An update on U.S. winter wheat

Farm and Ranch January 27, 2011 With just under two months of winter left by the calendar how is the nation’s winter wheat crop faring? USDA meteorologist Brady Rippey takes us around the different wheat regions starting with the dry area of the Plains.

Rippey: “We really don’t see much relief coming for the next couple of weeks for the central and southern high Plains region. It does look like we will see some very sharp temperature fluctuations alternating between modified Artic air and then back into Pacific air and back and forth. That is not really good. You can have some wind with that and some temperature fluctuations. That can add some stress to an already stressed crop. So the outlook is not really favorable.

Now for the other winter wheat areas we continue to see favorable conditions. We have a well established and over-wintering crop across the northern Plains and the northwest. We have lost some snow cover across the northern high Plains and also in the interior northwest where it has been mild recently. But the crop remains in good shape so hopefully as we go forth we get some replenishing of that snow cover.

The other area the wheat is looking reasonably good for the most part is in the soft red winter wheat belt. We did see some issues and drought and poor establishment early in the season but conditions have improved. And during the most recent Artic outbreak where the temperatures fell below zero all the way down into the mid-Mississippi Valley and into the middle and upper Ohio Valley, temperatures dipping into sub-zero levels there just late last week and over the weekend, we have seen snow cover protecting the crop there. So we don’t have too many concerns about the soft red crop outside of the poor establishment areas.”

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