U.S. winter wheat crop condition rated well above last year

Farm and Ranch April 6, 2010 USDA’s first official crop progress report for 2010 was issued Monday and for winter wheat;

Rippey: “Coming out looking pretty good in most areas especially in the hard red wheat belt in the plains and in the white wheat belt of the Northwest.”

USDA meteorologist Brad Rippey who says 65 percent of the winter wheat crop is in good to excellent condition.

Rippey: “That is way far ahead of what we saw at this time last year, only 43% of the crop rated good to excellent in early April.”

And only six percent of the crop is rated very poor to poor in condition this year.

Rippey: “And for the most part looking very, very good across the plains states where we see at least 60% of the crop rated in good to excellent condition in all of the major production states except Montana where condition are a little bit lower, 43% good to excellent.”

In the Northwest, 87 percent of Idaho’s winter wheat is rated good to excellent; 73 percent of Washington’s crop is good to excellent and in Oregon the winter wheat crop is rated 55 percent good to excellent with 42 percent in fair condition. Both Washington and Oregon have just a little wheat in the poor and/or very poor rating category.

USDA’s Rippey says there are still concerns about the soft red winter wheat.

Rippey: “Some of that ties back in the late planting and poor establishment and then the harsh winter that we saw.”

Of primary concern is the winter wheat in Missouri and Illinois.

Recent rain fall in the Pacific Northwest was seen as benefiting winter wheat but it did interrupt spring cereal seeding which had been progressing well ahead of average.

I’m Bob Hoff and that’s the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on Northwest Aginfo Net.

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