Heath Koehn farms near Montezuma, Kan., in an area where irrigation wells are declining. And that requires a strategy for stretching water across crops that bring more value back to the farm.
That’s where his circle of irrigated winter durum wheat comes into play.
A few years back, Kansas State University released a commercial winter durum wheat bred for Kansas conditions. Winter durum is used in pastas and can garner a premium compared with the cash price of hard red winter wheat.
It was that premium that caught Koehn’s attention and drove him to plant this circle.
“When I made the decision to plant it, the premium was attractive compared to what the cash price of normal hard red winter wheat was,” Koehn said.
It also didn’t require a special storage setup on the farm, with a local delivery point at Plains, Kan. But more importantly, as a winter crop, he was able to save irrigation applications because of the timing of the crop’s water needs and evapotranspiration rates.
“The reason we grow winter crops is because you’re more efficient when you irrigate in the winter and the early spring,” he said. “My water isn’t getting better. That’s why I’ve been looking at the canola and the winter durum for their water use compared to summer crops. We just evaporate so much more in the summer.”
Saving water and growing a crop with a premium market price are pretty convincing arguments for trying something new in his rotation, which also includes winter canola and corn.
While winter durum has similarities to winter wheat, there are a few differences. For starters, it produces a head that is more elongated and similar to the overall shape of a triticale, Koehn said. And while Kansas farmers are still learning about the ideal conditions in which to raise the crop, he was careful to protect it with fungicide applications against stripe rust and head scab.
Remember, Koehn said, it’s a food crop, and anything a farmer can do to protect the grain so that they’ll make grade is worth it.
“I was already doing those practices on my hard red winter: a head scab application, a stripe rust application, you know, at flag leaf a fungicide, and then again at early bloom for head scab,” he said.
He did plant his winter durum a few weeks earlier than his winter wheat because the new variety needs time to put on fall tillers.
“That way, when it overwinters and comes back, those tillers are already there and ready to go right off the bat,” he said.
Koehn said he thinks his winter durum might be ready for harvest the first or second week of June, depending on conditions.