Winter Wheat Crop Underperforms Other Crops

I'm Lacy Gray with Washington Ag Today.

For many growers around the state the winter wheat yields were a major disappointment; add to that the decline of wheat prices and you have a year that will be felt by many for years to come. Spokane area grower Chad Denny comments.

DENNY: The winter wheat was, as one of my neighbors coined it, it was a forgettable year. It was less than average; some fields were drastically less. It's incredibly variable across the region, and within five miles even could be a huge change, and it just depended on how the storms hit. The thunderstorms would come through and somebody got a half an inch of rain that made their crop and a mile down the road it missed. It's just crazy the variability.

Denny says his winter wheat yields were under average, but his spring wheat and barley fared better.

DENNY: I haven't figured it out on a percentage but I'd say probably 10% to 25% - I think you could say that easily enough, under average for winter wheat. My spring wheat on the other hand was average or just slightly above. So I was really fortunate with the spring wheat. My malt barley was a little above average and it made grade, which was not the norm in this region. There were a lot of protein issues, and mine had a little bit higher protein, they discounted it a little bit, but it wasn't bad. But a lot of them didn't make the clump specification for barley, and the dry weather is a factor there, and so when it doesn't make clump then it just gets kicked into the feed market. So that was quite a difference because the malt contract was quite a bit more than the feed market was this year.

That's Washington Ag Today.

I'm Lacy Gray with the Ag Information Network of the West.