01/13/09 Fewer winter wheat acres than expected

Farm and Ranch January 13, 2009 U.S. farmers planted 42.1 million acres of winter wheat last fall, a drop of nine percent compared to the previous year. The acreage in the USDA report issued Monday came in under trade estimates. In the Pacific Northwest, acreage in Oregon held steady with last year and Washington winter wheat acres were only down one percent. But in Idaho farmers seeded 13 percent fewer acres to the winter grain. USDA economist Joe Glauber cites several reasons for the acreage drop across the country. Glauber: "And I think there you are seeing farmers react to lower prices, the fact that a lot of crops developed late this year. That prevented some farmers from getting in a winter wheat crop. But mainly lower prices and to some degree higher input costs." By wheat class soft red winter wheat saw the biggest acreage drop from last year, down 26%. Hard red winter wheat was down four percent. Nationally, white winter wheat plantings were actually up one percent at 3.62 million acres. In a supply and demand report also issued Monday, the USDA raised its projection for U.S. wheat ending stocks this marketing year by 32 million bushels to 655 million due to lower feed and residual and seed use. Most of the increase in carryout went into hard red winter wheat while white wheat ending stocks were cut ten million bushels to 74 million. USDA's new season average price forecast for wheat is $6.70 a bushel. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.