Kansas Wheat Harvest a Mixed Bag For Farmers

The 2017 winter wheat harvest has been a mixed bag for Kansas so far as farmers race to bring in the crop amid damaging spring storms that have pounded some crops with hail.

Justin Gilpin, chief executive officer for the industry group Kansas Wheat, says fields around Norton and Goodland in northwest Kansas were hit by hail earlier this week. That comes on the heels of a lot of hail last week around Garden City and Deerfield in southwest Kansas.

A common theme with this year’s wheat crop has been variability.

Yields have ranged from 10 to 70 bushels per acre. Protein levels have gone up in heat-stressed crops in western Kansas. But hail has also destroyed some crops and some fields had so much disease they were not harvested.