April 21, 2000

It’s that devastating "D" word again—drought. Due to dry conditions, Texas wheat farmers have little to show for seeds sown last fall. According to the Texas Cooperative Extension, only 50 million bushels of wheat are expected to be harvested in 2000 compared to 130 million bushels in 1999. Extension economists estimate the drought has caused $55 million in wheat losses, including 400,000 acres that weren’t planted in the fall of 1999 and $14 million worth of crop that either never came up or has since died.

Eighty percent of the current wheat crop is rated from fair to very poor. Most of the dryland wheat crop, with the exception of the Central, North and East Texas crops will not be harvested for grain or will not provide enough income to cover production costs due to drought and low prices.

"In the west-central part of the state, from San Angelo north to Seymour and most of the Southern Rolling Plains, wheat was hard hit. It’s been awfully droughty, and a lot of it died," said Dr. Travis Miller, Extension agronomist, adding that he had heard that the Farm Service Agency had already received close to 16,000 claims in that area. "The reason it’s so bad is we had absolutely no fall rainfall. The biggest chance for rain is late August to early October, and there was nothing in there. We finally had one shower on October 30-31 that resulted in an inch to an inch-and-a-half. Then we missed seeding 400,000 acres of wheat because it was too dry."

Miller, who is also a member of Texas’ Drought Preparedness Council, said some of the rain that did come was beneficial to wheat on the Northern High Plains, which was in the jointing stage when it fell. That crop had received more early moisture than wheat in some other areas of the state, he said.

"The crop that looks pretty good is in the Blacklands. A lot of that wheat was pretty late, and a lot is pretty thin. I’d say they have an average, or maybe above average crop," said Miller. "Most of the Rolling Plains wheat is short and thin. I expect to see a lot of this wheat grazed. The cattle are worth a lot more than the wheat."

Miller said the decision to graze will have already been made by wheat growers.

March 15 was the date to pull cattle off wheat in the High Plains and they needed to be off by February 15 in Central Texas, he noted.

On April 11, the Extension agronomist indicated that he had received several disease-related calls from Honey Grove and the McGregor area, in Central Texas.

"Stripe rust is the problem. It’s kind of an unusual sort of rust. It prefers this cool, damp weather we’ve been having. They’ve also had a big Hessian fly problem in McLennan County. We were there at a field day last week, out at Jason Niemeier’s place in the western part of the county, and looked at some wheat that was pretty devastated. Several area producers had sprayed earlier in those fields, but they still had damage," he said.

With wheat in the $2.70-$2.80 per bushel range, Miller commented on yields and their importance in these times of disappointing prices.

"If you look at history, how yields have progressed and how prices have progressed, if we were getting the prices now and making the yields we had in the sixties, we couldn’t make it. We have doubled and tripled yields," said Miller, noting that since the 1930s, corn yields have increased 515 percent and wheat and oat yields have gone up 250 percent. "We have made dramatic increases in crop yields. That’s the only thing that’s helped farmers hang on to the thin margin, but it can’t go on forever. One thing we’re seeing that’s causing problems is international agriculture. They’re gearing up. What we’re doing is not a secret. They’re taking our technologies and the various policies of different world governments is giving them an advantage."

North Texas wheat producer James Carpenter of Nocona will likely graze out his entire 1,500-acre wheat crop. He described wheat all the way from Wichita Falls to Gainesville, where rainfall has been scarce, as "short and thin."

"We’ll graze most of it out. Some will be baled. Early varieties are fully headed now," he reported April 12. "Some late varieties are 25 percent headed out. It’s shorter and thinner than normal. Some of the fields that were baled yielded 30-50 percent less than last year. Spots that got moisture did better."

The Montague County farmer and rancher said steers are normally turned in on wheat around December 1 in his region. This year, however, it was the end of February before there was adequate wheat for pasture, and then, if anyone had wanted to run cattle, they would have had to haul water because ponds were pretty much dry.

"Really, the last two years, we’ve been pretty dry here," said Carpenter, noting that he had received an inch of rain on April 11. "The FSA dug a lot of new tanks. Most of those tanks are over a year old and still have no water in them. They’ve started a tank clean-out program, and a program to help with water-well drilling. There’s a tremendous signup in those programs. The water well drillers are really busy. Cities, like Wichita Falls, are already on mandatory water usage. Lake levels are almost critical, down 40 or 50 percent. They’ve dropped 8-12 feet, and that’s a lot of water."

Rusty Harris of Hico, who served with Carpenter and three others on the 1999-2000 Texas Farm Bureau wheat advisory committee, said, "It’s the first time since I’ve been farming that I’ve seen wheat die from a lack of water."

The Hamilton County producer planted 150 acres of foundation seed, 50 acres of which died and the remainder he called questionable, even with the inch or so of rain received on the evening of April 11.

"I’m not sure we’re even going to try to harvest that wheat for seed. We’ll probably cut it for silage. That’s what I did with every other bit of wheat and oats I had," said Harris, adding that an inch of rain four weeks earlier might have done some good. "A lot of my neighbors that farm over at Hamilton and surrounding counties either cut their’s and will try to sell it for silage, grazed it out, or are in the process of baling it."

Harris said the season started off with inadequate moisture and "somewhat poor stands," followed by more dry weather.

"We did top dress there at the last moment and got three-tenths on that," he said. "A year like this really hurts the fertilizer people, as well. They’re sitting there all winter doing nothing.

"I normally run a thousand yearlings on winter wheat," Harris continued. "I had none this year. I ran them last year and got a $90,000 check in June. I won’t get a check this June. It sure puts a cramp in your style."

On April 11, Hill County Extension Agent Bill Buxkemper was excited about the rain that fell across most of the central-to-eastern half of the state, from the Red River all the way down to Corpus Christi, including Hill County. Fortunately, this weather front didn’t produce hail, like the storms that passed over the areas of Hill County east of Highway 171, earlier this month.

"We lost about 17,000 to 18,000 acres to hail Saturday a week ago. That was a total wipe-out. The insurance companies came in and zeroed it out. There was probably another 13,000-14,000 acres with some degree of hail damage, but good enough to leave. Wheat in the western part of the county survived pretty good, but didn’t get the moisture. The people who got the hail also got the rain," he reported.

Buxkemper recalled that in times of decent commodity prices, hail was about the worst thing that could happen to crop.

"It’s a sad situation in agriculture when the prices are so low that when guys have hail and it’s a wipe-out, they can collect insurance and feel good about it. It’s really sad that they can actually come out as good as if they’d harvested a crop," he observed.