One Soggy Field at a Time, Wheat Traders Gauge Kansas Blizzard's Toll
- Worst of impact from weekend blizzard still an unknown
- In soggy fields, near ‘impossible to estimate yield’
The Coming Storm of Climate Change
Out in the wheat fields of Kansas, the damage wreaked by a spring blizzard earlier this week is easy to see. But determining the precise loss of production is still frustratingly unclear, even as grain traders, bakers, and millers complete their annual inspection of the state’s winter wheat crop.
Participants in the Wheat Quality Council’s annual tour have spent this week traveling around Kansas by car, making hundreds of stops to take field samples. The data show yields are poised to fall from last year’s record harvest, but the scouts, as they’re known, have had difficulty assessing crops on farms in the west of the state that were hammered by heavy snow and high winds last weekend. Some plants were flattened or left standing in excess moisture and mud.