Hettinger County ranked third in 2009 spring wheat production

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Hettinger County is ranked third statewide in spring wheat production in 2009, according to an agricultural statistics service.

Hettinger County’s high ranking is due to good yields from last year’s crop, said Darin Jantzi, director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Statistics Service, Fargo field office.

According to NASS information, Hettinger moved up from 22nd place in 2008 to 3rd with 12.5 million bushels produced.

Jantzi said the data for various crops is collected from producers by NASS staff, usually in the late fall or early winter when all harvesting is completed.

Yields for most crops were good across the board last year, said Patrick Carr, agronomist with North Dakota State University’s Dickinson Research Extension Center.

“Overall it was a good year,” Carr said. “The one exception was some of the fall seeded crops like winter wheat, this wasn’t true with all farmers, but in some cases it performed, relatively speaking, poorly, because it was so dry a year ago.”

Timely precipitation helped cool season small grains, Carr said, adding this year’s crops will start out well due to moisture received.

Regent producer Mark Anderson said his spring wheat yields were good last year.

“I would say over and above our federal crop insurance proven yields, we were probably at least 50 percent above that on our average,” Anderson said. “We didn’t get any of that normal 100-degree July heat that we normally did, that was a lot of it. Above normal precip was a major factor, too.”

Anderson said his moisture profile looks pretty good going into spring.

“I’m pretty optimistic about the year,” Anderson said. “A few timely rains and we’ll be able to pull another pretty decent crop, hopefully.”

Nearly all of the hard red spring wheat grown in the Upper Midwest made top grade in 2009, according to an Associated Press article.

Cavalier County took first place in 2009 spring wheat production with 13.4 million bushels and Ward County took second place with 12.7 million bushels, according to NASS.

Tags: agriculture, wheat, crops