Wichita ? After a bleak winter wheat harvest, Kansas farmers anticipate bumper crops of corn, milo and soybeans this fall.

If current industry projections hold up through this summer, Kansas farmers could end up cutting more bushels of corn than wheat this year.

The season’s first production forecast for fall crops will not be released by government statisticians until Aug. 12. But forecasts from various crop consultants already are estimating the Kansas corn crop at more than 400 million bushels, said Sue Schulte, a spokeswoman for the Kansas Corn Growers Assn.

“Things look wonderful, they really do,” she said.

If the early predictions hold out, it would be only the third time since records were kept that the Kansas corn harvest has topped 400 million bushels, Schulte said.

The other three big corn harvest years were in 1998, 1999 and 2000. Last year, Kansas harvested 300 million bushels of corn.

Abundant fall crops could not come at a better time for Kansas farmers after a disappointing winter wheat harvest hard-hit by drought, spring freezes and harvest rains. Kansas farmers abandoned 1.2 million winter wheat acres, replanting many of those with fall crops.

The government’s July wheat forecast lowered the estimate for the 2004 Kansas wheat crop to 313.2 million bushels, down 35 percent from last year’s near-record breaking crop of 480 million bushels.

This week’s crop weather release reported corn condition as 79 percent good to excellent. Another 16 percent was rated as fair. Only 5 percent got a poor to very poor rating.