Freeze, disease and rain caused a lot of problems in Weld County’s wheat fields this year, but statewide yields are expected to even out to at least average.
Many producers in the southern parts of Colorado have finished harvesting already and reported great yields, while Weld producers are just getting into their fields and are reporting damage from the Mother’s Day frost, wheat rust and heavy rains in May and June.
“It’s all over the map,” said Keith DeVoe, CEO of Roggen Farmers Elevator Association. “We’ve got fields around 75 (bushels) and fields around 15.”
RFEA buys wheat from local producers to make flour and other grain products.
Jerry Cooksey, of Cooksey Farms in Roggen in southeastern Weld, said he also is seeing a mixed bag in the harvest.
“There’s a lot of variability this year,” he said. “Some of it has to do with luck and some of it has to so with how the crop was managed.”
Cooksey finally started the harvest last weekend, but he has found rain to be the ultimate challenger so far.
“Harvest action is picking up this week,” Cooksey said. “We started in on Saturday afternoon but had a little bit of a shower then and got rained out.”
They started the harvest with an earlier variety, which was affected heavily by the Mother’s Day freeze this year, he said.
Cooksey said he’s seeing anywhere from 30 percent to 60 percent damage between the frost and rust.
Those fields that were more mature during the late freeze were seeing yields in the low-to-mid 30s of bushels per acre, Cooksey said — below average.
But the fields harvested on Tuesday painted a more positive picture, as they harvested a variety that was planted later.
“Today we moved into another variety,” he said. “The machines were showing about 52 bushels per acre. We’re feeling a little better today.”
It’s still a little too soon to tell the full outcome, but Cooksey said he expects a pretty good yield overall.
“This field is above average, and the field yesterday was below average,” he said. “I think some other fields and varieties are going to do well.”
This year was all about timing — both in planting and weather — and luck, he said.
The timing of spraying for wheat rust either saved the crop or made a large difference in the harvest, and the maturity of the wheat when the frost hit in May also affected what came out of the fields in July.
“Luck and timing, I would say,” Cooksey said. “There’s not many years that we have a frost on the 10th of May. That’s just bad luck there.”
Cooksey said the harvest is expected to bring about $500 million into Colorado’s economy this year, with 2.25 million acres to harvest. Weld County producers planted about 130,000 acres.
DeVoe said because of the damage, a lot of bushels are weighing in around 58 pounds — slightly lower than the ideal weight of 60 pounds.
The price per bushel is down about $1 year-over-year, DeVoe said. This year it’s ringing in at about $5.18 per bushel compared to last year’s $6.21.
Joe Westhoff, feed and trait specialist with Colorado Wheat, said he’s seen the same as everyone else so far — mixed yields. Some areas are seeing fantastic yields while others suffer.
“I think overall it will be an above-average crop,” he said, “but there will be some pretty disappointed folks out there.”
Cooksey’s neighbor, Joe Klausner of Klausner Bros. in Roggen, said he’s seeing average yields in his fields so far.
He said they’ve only finished about three fields, but things are looking pretty decent.
“I would say they’re in the average bushels, like 40,” Klausner said. “That’s bearable. Some (fields) had as high as 65. The lowest I’ve seen is 42.”
But Klausner said the rain is slowing down the harvest.
“It’s slow going out there,” he said. “These guys just really got started here in the last week. We’ve got about another 10 days if we don’t get many rain delays.”
