Derek Fuemmeler with Yield-Max Crop and Soil Consulting Services from Harrisonville, Mo., looks over wheat Tuesday on Pine Family Farms northeast of Lawrence. He estimates that the intensive wheat field will produce 80 bushels per acre, compared with an average crop that might yield 50 to 60 bushels.

Derek Fuemmeler compares traditionally grown wheat crops with intensive wheat crops.

Derek Fuemmeler broke a record in 2004 for the most bushels of wheat produced per acre in Kentucky: 105.

While that number doesn’t mean much to the average person, it’s enough to make a wheat farmer’s mouth water. It’s nearly double the average amount produced by Kansas wheat farmers, and Fuemmeler attributes it a technique called intensive wheat — a technique his company, Yield-Max Crop and Soil Consulting Services, specializes in.

Intensive wheat is not biologically or technologically different from normal wheat. Instead, it differs solely in the way the wheat is grown and cultivated.

“Wheat used to be something you’d plant in the winter just so you’d have something to do in the summer,” Fuemmeler said. “Now the wheat is the main concern, and we’re actually getting a lot higher yields out of it.”

Intensive wheat fields consistently yield about 80 bushels of wheat per acre, Fuemmeler said. That’s a drastic increase from the average 50 or 60 bushels per acre produced by traditional techniques. Fuemmeler has even seen a crop of intensive wheat yield 120 bushels per acre.

Roger Pine, owner of Pine Family Farms, hired Fuemmeler to help improve his wheat yields this year. He said in the past his wheat would average anywhere from 35 to 60 bushels an acre.

The process, which included two applications of fertilizer and an application of both fungicide and pesticide, is much more costly and involved than how he normally cultivates wheat, Pine said. But so far, he likes what he’s seen.

“Based on what we can see in our fields thus far, we feel like if Mother Nature cooperates in terms of no hail and no real serious weather, then we have an excellent chance of improving our yield,” Pine said.

And if his farm sees a 15 percent to 20 percent increase in yield, he said, the new process will be financially viable.

Though the techniques aren’t new, they haven’t been adopted by many Kansas farmers because of the greater costs associated with intensive wheat. However, Fuemmeler hopes to convince others of the technique’s benefits.

Fuemmeler said he thought intensive wheat could potentially provide some stability to growers in a volatile market by creating greater yields on their crops, which in turn means more money and a greater cushion for farmers when wheat prices go down.

The price for a bushel of wheat can range from $5 to $15 and can fluctuate by as much as $8 in a single month. Because the market is so inconsistent, it’s often difficult for farmers to maintain stability.

“It’s a challenge for someone when they want to plant in the fall of 2008, not knowing what the price is going to be when they sell it in the summer of ’09,” said Bill Wood, agricultural extension agent for Douglas County. “Farming is a difficult and challenging business.”

For now, Pine is going to wait for harvest before he decides whether his investment was worthwhile.

“I believe it will be, but the proof will be in the pudding,” he said.