Geary County Extension Agent Chuck Otte reports that the National Agricultural Statistics Service has released details on the 2017 Geary County winter wheat crop.

Geary County raised the fewest acres of wheat ever, dating back to 1901. The 6,250 acres of wheat harvested was lower than the previous low of 8,500 acres grown in 2010. Crop production in Geary County has been slowly moving away from wheat in favor of soybeans and corn due to herbicide resistant technologies and improved drought tolerance allowing soybeans and corn to be more profitable than wheat.

Winter wheat acreage started dropping in the mid-1980s with a loss of approximately 5,000 acres every ten years. Additional downward pressure due to economics pushed acreage down substantially when the 2017 wheat crop was planted in the fall of 2016. It appears that acres planted this fall was up however. The most acres of wheat ever grown in Geary County was in 1938 when 47,840 acres were harvested.

While the acreage planted was down, yield was very good. At 58.3 bushels per acre it was well over the ten year average yield of 44 bushels per acre. The highest county yield was in 2003 with an amazing 71 bushels per acre. The lowest county yield was 11 bushels per acre in 1925. The drought ravaged crop of 1989 came close to that with a mere 11.6 bushel average yield.

Total wheat production in 2017 was 364,600 bushels (21.9 million pounds). This was well below the ten year average, but not a record low production. The record low production came in 1912 when 210,886 bushels was produced in Geary County. The most wheat ever produced in Geary County was in 1990 when 1,187,200 bushels of wheat were produced. Geary County has produced
over one million bushels of wheat 12 different times. The first time was in 1937 when 1.09 million bushels was grown. Most recently we exceeded one million bushels in 2003. Given the changes in crop production we may never exceed one million bushels of production again.

Chuck Otte
County Extension Agent, Ag & Natural Resources