Scouts on the Wheat Quality Council’s tour estimated Kansas’ what crop has yield potential of 46.1 bu. per acre, easily topping the five-year crop tour average of 41.6 bu. per acre for the state. Scouts guessed Kansas’s wheat crop will total 281.78 million bu. crop this season.
This would be a sharp decline from USDA’s official yield and production estimate for Kansas in 2016 of 57.0 bu. per acre and 467.4 million bu., respectively, for the crop last year. On last year’s tour, participants pegged Kansas’s wheat crop at 382.4 million bushels.
But there is a lot of uncertainty about this year’s crop. Scouts noted that recent heavy precip has eliminated drought and boosted crop potential, but they also acknowledged they are not sure how much damage the weekend snowstorm had in western areas of the state.
“Yield is unusually high given the crop problems we had. But with a production estimate of 282 million bu., the area abandonment is incredibly high,” says Futures International Analyst Terry Reilly.
