The Enid News and Eagle, Enid, OK

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May 1, 2009

Crops suffer damage

By Kevin Hassler, Associate Editor

Wheat in parts of Grant County suffered significant damage from large hail dumped on the area during storms April 25-26.

“The southeast quarter of the county got quite a bit of hail damage,” said Kevin Owen, Grant County Farm Service Agency director. “It got hammered between Deer Creek and Lamont.”

Grant County traditionally is one of the largest wheat-growing counties in the state. He said he plans to do a damage assessment next week.

Added to the hail, Owen said, has been the heavy rain the past week. In the last seven days, the Mesonet weather-reporting site in Medford has recorded more than 8 inches of rain.

Wheat in Grant County escaped significant damage from the freeze in early April that hurt the crop elsewhere, he said, but hail and rain are combining to make prospects for the crop uncertain.

“I just don’t know what kind of wheat crop we’re going to have,” Owen said. “If it doesn’t slow down, we may have some major issues.”

In Garfield County, the wheat didn’t suffer as much from storm damage, said Jeff Bedwell, Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service ag educator in Garfield County, although there were isolated areas that had damage.

The biggest issues in the Enid area he said, come from the April freeze, as signs of damage continue to manifest themselves, he said.

“Time will tell,” Bedwell said. “We still have an evolving situation.”

The biggest problems he has seen are stem weakness and fertility issues with some wheat unable to self-pollinate.

He said he checked some wheat in a test plot near Bison Friday. Normally, a head of wheat would have 30-60 kernels in it. On Friday, some only had two or three kernels.

The 2007 wheat crop suffered damage from an April freeze, too, and statewide production was just 98 million bushels. That year’s crop also was hurt when many farmers weren’t able to get combines in their fields because of heavy rain at harvest and a lot of the crop was left in the fields.

In 2006, the wheat crop was devastated by drought and only 81.6 million bushels were harvested statewide.

Last year, conditions were good and the harvest reflected it, with 166.5 million bushels being collected, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service.

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