(FARGO, ND)– As many combines are starting to roll in the heart of the Corn Belt, spring wheat harvest in the Northern Plains is well on it’s way to wrapping up for 2024.
According to USDA’s latest Crop Progress Report, spring wheat harvest nationwide is 92% complete as of Sunday, September 15th. That is one percent ahead of last year at this time with North Dakota 88% harvested, Minnesota at 99% and South Dakota completed. And so far, many of the yields for spring wheat have been very good.
“A great harvest so far across the northern plains and that’s both in the winter and the spring wheat,” says Justin Berg, WestBred Technical Product Manager in the Northern Plains. “In Northwest Minnesota, Northeast North Dakota, we were seeing a lot of 80 plus bushel wheat coming off of those fields.”
Berg added that as you moved west across North Dakota, there have been plenty of above average yielding areas as well depending on if you caught timely rains. “There was a few hot pockets where they maybe didn’t quite catch as much rain as some of the other areas and there may be at average. But for the most part, a lot of really good wheat crop out there this year. We had cooler temperatures and great rainfall across a lot of the Northern Plains. Any of the rain systems that were moving through seemed to hit a good spot.”
In terms of disease pressure on this year’s spring wheat crop, there had been some talk of quality concerns in parts of the Red River Valley in eastern North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota. Berg says he did gets some calls on that this fall.
“As harvest progressed, it seemed as though as we got into some of the later seeded wheat in those Eastern environments and we started to see some issues with pre harvest sprouting and falling numbers.,” according to Berg. “It was sort of pocketed in certain areas in those environments. But, yeah definitely got some calls on it this year.
Berg did add that protein levels on most of the crop were acceptable, especially fields that were managed properly with nitrogen. He says taking some of the learnings from this year will be helpful for growers in 2025 as well.
“Lots of good learnings from this year for farmers. One thing I always love to talk about is soil sampling. We just talked about some of the issues we saw this year. I’m a big believer that we should be pulling those soil samples. It helps us best manage our crop nutrients, especially with today’s fertilizer prices. And just as a reminder, it’s best to pull them samples right behind the combine before any field work is done. That’ll get you your best results.”
Berg also mentioned that fungicide application was a hot topic in spring wheat this year across the Northern Plains and that was nice to see. And he says as you plan for next year, reach out to your local retailer or visit the WestBred website for more information.
