By PHYLLIS ZORN

Staff writer

Despite heavy rain around harvest, this year’s wheat crop seems to have come in without bad effects.

Dick Tippins, grain coordinator for Cooperative Grain and Supply in Hillsboro, Marion, and Lehigh, said most farmers were done with harvest for the season.

“Eighty-five to 90% of the crop seems to be in,” he said.

“We are $5.86 a bushel,” Tippins said Friday. “That’s still a good price.”

Tippins said farmers were getting yields of 50 to 70 bushels per acre.

Test weights are running at the typical benchmark of 59 to 60 on the bushel.

“If you get a lot of rain on the crop, it tends to reduce the test weight of the wheat,” he said.

As of Friday morning, the cooperative had received 1,431,000 bushels of wheat, Tippins said.

“That’s about average,” he said. “Once it dries up, I would think we could have it done by [this] week.”

Protein levels are on the low side, he said, and some of the wheat has had issues with wheat strip mosaic.

“If they put a fungicide on, that really helped,” Tippins said. “Overall, I’d say it’s a good harvest, and the prices are good. The majority are pretty pleased with it.”

Fields need to dry out before farmers run equipment over them to plant soybeans, he said. Some farmers are concerned about being able to plant early enough for beans to be ready by harvest time.