Air December 27, 2000

Thank you Mark, and good morning everyone. I hope everyone enjoyed the festive holidays just past. Now remember, we’ve got another big holiday weekend coming up so all the same safety rules apply. Wear your seatbelt at all times, drive with your headlights on, do not drink and drive, have cold weather emergency gear in the car and if the weather appears to be taking a turn for the worse, simply stay put and don’t risk it out in a snowstorm. This last bit of advice comes form someone who has gotten stranded and spent 30 hours at a truck stop in western Nebraska, as well as a couple of other occasions. I would have been better off to have just stayed home on every occasion, but I guess we’re all young and foolish at some time in our lives!

It’s the last week of the year 2000. For all of you purists, the last few days of the 20th century and the second millenium, AD are about to expire. I know I intend to ring in the first true year of the 21st century this weekend. Well, what did this year bring us? WE got some of the hottest and driest weather in ten years. We got some of the coldest weather in about the same length of time as well. In spite of that, we still had crops to harvest. I just received the preliminary wheat harvest data for 2000. Average county yield was 44 bushels, which, up until a few years ago would have been nearly the highest ever. There were certainly more acres abandoned this year than in most years. Dry seeding conditions a year hampered some fields. Soybeans have been becoming more and more popular in recent years, and this year they got hit hardest of all the crops. There were a lot of 3 and 4 bushel per acre beans out there, but a surprsing number of 20 bushel beans also. Corn was great and milo tolerable. So what do you do next year? Well, the long range forecasts simply say climatological for the coming year which simply means that there’s nothing to indicate the weather will be abnormal. So plan for a normal year, whatever that is in Kansas. And this is what we usually say. Don’t make big changes based in your cropping plans based on one unusual year. Of course with pastures and native range we’re dealing with a different critter - but that’s a topic for another day!

This is Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook 2000, wishing everyone a Happy New Year!

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