Winter and spring wheat crop progress

Farm and Ranch July 12, 2011 There is usually some winter wheat being harvested by this time of year in the Pacific Northwest, but the USDA reports there had been no harvest activity in the past week. USDA meteorologist Eric Luebehusen says nationally harvest is progressing.

Luebehusen: “As far as winter wheat, the harvesting continues to move along. We are not at 63% of the crop being reported harvested. And this is right on target with the five year average and just one percentage point behind last year.”

Luebehusen says the U.S. spring wheat crop continues to lag in development.

Luebehusen: “Spring wheat development continues to be slow across the northern United States. We are at 27% headed nationally. That is 41 percentage points lower than this time last year and 46 percentage points off the year average.”

Nationally the spring wheat crop is rated 73 percent good to excellent, up three points from last week. Last year at this time the rating was 83 percent good to excellent.

USDA reports only 25 percent of the U.S. barley crop has headed compared to a five year average for now of 67 percent. The crop is behind in the PNW too but by a lesser degree. Half of Idaho’s crop is headed and 70 percent of Washington’s barley is headed out.

The U.S. corn crop is rated 69 percent good to excellent, the same as last week. Development of the crop is behind the average pace.

I’m Bob Hoff and that’s the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on Northwest Aginfo Net.