• Allison Miles •
• Originally published July 15, 2008 at 4:13 p.m., updated July 15, 2008 at 4:13 p.m.

With harvest season under way, recent weeks have meant long hours and hard work for local farmer Justin Leita, who doesn’t even pause for lunch.

“Usually we don’t stop for anything,” he said. “We usually drive the machine with one hand and we’re eating a sandwich or whatever you can wrap up and eat in the other.”

Harvest is far from over, Leita said, noting he still has corn, cotton and soybeans to deal with. He finished his 1,200 acres of milo on July 9 and said things look pretty good this year.

He estimated an average yield of about 5,000 pounds an acre.

“I actually thought it would do better than it did,” he said, “but it did pretty fair.”

Leita stores most of his milo at his own grain facility, although some went to local elevators.

It’s been a good year for sorghum statewide, said Wayne Cleveland, executive director of the Texas Grain Sorghum Association.

Yields in The Valley have been a little above average, while the high plains region saw more acreage.

Victoria and the coastal region are sort of split, Cleveland said, with half of the crops coming in above average and about half below.

“The quality remains good on all of it,” he said. “There’s a good test weight and I think producers are generally pleased with their yields.”

In total, Texas planted a little more than 3 million acres of grain sorghum this year.

That’s up about a half million acres from 2007, Cleveland said, noting that supply and demand issues contribute to the increase.

About 100 million bushels of the crop went to Europe last year, he said, which liquidated the market.

The weather contributed to the crop’s well-being, Leita said, noting the dry season was dramatically different last year’s continual downpours, which devastated sorghum yields.

“This year we’d get a little shower and the sun and wind would come out,” he said. “I don’t really think anybody’s having much of a difficulty.”

Producers typically work to get sorghum harvested quickly, Leita said, because it’s an unforgiving crop.

Too much rain or overexposure to the wind can cause the head to sprout, he said, which renders it unusable.

“With corn, it doesn’t affect it as bad,” he said.

And on the days where showers meant overly soggy milo and fields, Leita said he kept business as usual.

He just bounced back and forth between his corn and sorghum harvests.

“I’ve been seeing a lot of farmers having issues like that,” he said.

The strategy worked, he said, although some parts of his crop seemed to get rain nearly every day, while others went almost untouched.

But that’s something you can’t really plan for, he said. You just have to keep your fingers crossed and pray you’re doing the right thing.

“I believe it’s a little bit of luck, a little bit of faith and, I guess, hope,” he said.

Allison Miles is a reporter for the Advocate. Contact her at 361-580-6511 or amiles@vicad.com, or comment on this story at www.VictoriaAdvocate.com.

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