U.S. winter wheat acreage lowest since 1913
Farm and Ranch January 13, 2010 You have to go back to the year before World War I, 1913, to find a time when U.S. farmers planted as few acres to winter wheat as they did this past fall. The USDA reported Tuesday that U.S. winter wheat seeding were only 37.1 million acres, down 14 percent from the previous year. The major reason for the decline was delayed row crop harvesting in the Midwest which prevented farmers from getting winter wheat planted. Peter Georgantones of Investment Trading Services in Bloomington, Minnesota says the planted acres number was a shocker at three million acres below trade expectations. Georgantones: “Your throw a 42 bushel yield say nationally on 6.2 million acres and you have just knocked 250-260-million bushels off your crop from a year ago, which we need because we are absolutely buried in wheat right now.” White wheat acreage, which is mostly soft white winter wheat produced in the Pacific Northwest, was not impacted like the other winter wheat classes were. Georgantones: “Basically it is about four million less hard red wheat acres planted. That kind of surprises me. On soft red, is down about 21/2 million from a year ago and white is about the same as a year ago. So, most obviously hard red, soft red, where all the double-crop acres were at play there.” In the PNW, winter wheat acres in Washington at 1.7 million are unchanged. Idaho’s plantings increased five percent to 580-thousand. Oregon winter wheat acres are up seven percent from last year to 810-thousand. I’m Bob Hoff and that’s the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network. ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
