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Michigan wheat crop hurt by wet weather

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Farmers try to get some return on damaged crops ::

Much of Thumb wheat crop may be ruined ::

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HURON COUNTY (WJRT) -- (07/30/09) -- Too much rain at the wrong time has damaged thousands of acres of wheat in the Thumb.

For some farmers, this means a complete crop loss, while others say they might be able to salvage some of the growth. This year the weather has not been kind to farmers who planted soft white wheat.

Just looking at the wheat you'd never know anything is wrong with it. That's because the problem is inside. Inside the wheat are little kernels. They are usually closed, but this year, many are sprouting, and that's bad. Those sprouts were caused by some heavy and steady rain just a few weeks ago.

That was the exact wrong time of the growing season to get that much rain. Farmers are now trying to find out if any of the wheat can be saved.

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Typically, the wheat is sold and made into things like flour, cereal and crackers. But wheat with sprouts can't be sold for that purpose. It's considered damaged.

The only option open to farmers is to sell the crop for livestock feed and make a fraction of the money, or plow it under and lose everything.

"Hundreds of dollars per acre invested into this wheat field, and, for the most part, it's a loss," MSU Extension field crops educator Bob Battel said.

Just this morning, Huron County farmer Don Koth tried to sell some of his 550-acres of soft white wheat. "They rejected the load and I had to bring it back home."

Too much moisture ruined the crop. "We got rain at wrong time this year, when the wheat was mature," Battel explained.

That rain caused the sprouts. "A kernel like that is what we're talking about, where you can see that it's broken open and the green shoot is starting to come out," Battel said.

Those sprouts make the wheat unusable for things like flour or cereal. Instead, farmers like Koth have two main choices; plow under the crop and lose everything or try to sell some less-damaged crops for livestock feed. But even that likely means earning less than half what he expected, so now he turns to his crop insurance.

"We went with more of the basic coverage, which will give us 25 percent of our expected revenue."

For a farmer like Koth, that's a big cut. "Payout on that will come to about $80,000, so we're talking a $200,000 loss for our farm."

The wheat comprised about 25 percent of Koth's crop this year. He now hopes the rest of his crops aren't damaged by Mother Nature.