New numbers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture confirm what Upper Midwest farmers already thought: South Dakota and North Dakota enjoyed record spring wheat yields this year.
South Dakota's spring wheat crop yielded an average of 56 bushels per acre, blowing past the previous record of 47 bushels per acre in 2004.
North Dakota's spring wheat crop yielded an average of 47.5 bushels per acre, topping the previous record high of 46.5 bushels per acre in 2013.
Wheat, a cool-season grass, fares best in cool conditions, and the cool summer helped the crop throughout the Upper Midwest. Minnesota and Montana also had near-record spring wheat yields, according to the Nov. 10 report from the National Agricultural Statistics Service, an arm of USDA.
Montana's spring wheat yielded an average of 35 bushels per acre, with Minnesota spring wheat yielding an average of 55 bushels per acre. The unusually late and wet spring hurt spring wheat in both states, offsetting some of the gain from the cool summer, farmers say.
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But South Dakota's spring wheat crop started off strong and stayed that way through harvest, says Reid Christopherson, executive director of the South Dakota Wheat Commission.
"It was just a tremendous year," he says.
Farmers in parts of the state harvested wheat that yielded much more than 56 bushels, pulling up the overall average. And South Dakota avoided any major problem areas with low yields, which would have pulled down the overall average, he says.
Spring wheat's popularity has declined in South Dakota and the rest of the Upper Midwest in recent years, with farmers increasingly turning to corn and soybeans.
Anecdotal reports suggest the 2014 record yield will encourage South Dakota farmers to plant more corn next spring, although it's too early to be certain, Christopherson says.
Improved wheat varieties and farming practices contributed to the record yields, says Fran Leiphon, a Crary, N.D., farmer and president of the state Wheat Commission.
Heavy rains during the 2014 harvest hurt wheat's quality in parts of the state, however, he says.
The early fall rains led NASS to revisit its estimated spring wheat yields in the Upper Midwest. But the updated numbers released Nov. 10 differed only slightly from the original estimates.
