02/11/08 Wheat supplies get smaller and smaller

Farm and Ranch February 11, 2008 In its latest supply and demand report issued Friday the USDA boosted its projection of U.S. wheat exports this marketing year by 25 million bushels. That more than offset a reduction in feed and residual use and dropped U.S. wheat carryout stocks to 272 million bushels. That is a stocks-to-use ratio of just 12 percent, the lowest since 1947/48. The reduction in ending stocks came in hard red spring wheat and soft red winter. White wheat carryout was unchanged at just 27 million bushels. USDA also lowered global wheat ending stocks over one million metric tons, down to just under 110 million metric tons, the lowest in 30 years. USDA economist Joe Glauber says the tight supplies are the result to two years of bad crops. Glauber: "Southern hemisphere, Australia has had very poor wheat harvests the past couple of years. And this year it was compounded by the fact that yields were off in the U.S. They were certainly off in Canada where we had a big drop in production and in the E.U. as well. We are expecting that to rebound this year. All those areas should be back with more normal production levels but because of the tight stocks we expect prices to remain fairly high." USDA's forecast of a season average price for wheat was unchanged at $6.45 to $6.85 a bushel, well above the record of $4.55 in 1995/96. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.