Kansas farmers harvested an estimated 396 million bushels of winter wheat this year. The Kansas Agricultural Statistics Service says that means the harvest is 43 percent larger than last year's. Bill Spiegel is a spokesman for the trade group Kansas Wheat, and says several factors can account for the increase:
The 2012 winter wheat crop was also notable for having the earliest Kansas harvest on record, and the average yield was 44 bushels per acre...far outstripping last year's mark of 35 bushels an acre. The state's farmers also planted their wheat on nine million acres of Kansas land, making it the largest area harvested since 2006.