Like everything else in 2020, COVID-19 pandemic precautions kept the Wheat Quality Council’s Hard Winter Wheat Tour at home last year.

ROUTES: The Wheat Quality Council Hard Winter Wheat Tour uses the same color-coded routes each year in order to reduce variables in calculations from carloads. 

But now those precautions have eased, and the annual Hard Winter Wheat Tour is back on the road from May 17 to May 20, crisscrossing the state with its rainbow-colored routes, gathering data on the status of this year’s winter wheat crop.

Snapshot in time

The tour concept is simple and has been for 64 years. Invite wheat buyers, millers, bakers, farmers and others in the industry from all over the world, load up four to a car and drive a predetermined route across the state of Kansas — and into Nebraska and Oklahoma. Along the way, each carload stops at wheat fields to take measurements of the crop, as well as note any weeds or pests, fungal diseases and other crop conditions.

Each passenger writes down his or her measurements from the stop, and those are tabulated with a formula from the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service that accounts for the wheat’s stage of development and other variables. The result is an estimated yield for that particular wheat field if all the conditions are the same to harvesttime.

Consider it a snapshot in time, if you will.

Those results are then averaged with all the other cars on all the other routes for an average number at the end of each day, when the cars stop for supper. At the end of three days of traveling and measuring, there’s a final crop estimate announced. That final yield estimate and reports from the field are valuable insights for farmers, grain buyers, millers and bakers.

Pandemic precautions

Last year, because of pandemic precautions, the tour had to switch to a virtual format. Instead of carloads of strangers from around the globe, experts from Kansas State University Extension and Kansas Wheat took to the highways to measure representative fields and provide updates over webinars each day. It wasn’t an official number, but it did provide the industry with an overall feel for the winter wheat crop’s development before harvest.

Dave Green, Wheat Quality Council executive director, coordinates the tour each year. The council announced that with rapid expansion in vaccinations, some vaccinated drivers were willing to take passengers as long as they, too, have been vaccinated. Otherwise, in order for the tour to proceed, each participant was going to have to drive his or her own vehicle across the state.

Schedule

The wheat tour kicks off bright and early Tuesday, with cars traveling their predetermined Kansas routes from Manhattan to Colby, along the northern part of the state and into Nebraska.

Then, the tour will swing south, on predetermined Kansas routes from Colby to Wichita, where results will be tallied Wednesday. Some routes will even dip into Oklahoma for a look at the winter crop in the northern part of that state.

Finally, the cars will head from Wichita back to Manhattan May 20, with a final estimate of the winter wheat crop announced around noon Central time.

Follow the Kansas Wheat Twitter account, @farmer_kansas, for results from the tour. Watch for highlights from Kansas Wheat, KSU Extension and others as they crisscross the state.