07/29/08 2008 PNW wheat variety surveys

Farm and Ranch July 29, 2008 Surveys of planted wheat varieties for harvest this year in the Pacific Northwest show that soft white wheat continues to be the dominant class of wheat produced in the region, particularly winter wheat. Tom Mick, CEO of the Washington Grain Alliance says this year's report didn't have any surprises for his state. Mick: "We knew that hard red spring acres would be up slightly because of the price that can be obtained for DNS. We knew that hard red winter would be down and it was because at planting time last year soft white was very price competitive with hard red. So we saw soft white acres up a little bit, hard red winter down and hard red spring up." Winter club wheat acres in Washington dropped 45-thousand to 123,100 acres. Eltan remained the top soft white winter wheat in Washington. A Rod-Tubbs mixture showed a large acreage increase. The top club wheat was Bruehl. Bauermeister was the top hard red winter with the variety Eddy showing a substantial decrease in plantings. Louise was the top soft white spring wheat in Washington; Westbred 926 the top hard red spring. Idaho reported its top wheat variety as Brundage, a soft white winter, followed by Westbred 936, a hard red spring and then Alturas, a soft white spring wheat. For the 29th straight year the soft white winter wheat Stephens was tops in Oregon with Tubbs in second. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.