Winter wheat planting progress
Farm and Ranch September 22, 2011 USDA’s weekly crop progress report this week showed 14 percent of the 2012 winter wheat crop has been planted, six points behind the five year average for now. Washington continues to lead the nation with about half of its crop planted, just a couple of points behind the average pace. Idaho has sixteen percent of its 2012 crop in the ground with seeding in Oregon at eight percent complete, which is 11 points behind the five year average. The main problem area for the next U.S. winter wheat crop is still the drought in the hard red winter wheat belt in the southern plains where USDA meteorologist Brad Rippey describes a bleak outlook. Rippey: “We have gotten a couple of nice breaks from the heat across the southern plains in September. It has been on and off again hot and unfortunately as we head to the end of September and into early October it looks like the high plains region will be turning rather warm again. It is getting late enough in the year I am a little hesitant to say hot. But we will see temperatures back into the 90s in Texas. Even though we saw some areas picking up one to two inches or even a little bit more in Texas and Oklahoma last week, it does not look like a good situation as we head to the end of the month and into early October.” USDA says ten percent of the U.S. corn crop had been harvested to start this week. One point behind average. I’m Bob Hoff and that’s the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on Northwest Aginfo Net. ?
