May 6, 2009 10:55 AM, By Ron Smith
Farm Press Editorial Staff
Southwest wheat production could be off by 50 percent from last year, a victim of the double disasters of prolonged drought and late freezing temperatures.
“A 50 percent crop loss is likely across the state,” says Gaylon Morgan, Texas AgriLife Extension small grains specialist. He said the 60-million bushel crop estimate from the Texas Agricultural Statistics Service puts the crop about half of last year’s.
The situation is not much better is Oklahoma where Extension small grains specialist Jeff Edwards estimates the crop could be down 40 percent to 50 percent from last year’s “bumper crop.”
“Farmers had some damage from the March freeze,” Edwards says, “but not a lot. The April freeze hammered us.”
He says the real story in southwest Oklahoma was not the cold snap, but the drought that extended from late last summer through early spring.
“The freeze just put it out of its misery.”
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