HUSA May 6 2026 - Ripping in Arizona

The report discusses how unusual weather patterns in 2026 have made it difficult for custom harvesters to find work across North America. Despite the slowdown, Demaray Harvesting and Trucking in Arizona recently began fieldwork, including deep ripping to break up compacted soil caused by flood irrigation. Hale Harvesting briefly secured a swathing job in Oklahoma, but the work ended quickly, leaving them searching for more opportunities again. Meanwhile, Beckley Harvesting shared photos from a gathering in Kansas, highlighting some community activity despite the challenging season. Overall, the industry is facing limited demand and uncertainty.   Welcome to the Harvest USA Report, I'm Brian Hale. An original production of Howard Hale Broadcasting, now expanded throughout North America. As many of you have heard, it's getting really tough right now for the custom harvesters to find work with the crazy weather patterns that 2026 has delivered.   However, we are finding just a few crews out there getting busy. Demaray Harvesting and Trucking LLC is in Casa Grande, Arizona. They've got a couple machines into the field this last week in Arizona.   It feels good to blow the cobwebs off and get back into the swing of things, they wrote. Demaray does a fair amount of deep ripping in Arizona throughout the year using a Steiger 525 with a 7 shank Wilcox ripper. Ripping is very important in this part of the country because with all of the flood irrigation, the ground gets severely compacted over time and turns into a hard pan.   We generally have to rip anywhere from 24 to 28 or more inches deep in to get under the pan and break the ground up again. Hale Harvesting had some good news, but it didn't last long. They wrote, one day we got a phone call and packed up and hauled a swather down into central Oklahoma.   The phone has just not been ringing, which has made it even more of a delightful surprise to get this swathing call for someone who was a custom grain harvester himself for more than 40 years. The only downside is that we're already finished and back to hunting for more work again, so if you're considering calling to talk swathing, don't hesitate. We wish we were in the field, but we're not.   That's from Hale Harvesting. Our friends at Beckley Harvesting Incorporated were enjoying some lights at Trucktown in Colby, Kansas recently. Some really neat pictures there can be found on our Harvest USA report Facebook page and be sure to follow us there.   That's going to do it for today's Harvest USA report. Thanks again for listening and may God bless. I'm Brian Hale.