Nearly a year ago, the United States started to feel the effects as the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted all facets of life and society. Life in major cities and small towns ground to a halt as the world waited for something to change and case numbers to come down. While the pandemic continued, the day-to-day operation of farms largely continued unaffected.

“Fortunately, we had no issues to speak of from COVID,” said Brock Neville, a WestBred® grower in Colwich, Kansas, and a third-place winner of the National Wheat Yield Contest’s Winter Wheat — Irrigated category.

In March and April, supply chain issues dominated the news cycle across the country as grocery stores and retail shops ran out of everyday supplies. However, America’s heartland never stopped producing wheat.

If there were logistics problems with shipping materials to consumers, they did not have a major impact on growers like Neville. “We never had problems getting drivers or moving stuff,” he said. “COVID hasn’t affected the supply.”

Early worries about the wheat commodity price crashing never materialized. Neville also remarked on the market strength of wheat entering 2021: “We’ve had this huge market rally at the end of the year.” The early weeks of 2021 had a strong market showing, with wheat prices hitting $6.76 per bushel in early to mid-January — the highest price since 2014.

For Neville, 2020 did have learning lessons, but not from the pandemic. He’s switching over to using seeds per acre for wheat (instead of seeds per pound) and changing his fertilizer regimen to focus on providing nitrogen to his plants in the spring at green-up. “We’ve got all our wheat in the ground. We’re pretty much using WestBred on all our wheat fields. WB4699 is what we won with last year, so we’ve got that.”

And in 2021, in the midst of quite a bit of chaos, the planting season continues.

We want to hear from our community about how COVID-19 impacted you. What difficulties did you experience in your operation? Did you learn any lessons you will use in the future? Connect with us on Facebook or Twitter and let us know how you’re planning to deal with the effects of COVID-19 in 2021.

To share your wheat story with WestBred, contact us at the.tiller@westbred.com

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