A wave to wheat country: In Kansas, June's harvest marathon is a test of tradition as more profitable crops beckon.

Byline: Andy Badeker

SUMNER COUNTY, Kan. _ Think of dusk in a wheat field freshly shorn to stubble like a boy's summer haircut. To the south, across six miles of farmland, the ballpark lights in Wellington glimmer. The humid air is cooler now, with a weedy tang. Bugs bite and crickets conduct their noisy business in ditches tangled with black-eyed Susans.

But the whir of insects fades and something mechanical takes over, something that sounds like a riding mower mated to a helicopter gunship. Over the rise comes a big red chunk of combine, a machine that cuts a 30-foot swath at 15 miles per hour, hour after hour. At its side rides a tractor towing a cart to catch the non-stop combine's cargo: a torrent of wheat kernels stripped of stalk and chaff, ready for the local co-op and the world beyond.

It's harvest time in Sumner County, the wheat capital of Kansas, still the wheatiest state in the union. (Though North Dakota is close, Kansas still grows the most, raising roughly 2 percent of the world's wheat.)

As the combine and tractor take the corner, leaving a cloud of dust and chaff and diesel exhaust, think of this scene repeated all over the county. Then think of the countless cutting crews working into the night under their machines' halogen lights,…