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Rain will stabilize wheat, but damage is already done

Some of the driest areas of the hard red winter wheat belt, including northwest Kansas and western Nebraska, received as much as two to four inches of rain over the weekend.

Lucas Haag, a Kansas State University agronomist based at Colby, says that while the rain is certainly beneficial to the wheat, it won’t reverse the damage already done due to drought and winterkill.

“It’s not like the yield expectations on wheat all of a sudden have been magically lifted,” says Haag. “What it’s just going to allow us to do is preserve that yield potential we had coming out of winter.”

Haag says some areas may still be able to produce 55 to 60 bushel per acre wheat, “but the vast majority of the area is probably not there—I think the one thing that is probably true is we’ve clipped the top-end potential out of this crop really across the area.”

But Haag adds the timing of the rains was ideal for row crop producers who are just getting ready to plant corn.

AUDIO: Lucas Haag