04/10/08 U.S. wheat supplies stable; world stocks up

Farm and Ranch April 10, 2008 Total U.S. wheat ending stocks for the current marketing year were left unchanged by the USDA in its April supply and demand report this week. At 242 million bushels Alan Conrad of the Zaner Group says carryout stocks remain tight. Conrad: "Just allows for no droughts or drowned outs or the like, or whatever pestilence you want to come up with." And when it comes to drowned wheat, Conrad isn't all that concerned right now about the waterlogged fields in parts of the soft red winter wheat belt. Conrad: "It's early April. I grew up from a family of farmers and early April can be wet. The weather starts warming up. The ground will dry. It will get warmer. We move forward. My assessment on the wheat. It will grow. My assessment on how big the crop will be? I just don't have any guesses on that." There were some offsetting adjustments within that USDA ending stocks number of 242 million bushels. Wheat feed use was reduced by 50 million bushels but exports were raised by 50 million. That resulted in hard wheat carryouts being reduced a few million bushels, a slight increase in soft red stocks and no change in white wheat ending stocks of 27 million bushels. USDA raised world wheat ending stocks by 1.5 million tons from last month's estimate putting the world stocks-to-use ratio at 18%. U.S. corn supplies got tighter in the April report as USDA trimmed those ending stocks by 155 million bushels. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.