Stunted wheat crops turning blue in drought-ravaged Kansas

At this time of year, crops are typically a verdant green and reach about knee height. Instead, prolonged drought means that many plants are just barely shin-high, their growth stunted by a lack of moisture. Some are yellowing, and others have the telltale bluish hue that plagues damaged fields.

Crop scouts set out this week to analyze yield prospects in Oklahoma, Nebraska and Kansas, the biggest U.S. grower. What they found underscores why the government is predicting that farmers across the nation will likely abandon their wheat crops at the highest rates since 1917. The signs of drought are everywhere, and many plants are too scrawny and damaged to be worth reaping.

The dryness gripping the American Plains is shrinking the U.S. wheat harvest, limiting the expansion of world supplies and delaying further relief from the worst food inflation in decades. It also allows Russia, the biggest wheat shipper, to further tighten its hold on the global grain trade. Meanwhile the U.S. is losing its relevance in the market, with domestic buyers even having to resort to purchases of European imports.

Across the Plains, some wheat heads that should be abundant with “spikelets” housing kernels are instead pale and shriveled — and they lack any of the grain that’s typically turned into food. Even after some recent rains, the ground is hard, cracking and dusty. There’s no worry of getting stuck in the mud like in years past.

More than 100 scouts traveled through the region this week, carefully measuring fields to determine the outlook for this season’s harvest. Data from Tuesday and Wednesday signaled yields that will trail last year’s crop. 

Issues with supplies mean that domestic prices are so high that the U.S. is making purchases of European wheat. At least two cargoes of Polish grain have arrived in Florida this year, with more expected over the next few months, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because the deals are private.

“These are the first vessels to the U.S. in many years,” said Miroslaw Marciniak, a market analyst at InfoGrain in Warsaw.

Farmers in the U.S. Plains typically grow hard red winter wheat, the variety mostly used to make bread.

Oklahoma farmer Dennis Schoenhals has about 150 acres of hard red winter wheat that was abandoned. He had the shriveled plants swathed for hay to feed cows, since it won’t make grain that would typically be milled into all-purpose flour.

Schoenhals still has 350 acres of wheat. He says it if yields 30 bushels an acre he’d be “ecstatic,” even though that’s down from 48 bushels per acre a year ago.

For Schoenhals, it’s the second straight failure on the fields that were planted in June with soybeans that weren’t harvested. Even his hay yields have been a disappointment, coming in at just more than one bale per acre, compared with four or more normally.

“We’re just glad to get what we could, because it’s been so dry for so long,” he said. “It’s the second year we’ve been in an exceptional drought.”