Air February 21, 2001

Thank you Mark, and good morning everyone. Goodness gracious, so much to talk about and so little time. Coming up on March 1st is the soybean production seminar in Clay Center. With the increase of soybeans the past several years, this would be a very good meeting to attend. There is no registration cost, but you need to call the office by the end of the month if you want to attend. March 6th is the meeting here in Junction City on controlling costs in crop production for increased profitability. You may be surprised to hear that the best way to keep costs down is to actually spend more money. And on March 9th there will be a program at Riley County High School on using Quicken for your farm accounting. This will be a repeat of a program we held locally a couple years ago, and is very well presented. This does have a limited class size so call me right away if you are interested.

The survey results for wheat varieties planted for the 2001 crop was released last week with very few surprises. In our area, 2137 and Jagger continue to run 1st and 2nd and account for about 60% of all the wheat planted. Statewide, Jagger came in at 36% of the acres and 2137 at 22%. Total acres planted was up very slightly from last year. The past three years have been pretty stable at, or just under, 10 million acres. That’s about a 17% drop over the last ten years, and accounts for most of the increase in soybean acres statewide. Back to varieties now, Karl and Karl 92 came in a fairly strong third in the north central and northeast areas of the state. In the central and east central areas Karl was a distant third. These areas get a little confusing, since we are basically in the corner of one are. Geary County is in the east central district, Riley county in the northeast, Clay county in the northcentral and Dickinson county in the central. So I look at all four. What concerns me about Karl is its disease resistance or lack thereof. The past several years we’ve had fairly light rust pressure. If this shapes up to be a wet spring, Karl could really get hammered. Are there any up and comer varieties? Well Dominator came in 4th or 5th in those four districts I just mentioned and has done fairly well in the past several years. If you are thinking about a new one for next fall, keep an eye on how it does this year. By the way, this report and all reports from the Kansas Ag Statistics service is available on the World Wide Web, call me for the address!

This is Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook 2001.

Return to Radio Home Page

Return to Ag Home Page