Ag Weather Impacts

Ag Weather Impacts

The Columbia Basin is headed for another week of hot and dry weather after a brief respite from the heat over this past weekend. This will keep the weekly irrigation needs around 2 inches for corn, alfalfa, sugarbeets, and late potatoes and an inch an half for melons and lawns. If you need to spray, you can expect winds to be light on most days. Plan on livestock heat stress to be a concern especially between 11 am and 6 pm. Shading or cooling will be important. Looking at the wheat harvest, it jumped 8 percent in Washington and 15 percent in Oregon, so lots of fields are being quickly transformed to stubble and piles of wheat are showing up. Now Last Wednesday, I talked with Randy Bracher of Bracher Farms. At that time they were about 25 percent complete with their soft white and irrigated spring wheat acreage north of Pendleton and near Helix. When I last visited with Randy in early May, he was concerned about the potential for extreme heat during the critical heading, flowering and filling stages.

Randy:

We had a nice moderate spring. We didn't have a tremendous amount of moisture, but we got timely moisture and those 75 to 80 degree days were pretty easy on our wheat crops.

So far, they've been pleased with the yields.

Randy:

Right now, we're above average, where our lower country is 45 to 50 bushel range and we were cutting 60 to 70, so we're pleased with that.

Thanks to Randy Bracher for the harvest update from Umatilla County.

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