Wheat acreage — shrink to ’60s levels?
Oct 28, 2009 11:01 AM, By Mary Hightower, University of Arkansas
“We don’t have any wheat planted and may not plant any at all due to the weather and prices. There is very little interest.”
“Some acres have emerged,” he said. “It was planted earlier on a lighter soil. I don’t know how much more will be planted.
“We still have corn, rice, soybeans and milo to harvest in the county,” Perkins said. “We need some sunshine to finish out the year, but looks like not much for this week.”
Lafayette County, Ark., has about 3,500 acres of wheat planted, said Joe Vestal, the county’s Extension staff chair for the division.
“That was planted in early September before the rains began and this was primarily for grazing purposes,” he said. “Our producers have lots of beans and cotton left to harvest and can’t get their wheat planted until it dries up.”
Other counties with wheat include Clay, Mississippi, St. Francis, Phillips and Jackson.
“I know of one producer who aerially seeded some wheat into standing soybeans a few weeks ago as the leaves began to fall,” said Randy Chlapecka, Jackson County, Ark., Extension staff chair for the division. “I saw one grain drill going last Wednesday before the rains hit on Thursday … this will almost certainly be our smallest wheat acreage in forever.”
Andy Vangilder, Clay County, Ark., Extension staff chair, said he had “one grower who got 32 acres drilled last week and sowed 80 acres into corn and shredded cornstalks as a cover,” he said. “That should work if we get more rain.”
The National Agricultural Statistics Service said that for the week ending Oct. 25, winter wheat plantings were at 25 percent, up from 16 percent last week but behind the 2008 progress of 30 percent. The service said 12 percent of Arkansas’ winter wheat plantings had emerged.
“We were predicting somewhere in the 350,000-acre range for planting this fall, down slightly from last year’s 430,000 acres,” Kelley said. “Compare that to the 1.07 million acres planted the year before.
“You have to go back to the early 1960s to find a year that planted acres dropped below 200,000 acres in Arkansas,” he said. “That could happen this year.”
