Club wheat supplies may remain tight for 2009/2010

Farm and Ranch May 26, 2009 Assuming demand holds up, club wheat growers in the Pacific Northwest could see good premiums for their grain again in the 2009-2010 marketing year. Glen Squires, vice president of the Washington Wheat Commission, says club acreage in the region for this year is probably up 30 percent at about 220-thousand acres.

Squires: “What that would translate into would be around nine million bushels of production, which is up from 7.3 last year. The big caveat there is there is a lot of club area that really did not make it through the winter very well and so we kind of have to see how much was reseeded and how the crop develops. Overall we are looking at not much difference in the stocks available. I think ending stocks, total supply, is not going to be much different than last year.”

Given the estimated demand Squires says we are looking at continued tight club wheat stocks.

Squires: “The tightness of the crop would suggest that there should be some premium next year without question. What level that will be really will depend on how much demand there is and what the size of the crop turns out to be. It is still early to be pegging a number for crop production.”

I’m Bob Hoff and that’s the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.