Hail Hits Washington Wheat Pt 2

From the Ag Information Network, I’m Bob Larson. As if last year’s heat dome and drought wasn’t bad enough, this year brought weather challenges of its own, like the violent storms in Eastern Washington this month that brought lightning, high winds, rain and hail.

Fairfield farmer and Washington Association of Wheat Growers board member, Marci Green says it was unlike anything she’s ever seen so it’s a good thing they were insured …

GREEN … “Yes, it was. I’m very thankful. We’ve always kind of wondered, do we really need this because, like I said, we’ve never had a hail claim on our farm, but we went ahead and got it and I’m glad we did.”

That said, it was still not the perfect scenario …

GREEN … “I mean, and yes, we have insurance, but insurance doesn’t … you would rather harvest your crop because insurance doesn’t bring you all the way back to where you would have been if you’d been able to harvest it.”

And after last year, Green says expectations for this crop were very high …

GREEN … “The ones that got hit with hail, it’s very discouraging. I mean, we had a very good crop out there. I mean, people were look at record yields this year. And so, to have those just disappear in an instant is very frustrating and discouraging, but that’s how the farming game works, I guess.”

The August 11th storm struck wheat, lentils, garbanzo beans and other crops from as far south as Whitman County, but hit farms from Fairfield to Rockford particularly hard.