09/16/08 Tale of two harvests

In southern Idaho grain growers depend on irrigation while their farming brothers in the north rely on rainfall. Wheat grower Terry Jones says a good wet winter and spring has given him and his farming neighbors in Emmett abundant irrigation water this season. JONES "Because this year our irrigation company let us have just about what we needed. We've really been able to pour the water on the crops and we had an excellent spring for wheat. My yields which run just about a hundred bushels to the acre on some of this marginal soil this year pushed 115 bushels to the acre so with that I'm a happy camper right now." The other tale in this year's wheat harvest is from north Idaho where growers had heat, drought and late rains. Robert Blair's farm is northeast of Moscow. BLAIR "This year harvest is down between 30 to 50 percent depending on where you are at from between Potlatch and Grangeville. Right here I should be cutting about 120 bushels of wheat and we are averaging between 85 and 95 bushel." Blair says he's in a 25 inch rainfall zone but prior to the rains at harvest he'd only had about ten and a half inches so far. When it finally did rain it was at an inopportune time. Voice of Idaho Agriculture Bill Scott