Even as Douglas County farmers begin to harvest their wheat crops, most of their focus still is elsewhere: their corn and soybean crops.

Several producers said they thought their wheat crop would be only average. But their corn and soybean crops, the two dominant crops in Lawrence-area fields, had the potential to be well above average.

“If we could just get a little rain once a week or so from now until August, it would be an excellent crop,” said Mark Wulfkuhle, who farms near Stull. “But it never seems to work that way. Right now the crops look pretty good, but in this business that can always change.”

Pat Ross, who farms near Lawrence, agreed the crops looked good now but said rain would give them a boost.

“We’re at the point where we are starting to get a bit dry,” Ross said. “Some folks are starting to irrigate again.”

Ross said he would take the rain even if it meant delaying area wheat harvest, because the corn crop was beginning to enter its critical “tassling stage,” where heat and dry weather could turn a good crop into a poor one.

“There’s a lot more corn in the ground than wheat, so I would take the rain right now,” Ross said. “Wheat is just such a small part of what we do around here that I think a lot of other people feel the same way.”

The area isn’t as dry as parts of western Kansas or other western states. According to the most recent crop report from the Kansas Agriculture Statistics Service, only 16 percent of subsoil moisture levels in the east-central region of the state, which includes Douglas County, were considered less than adequate. That compared with 89 percent of the soil in northwest Kansas and 99 percent in the southwest part of the state.

Dry weather elsewhere may be creating business opportunities for some area farmers, though. Wulfkuhle said he was in the process of buying cattle from ranchers who had been forced to sell because their dry pastures couldn’t support their herd.

“I’ve talked to sale barns in some parts of the country and they are seeing about four times as many cows coming through than normal right now, and a lot of them are only going for about a quarter of what they’re worth,” Wulfkuhle said.

Eastern Kansas pastures have been faring well, he said.

“We’ve got more pasture than we know what to do with right now,” he said. “We’re cutting lots and lots of hay because the pastures are just in real good shape.”

Whether eastern Kansas’ good weather conditions will add up to a good financial year for farmers is still uncertain, both Wulfkuhle and Ross said.

Ross said he expected his wheat crop would fetch a slightly better price than it did last year. The price of wheat this week has been hovering about $3 per bushel, compared with about $2.85 at this time last year. However, Ross said he expected his crop to produce closer to 30 bushels an acre than the 50 bushels an acre it produced last year.

As for corn and bean prices, Ross didn’t have a prediction of where they would be at harvest time, which is generally in September for both crops. But he said he’d seen more signs that the agriculture economy was faltering rather than gaining strength.

“I guess I’m not too optimistic,” Ross said.

“Some friends and I were talking the other day about what has happened to agriculture. Two years ago our local co-op (Farmers Cooperative Assn.), the largest in the state, went bankrupt. Last year the largest cooperative in Iowa went bankrupt; and this year Farmland Industries, the largest cooperative in the country, went bankrupt. It’s not a very good trend.”