Farm Fact Friday: The Impact that Rain has on Wheat Harvest

Hello everyone welcome back to another Farm Fact Friday hope your week has been awesome. Certainly around here in northwest Ohio things have been a little bit wet and by a little bit standing in this combined wheat field I can hear the sound of the moisture in the ground. So what I want to talk about today is the impact of rain on wheat harvest. So I am in a combined wheat field which is a good thing, not every field is like this in the area and thankfully for this field as well the straw has also been bailed. So a great situation but it could have been much different if weather patterns would have changed or you know things would have happened in a different way at harvest time, time is of the essence especially when it comes to incoming rain showers and those type of things.

So if you were out and about during the independence day weekend and you saw lots of farmers uh busy in the fields there was certainly reason why because once wheat is ready to be taken off it needs to get harvested. Especially if rain is in the forecast and what I have in my hand right here are uh some wheat that is in different stages of what happens when it meets moisture, after it has you know after it’s ready to actually be harvested. So the kernel I’m pointing to here move my camera a little bit this one right here you could tell that it’s it’s plumped up it has extra moisture added to it uh the next one in line here you can see that a sprout is starting to come out of that and then the next two you know this one is starting to sprout, has some root structure along with the wheat that would pop out of the ground and this one even more so. These are the things that you want to happen after you plant the wheat in the ground this certainly is not something that you want to see happening when the wheat is still in the head and needs to be combined.

So while we think about you know rain is good things when we want things when we want the crop to grow opposite is true during harvest time when wheat is in the head and it needs to be harvested but rain has gotten to it first this sprouting, decreases the quality of your wheat. So farmers have to make the decision of do I take it off early with a little bit higher moisture content and dry it either at the elevator or at home in the drying system or do you wait and let the nature take care of the drying hoping that it doesn’t rain and start this process? So lots of decisions have to be made sometimes it equates to long nights, long long days, long weeks to get to get everything in but like I said time is of the essence especially in situations like this what we’re experiencing right now with standing crops in certain areas and not being able to get that wheat off because of all the extra rain that we’ve had and it being it was ready to to harvest prior to all that coming in. So hopefully today was educational for you, another thing that you know farmers have to think about when it comes to harvest time and you can now think about when we’re getting rain at the same time that we’re seeing combines in the field. So with that have a great rest of your Friday a wonderful weekend we’ll check you back next week for another Farm Fact Friday take care.