A Lesson on Wheat

Thanks to my lovely wife's little poll, apparently there are some of you that want to hear from me! Yes, believe it or not this is Dave typing tonight! This should be boring enough to curb any further request! :-)

One of the "perks" of being the Kellogg's wheat buyer is that you get to travel around the country each spring to inspect the developing wheat crop. Most people may not call this a perk, but to a guy from a wheat farm this is a great way to get out of the office and enjoy the great out-of-doors.

You may ask, "Why do you need to go out look at the wheat crop? Can't you just read about it?" The truth is, there are fewer and fewer people that actually scout crops anymore and so much of the information written by the "experts" is either completely wrong or at least not commercially significant.

The trip covered a large portion of the Soft Red Winter wheat growing areas in IL, AR, TN, and KY. We use the Soft Red Winter wheat flour in the Town House, Club, Cheez-it and Keebler crackers and cookies.

The main purpose of the trip is to calculate the expected yield, and there are several diseases and insects that we look for as well as we inspect each field. Fusarium head blight (also known as head scab) is a fungal disease that can cause the most damage to yield and quality. The fusarium spores are in the environment all of the time but can only infect the wheat only during the few days when it is flowering if the weather is damp and the temperatures are over 70 degrees. This year there were massive amounts of rain during flowering so we were concerned that there would be fusarium head blight and we did find the worst outbreak in years. Here is a picture of what it does to the wheat head. The brown spots on the head will either not produce any grain at all, or it will produce small shriveled kernels that will contain the toxin called vomitoxin. Vomitoxin will make animals and humans vomit if too much is ingested, hence it's name. Obviously we cannot use this to make cereals or crackers with this so understanding where this is occurring is very important to Kellogg's.

We also found a lot of glum blotch in the same areas that were infected with the head scab. Glum blotch will not cause any nasty toxins, but it shrivels up the kernel and lowers test weights, thus reducing overall yield.

Glum Blotch

Another disease that we look for is barley yellow dwarf. This is a viral infection that is introduced to the plant by aphids. Yields can be adversely effected depending on how early the infection occurs. Most fields we inspected had a very small amount, not enough to effect yields and thus not commercialy significant. Plant pathologists see it and write about it and get the market concerned about it when if fact it is late enough to not adversely effect yields. This is a good example of why we go and see for ourselves.

Barley Yellow Dwarf

We also check for insects such as army worms and cereal leaf beetles as they can completely destroy the crop if not controlled. We saw very little of each this year.

Cereal Leaf Beetle

Army Worms

This year we found a lot of problems that the "market" doesn't know about yet. This has been very valuable as a wheat buyer and getting positioned correctly in the market place.

Our consultant and tour guide (Mike Z.) that we go with has been doing this tour the 3rd week in May for 20 years and has built up many excellent relationships with farmers, agronomists, county extension agents, elevator managers, and university contacts. We are able to meet with these people along the way and glean valuable information. Mike has also discovered every little hole in the wall rib place along the way so we ate very well!

Hope this hasn't been too boring if you actually read this far!