Small grains harvest is underway in North Florida. This includes rye, wheat, and oats.  There are not any local milling operations that use wheat for flour, thus the wheat crop is typically delivered to a local elevator and used for a feed ingredient.  Rye and oats are usually saved for bagging and subsequent seed sales in the Fall. I am hearing from about 10 to 15 bushels per acre on the rye harvest. Areas with a little more rain than we received during grain fill are probably seeing higher yields. Overall, we don’t have the seed quality issues we experienced the last several years.  Some years we grow a good crop and the Summer rainy season begins before harvest. So far we have had good harvesting conditions. The weatherman continues to threaten the start of a rainy season, but we are still waiting for this to materialize.

Farmers are also baling the straw. Most will go to erosion control projects. However, some often moves to the panhandle of Florida to be used as a compost by the mushroom industry. Most of this acreage will be double cropped, planted to either peanuts or soybeans.