By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The wheat harvest is still on hold and they weren't that far into it before the rains came late last week and into this one, but it isn't that danger that comes out of a farmer's mouth first.
"Right now, the price of grain is really the big driver," said K-State Extension agent Ryan Flaming in Harvey County. "The uncertainty of the grain markets."
Farmers have a decision to make and it's hard to have enough information to make the decision.
"Harvest is going good, I mean, good yields are coming in," Flaming said. "That's the positive stuff I've been hearing. The negative part is, they don't know when to market the wheat. Try to sell it as they dump it off over the scale or should they pay storage and hold on to it for a while, hoping on the market to go up down the road?"
If farmers want to store their grain, they should be able to do that, unless yields are a lot bigger than thought.
"I know Canton's got several piles of it out there right now, but I don't think right now there should be any storage complications," Flaming said. "We'll see how harvest goes and what kinds of yields we see will have a pretty big effect on that."
Flaming said traditionally farmers go to their best fields first, so he expects yields to taper off as the harvest goes along, but that they were only a couple of days in when the rains came at the end of last week. He expects it to be 80% done by the 4th of July if weather doesn't get in the way.