Vermitoxin and other diseases hurt wheat crop

Nevada Daily Mail

There is an old saying for farmers when it comes to growing wheat: "Wheat doesn't like wet feet."

Russell Johnson of Johnson Farms, in Deerfield, said he is feeling the difficulty record-setting rainfall provided this growing season. The rain that fell, Johnson said, led to diseases and toxins to be spread throughout most of his and other Vernon County farmers' crops.

"Our wheat didn't actually yield terribly, but the quality was awful," Johnson said. "Wheat hates wet weather because of disease and vermitoxin."

William Wiebold, a University of Missouri agronomist said, "Like many problems this year, we've never been here before. We don't have research to answer questions raised by new record setting wet weather. With the frequent rain, the wheat's leaves and flower head stayed wet. That's when it is most susceptible. That's what gets fungus to grow."

Johnson said the elevator he sends his wheat to created problems for him financially. He said a bushel of wheat typically brings in $4 to $5 dollars, but this year, he received $1 to $3 back on his wheat.

"When I first brought my wheat to Kansas City [Kan.], they were grading it in-house. I was getting dockage on it, but it wasn't terribly bad," He said. "I still have two loads I'm not sure what I'm going to do with."

As the season progressed, Johnson's wheat lost him more and more money. He said he finally had to stop shipping his wheat to Kansas City because he said he couldn't afford to send it for such a small return.

"Basically when you're getting $2 a bushel of wheat, even if it had some yield value to it, you're not returning your cost. The last haul I sent up there, I only got $1.60," Johnson said. "I said, 'that'll be all of that.' I couldn't afford to bring it up there for that price. They were going to quit buying it because the wheat was such poor quality -- because of the vermitoxin.

"Farmers and ag-related businesses are going to hurt because farmers don't get any money."

When he has quality wheat, Johnson said he sends his wheat "into the food chain." This year he sent his crop to a mill in Carthage and Bartlett Grain in Kansas City, Kan., who export soft wheat.

"This year's wheat will probably go into livestock feed," Johnson said. He said some crops were good enough for the food chain. Ideally, wheat weighs 60 pounds per bushel; most companies don't dock farmers until 58 pounds, he said. Wheat this year weighed anywhere from 58- to 59-pounds all the way to 30-pounds for test weight.

"When it doesn't have enough weight, it just doesn't have the protein values," Johnson said.

One of the biggest issues the farmers had with rain was with the perpetual rainfall, Wiebold said.

"If it had rained for just a couple of weeks, it probably would have been OK, but with the long period of rain, fungus grew," he said.

An average of 5.08 inches of precipitation fell monthly from April through July in Vernon County this year, compared to the average 3.8 inches of precipitation that fell each of those months across the United States, reported by USA.com, a local-weather website.

The continuous rain gave trouble for all Vernon County farmers, Johnson said. Many farmers used fungicides in an attempt to clear the fungus disease from the wheat.

The rain won this year; Johnson said some of his neighbors who used fungicide asked why their wheat looked like his fields despite him not using fungicide this year.

"It was just too wet," Johnson said. "The rain just washed the fungicide off. The yields were not awful by any mean, my yields on my fields were close to 20 bushels, which is over my historical average," Johnson said. "It was the yield issues [causing problems for all of Vernon County farmers]. Some people were talking about yield issues, but it's still tied to test weight. Our weight was weighing anywhere from 51- to 57-pounds. If it gets to the 50s or above that's not that bad, but it's really just a quality thing."