Area wheat farmers may see less damage than anticipated from late cold snap

As planting season continues, area farmers may have dodged a bullet after a dry winter and a cold snap earlier this year.

Anthony Ohmes, an agronomy specialist with the University of Missouri Agricultural Extension, said it’s not clear the degree to which last month’s weather will injure crops, especially wheat, but it’s likely the first thing on many producers’ minds.

“We had a freeze in March, and those low temperatures we experienced in March did influence or affect some of the wheat acres,” he said. “To what level, some people can probably give their opinion, but nobody’s going to know before we reach harvest. But there is some level of injury throughout the whole region that experienced that freeze.”

The most widely planted crops in Southeast Missouri are wheat, corn and soybeans, Ohmes said, with wheat concentrated in two “bands” in Bollinger, Cape Girardeau and Perry counties and in Mississippi and Stoddard counties.

“Basically, we had that warm February, so wheat came out of dormancy, and green-up started early. That put us a little bit ahead on wheat development, and then we dropped down to temperatures that were in the 20s for a big portion of the region,” Ohmes said.

Frank Milde folds up a row planter Tuesday to go refill it with corn on his farm west of Cape Girardeau.Fred Lynch

“It’s going to be field-to-field, depending on how cold it got in your specific field, then what specific stage your wheat was, so there’s a pretty big ‘depends,’ but there will be some level of injury.”

While the extent won’t be known until harvest, Ohmes said the preliminary indications suggest the freeze had less of an effect than predicted.

“Moving into it, there was a lot of concern because that cold of a temperature, we could see severe [damage],” he said. “But looking at the fields after the fact, the injury was a lot less than what we anticipated. So if you’ve got to pick a strand of positivity out of it, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.”

Sixth-generation wheat, corn and soybean farmer Blane Milde said the only setback he’s seen so far is about a week’s delay in planting corn, which he was doing Tuesday morning.

The weather hasn’t caused him to cut back on wheat in favor of another crop, he said, adding he’s more concerned with rainfall.

“We’re finally starting to get some rain that we really do need, a little moisture,” he said. “Not right now [since] it’s been raining, but it didn’t rain all winter.”

If the weather proves too wet, Ohmes said it could further delay corn planting in some areas of the region.

Either way, he said the farmers he works with believe this year’s corn yields are unlikely to set records.

“They’re not going to be higher than in the past. Some producers are going to probably stay within their rotational acres; other producers I’ve talked to, they’re going to be down on corn acres,” he said. “Corn acres overall are probably going to depend on the area, but we’re probably going to see a little bit lower corn acres overall.”

If wheat and corn acres trend lower this season, Ohmes said the difference will be made up in more acres of soybeans.

“Bean prices have held steadier than others when things were getting sold and booked, so bean acres will be up as far as over the whole region,” he said.

But Milde said so far, he’s sticking with his game plan.

“[It’s] nothing different. Last year was cold. This year was a little cold,” he said. “But ... you can go from one extreme to the other; I mean, this is farming.”

tgraef@semissourian.com

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