May 12 at 50 bushels per acre, up from 43 bushels in 2024. The projection followed scouts’ appraisal and measurement of 449 wheat fields. 

Scouts noted more fields than normal had been terminated, grazed or cut for hay or silage. Still-developing wheat was mostly in good condition, although signs of drought stress and wheat streak mosaic virus were common. Generally, wheat was taller and had better stands in central and southern Kansas than in the west, and yield projections were higher in those areas.

“That theme that came out of the wheat tour, it kind of remains in place today,” said Justin Gilpin, chief executive officer of Kansas Wheat. “There’s still going to be a lot of variability. Since the wheat tour, we have had some moisture and we have had some cooler weather that’s really helped with kernel development and the filling. So that’s going to benefit some of those areas in southcentral Kansas and the southern part of Kansas, but there’s still going to be parts of the state that just didn’t have the tillers or the stands due to drought conditions to really benefit from the moisture and the cool temperatures. It’s not going to add a lot of bushels, or it’ll kind of maintain what potential it has, even though it might not have been very good potential.”

Winter wheat conditions nationally have hovered near year-ago ratings. In hard red winter wheat country, conditions improved weekly in May before regressing in dry conditions. Increased rainfall totals in late May put conditions back on an improving course. Per the USDA, winter wheat rated good-to-excellent as of June 1 was 51% in Kansas (48% a week earlier), 55% in Oklahoma (46%), 30% in Texas (26%), 55% in Colorado (51%), 23% in Nebraska (19%), 31% in South Dakota (28%) and 75% in Montana (77%).

“Rains (the week of June 2) were huge,” Gilpin said. “There’s going to be some areas — such as in the southeast part of the state, where there's not a lot of wheat — where there is some flooding in low-lying areas that’s going to hurt wheat. With the cooler temperatures and maybe adding a few bushels with the moisture in the southern part of the state, it’s probably got people watching what protein premiums might do if the crop has some higher-yielding, lower-protein wheat. That’s something the market’s going to be anxiously waiting to see how wheat starts coming in (during harvest) in the next two to three weeks.”

When Kansas harvest samples get lab-tested and data is released, likely by mid- to late June, average protein and average yield figures will most likely belie wider-than-normal ranges, Gilpin said.

“It’s just one of those years where it’s going to be a lot of variability,” he said. “When you say what the state average is for wheat yield, it’s going to be one of those things like ‘this is what the average is, but there isn’t really any average.’ If it’s a 50- to 53-bushel average for the state, that means there’ll be 60- and 70-bushel wheat and there’ll be 20- and 30-bushel kind of variability. I think it’ll be the same way with protein if I had to guess. There definitely will be pockets of higher protein in those drought-stressed areas and then some of the southern areas where they have been able to add some bushels, you’re probably going to have higher yields and some lower protein in some areas.”

In most of Kansas, late-season rains haven’t yet deteriorated wheat quality, and weather forecasts contained good crop weather into harvest.

“Fortunately, we’re not far enough along where these rains are coming at a risk of damaging wheat in the fields,” Gilpin said. “It looks (the second week of June) things are going to dry out and heat up, a good thing for the Kansas crop. There are some concerns about that central part of Oklahoma on some of that wheat and in Texas that is getting delayed due to rains. It’s an exciting time and an anxious time of the year because what happens the next 30 to 60 days dictates how the next 10 months of this crop gets marketed both domestically and internationally and for our farmers.”