National winter wheat ratings slip

Farm and Ranch November 2, 2010 USDA’s initial rating this fall of the U.S. winter wheat crop was the lowest since 1991 and department meteorologist Brad Rippey says crop condition has slipped slightly from that initial report.

Rippey: “By the end of October now at 46% good to excellent nationally, 16% very poor to poor. Those numbers have slid a little bit from last week, 47% and 14% respectively, and are quite a bit below what we see at this time last year when the crop was rated 64% good to excellent and only 6% very poor to poor.”

Ratings for the winter wheat in the Pacific Northwest are much better than the national numbers but they did slip from last week too. Washington’s winter wheat is rated 88 percent good to excellent down from 89 percent. Idaho’s winter wheat is 85 percent good to excellent down from 93 percent. And in Oregon 64 percent of the winter wheat is in good to excellent condition compared to 67 percent last week.

Rippey says it is dry conditions that are resulting in the low national rating.

Rippey: “We see very poor to poor rankings on at least 25% of the acreage in four states, Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana and Texas.”

And Rippey says Kansas is dry too.

Rippey: “19% very poor to poor. Than number has inched up from 15 a week ago as much of the state has been seeing very dry conditions.”

USDA says 92 percent of the winter wheat has been planted and 73 percent emerged, right on the five year average.

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

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