By Tom Polansek
MANHATTAN, Kansas (Reuters) - Wheat yield potential in Kansas was estimated at 30.0 bushels per acre (bpa) on Thursday by crop scouts on an annual Wheat Quality Council tour, the lowest since at least 2000.
The figure in the biggest U.S. winter wheat producer is below the five-year crop tour average of 45.62 bushels per acre from 2017-2022, reflecting the impact of months of drought. No tour was held in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The U.S. Agriculture Department on May 12 estimated yields at 29 bushels per acre in Kansas.
Farmers, grain traders and food companies are watching crop conditions closely as the U.S. government expects domestic wheat stocks to fall to a 16-year low. A poor crop from the United States, the world's No. 5 wheat exporter, leaves the world more vulnerable to shortages and could result in higher food prices.
Tour scouts on average projected the Kansas harvest at 178 million bushels, below the USDA's estimate for 191.4 million and last year's harvest of 244.2 million due to expectations that many farmers won't bother to harvest their wheat.
In most of the 652 fields the tour checked, scouts could see the ground through the wheat crop because plants were thin and short. When crops are in good shape, they form a canopy over the soil.
One field in Marion County, Kansas, had visible cracks in the soil on Thursday. Plants that would normally be about 30 inches (76 cm) tall were only 20 inches (50 cm) due to dryness.
"You can tell that this is not normal for this part of the country," said Dave Green, executive vice president of the Wheat Quality Council.
Some farmers in western Kansas said rains helped improve the crop in recent weeks. They want more rain, along with cool temperatures, between now and harvest in about four to six weeks.
Experts caution that rains now are arriving too late to significantly benefit yields in many places.
"In southern Kansas, it's getting to the stage where it's too late," said Joel Widenor, an agricultural meteorologist with the Commodity Weather Group. "Sure, (rain) will help out a little ... but it certainly won't have the impact that some of the earlier rains had."
Another round of more widespread showers is expected in the last week of May that could benefit wheat in northern Kansas, where crops are less mature and still developing, Widenor said.
In Healy, Kansas, located in the western third of the state, wheat grower Vance Ehmke said he is living rain-to-rain and already expecting the worst harvest in his 48 years of farming.
"If it quits raining, we're just dead meat," Ehmke said.