A winter wheat crop update

Farm and Ranch January 7, 2010 How is the U.S. winter wheat crop faring so far this winter?

Rippey: “We’ve got a good looking crop across much of the Plains and also extends to the Northwest.”

That’s USDA meteorologist Brad Rippey. USDA won’t put out weekly crop condition reports until spring but many states issue monthly reports. The reports from Washington and Oregon each mention some concern about winter kill from the early December artic cold. Several counties in Washington reported that frozen ground did not allow snow and rain to seep into the ground and there was some runoff.

USDA’s Rippey has some numbers on the percentage of winter wheat in poor to very poor condition.

Rippey: “Very low numbers on the Plains reflective of the well established crop, good moisture conditions. Only two percent of the crop rated very poor to poor in Nebraska and South Dakota. But we do see that number as high as 21% in Texas. Again, that is due to developing drought in the west Texas wheat belt.”

Rippey says there are some problems with the soft red winter wheat crop, a market competitor to soft white.

Rippey: “In the mid-south and the Ohio Valley, the reasons there we had a late planting and we‘ve had very wet, stormy conditions so the crop was not well established and it continues to struggle though wetness and freeze-thaw cycles and other conditions that have not favored the crop.”

In Illinois for example, 29 percent of the soft red winter wheat there is in poor to very poor shape.

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

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