Mississippi State, Mississippi
June 6, 2008
By Linda Breazeale, MSU Ag
Communications
Mississippi’s farmers are beginning the 2008 harvest of 450,000
acres of wheat, the most grown in the state in almost two
decades.
In 1990, the state had 600,000 acres of winter wheat, but it was
a drastically different time then. Wheat yields averaged 30
bushels per acre, and the 1990 price averaged $3.07 per bushel.
At the same time, farm diesel averaged 94 cents per gallon, and
urea nitrogen fertilizer was $192 per ton.
In 2008, the five-year yield average is just over 53 bushels per
acre, and the current crop’s price is running around $5.25 per
bushel. But before people think of wheat as a pot of gold, they
should remember that all cost-of-production factors have
skyrocketed in recent years. For example, diesel is running
$3.62 per gallon, and urea nitrogen fertilizer is $552 per ton.
“These conditions are typical of commodity markets,” said John
Anderson, agricultural economist with
Mississippi State University’s
Extension Service. “When prices are high, input costs go up.”
Anderson said wheat growers have seen historically strong prices
since last fall, and some even booked their crops when prices
were in the $10-per-bushel range.
Erick Larson, Extension small grains specialist, said good
management and productive soils should provide strong wheat
yields despite less-than-ideal weather conditions unless fields
drained poorly or additional storms complicate harvest.
Mississippi fields averaged a record 59 bushels per acre in 2006
and then 56 bushels per acre in 2007.
“Recent storms have caused some wheat to lodge, or fall over,
and that can cause harvesting problems and reduce grain quality
as well,” he said. “South Mississippi had significant freeze
damage this spring. Some fields were abandoned immediately and
others have significant yield losses.”
Larson said farmers battled more than normal disease pressure in
wheat because of weather conditions.
“We had very wet conditions from February until harvest. That
challenged timing for pesticide applications and caused wheat to
be stunted in poorly drained fields,” Larson said.
Warren County Extension director John Coccaro said about 25
percent of the county’s 4,000 acres of wheat was lost to spring
flood waters that are only now beginning to subside.
“We’ve watched this water forever. It dropped some, then rains
came and it went back up,” Coccaro said. “After that second bump
up, it just never changed. It’s been dropping very, very slowly,
and farmers are just now getting back into some areas.”
Coccaro said most of the 1,000 acres that flooded will go into
soybeans soon. The once-feared shortage of soybean seed has not
materialized.
“It’s a good situation for soybeans. There is no better burndown
than water sitting on a field for a couple of months. The land
has no weeds and no insects, plus soil nutrients have increased
and there’s a full charge of soil moisture,” he said.
The only challenge that could slip up on soybean growers, who
are out of practice with flooded fields in recent years, is the
need for rhizobium bacteria in the soil. Growers need to add an
inoculum on the seed to help rebuild rhizobium bacteria levels
depleted by long-standing flood waters.
“This bacterium allows plants to convert atmospheric nitrogen to
a form the plant can use,” Coccaro said. “Under normal field
conditions, sufficient amounts of the rhizobium bacteria remain
in the soil from year to year for plants to use, but floodwaters
deprive the bacteria of oxygen and kill it. Failure to have
adequate rhizobium bacteria in the soil will cause plants to be
weak and spindly.
“Farmers may even want to double up on the inoculum this year,”
Coccaro said. |
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