Wichita ? Two weeks before he plans to plant corn, Hugoton farmer Bob Parsons runs his irrigation pumps each day to water barren fields in hopes of boosting soil moisture enough that his seeds will sprout when he gets them into the ground.

“It is real disheartening,” Parsons said. “The last two years in farming (have) been by far my worst and starting on a third one, it doesn’t look too hopeful.”

His irrigated winter wheat fields are greening up now, but his dryland wheat is so bad he calls it almost nonexistent.

It has been seven months since it last rained in much of western Kansas.

Farmers say some of the better wheat in the state is north of Wichita to Salina, and from McPherson to Great Bend. Fields north of Interstate 70 along the northern tier of counties, which got some snow this winter, also are doing well.

“It would take a major miracle right now even if we got rain in the next week to salvage any of this dryland,” he said.

On Monday, Kansas Agricultural Statistics Service rated nearly half of the 2002 Kansas wheat crop at its two bottom ratings.

In its weekly report, KASS reported 16 percent of the crop in very poor condition and 25 percent in poor condition. Another 34 percent ranked as fair. Just 23 percent was rated as good and 2 percent excellent.

Last year, Kansas farmers abandoned 1.6 million acres of drought-stressed wheat before late spring rains salvaged the rest of the crop.

Crop insurance assessors have been hesitant to do appraisals on the wheat crop losses at this time of the season because they were criticized for responding too quickly last year. Fields were declared as losses when other wheat fields came back from the drought just prior to harvest.

But few farmers are expecting a similar bailout from Mother Nature this spring because the wheat is already dead or doing so poorly it could not compete with the weed pressure.

Wheat has come out of dormancy in most areas but is growing very little because of dry conditions, KASS said. Wind damage is reported to be light on 20 percent of the acres and moderate to severe on 17 percent.

The agency also is reporting army cutworm infestations in the central and south-central districts.