Wichita ? Hot, dry weather has pushed the Kansas wheat harvest northward with poor crops far more widespread than had been expected.

For the past week, farmers and elevator operators in southern Kansas reported smaller crops than normal as drought and hail take a toll on the beleaguered grain.

Doug Wareham, senior vice president for the Kansas Grain and Feed Assn., and other industry observers toured elevators in southern Kansas during harvest last week from Wichita to Elkhart. At one southwest Kansas elevator, operators had dug down 32 feet and found no moisture in the soil.

“They are certainly in a Depression-era drought right now,” Wareham said Tuesday.

Most elevators have not taken on the seasonal help they typically hire, and some are even looking at laying off some full-time staff, he said.

In places like Tribune and Johnson City it has been a few years since they have had an above-average crop. And with soil dry at such depths, concern is already growing about the 2003 wheat crop, Wareham said.

The yields diminish significantly west of the Pratt area, and yields of dryland wheat are almost nonexistent in southwest Kansas, he said.

With the combines now cutting as far north as Colby and Goodland, elevators across the state are reporting low yields and harvests so small that grain handling facilities will be lucky to get half as much wheat as during a normal harvest.

Places around Colby and Goodland had significantly more moisture than southern counties, but the first loads going into their bins are showing low yields and widely varying test weights.