Years ago, Kansas Governor Mark Parkinson was a frequent visitor to his grandparent's wheat farm in Scott County. Pictures of him riding a combine as a youth, he says, are notable in part because those machines had no cab, let alone air conditioning. After emerging from a combine operated by Tanner Brown southwest of Colby July 6, Governor Parkinson remarked that today's combines are vastly improved. Governor Parkinson's visit to the Thomas County farm of Tanner Brown and his father, Mike, symbolizes the importance agriculture plays in the states' economy. "It's important to highlight how important agriculture is to the state and particularly, how important wheat is to our agricultural sector. We have an awful lot of parts of the state that are hurting because of the recession," Parkinson says. "The recession has hurt everybody but it has probably affected agriculture less. Kansas needs some good news and we wanted to highlight that there are good things happening in the state. Farmers in many parts of the state are having good crops and yields and can help us come out of the recession." The Kansas wheat crop was projected to average about 40 bushels per acre, based on National Agricultural Statistics estimates in May. Mike Brown expects his wheat crop to follow suit. "The harvest so far has been fairly decent, with yields in the 40 to 60-bushel-per acre range. Proteins are running from 9 to 12.5, so they're pretty variable. Test weights have been running 60 to 64 pounds, so those are good," he says. "We've lost 450 acres to hail. We still haven't cut a whole field yet, because we've run into some green wheat we've had to cut around." Brown asserts that a positive wheat crop means good news in rural Kansas communities. "When we have good yields and the prices are good, it makes a big difference to Main Street in these small towns. Implement dealers, car dealers and hardware store merchants. It's a big factor for all of us out here in the western part of the state," he says. More than 20% of the Kansas population is involved in farming or other sectors of agriculture, Parkinson says. But that doesn't mean rural Kansas is recession-proof. "Agriculture has changed dramatically over the years. We've gotten very good at farming and very efficient at it. And as a result of becoming more efficient, it takes fewer people and that's had a dramatic impact on cities around farms. We've sort of been a victim of our own efficiency and that's been a problem. The number of people directly involved in farming has declined but it's still a very important part of our economy," he says. " Adrian Polansky, Kansas Secretary of Agriculture and USDA's appointee to run the Kansas Farm Service Agency, joined Parkinson on the harvest trip to Colby. Polansky, who farms near Belleville, says wheat harvest is a nostalgic time for many Kansans. "There is something special about wheat. I don't know exactly what it is, whether it is the golden fields, the time of the year, or the tradition of wheat harvest going back to binding machines and threshers. But there is something magical about wheat harvest that at least in me, gets the emotion going like no other crop. It's an opportunity to focus on agriculture in a larger sense. It's an important time in Kansas now, and will be in the future," he says. -30 -