08/11/08 Willamette Wheat

Willamette Wheat. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. Buoyed by continued strong prices, Willamette Valley wheat production is expected to hit its highest mark in years. Wheat harvest is already underway in some Willamette Valley fields and the sight of amber waves of grain is clearly visible from I-5 right now: MERTZ: We're seeing a lot more wheat acreage in the State of Oregon right now. Specifically, in the Willamette Valley is where most of the growth is. Chris Mertz is state director of the Oregon Agricultural Statistics Service. Some estimates call for a four-fold increase in Willamette Valley wheat production- as many as 120-thousand acres this year. Tammy Dennee of the Oregon Wheat Growers League says the gold rush mentality for wheat was evident at fall planting last year: DENNEE: For the winter wheat crop, those numbers were fairly bullish and it was because the price was really good. That was one of the best cash crops that farmers could look at and put in the ground. So if they had equipment or equipment they could borrow for harvesting and for tending the crop to maturity, then that was an obvious choice and made their decision really simple. Statewide, nearly a million acres of wheat has been planted this year, up from about 855-thousand acres in 2007. With the price of wheat more than doubling in the past 14 months, the production value of Oregon wheat this year is almost sure to eclipse last year's record high of 313-million dollars. Mertz says many Willamette Valley growers are taking advantage of high wheat prices to work in a rotational crop for grass seed. That's where a lot of the new acreage of wheat is coming from: MERTZ: Some of the grass seed farmers in the valley have had a decline in acreage and have been given another option. That's good for their crop rotation, too. So it's economically, they can go ahead and plant some wheat this year. Mertz says wheat gives farmers another option, and many are choosing to grow wheat this year when it wasn't profitable in years past: MERTZ: The prices are a lot better. So farmers had choices they can make, and they can make a little bit of money on wheat because of the world supply situation. So farmers decided to make that choice to plant some more wheat. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.