4-26 IAN World of Wheat

 The World According to Garp… make that the world of wheat according to Blaine.

 I had a conversation with the executive director of the Idaho wheat growers Association Blaine Jacobson: “Over the last year there has been a lot of turmoil in the world wheat market. Last summer Russia put into place and export ban because there was a drought in their wheat growing area so they stopped exporting wheat and that affected the Mideast dramatically and North Africa and the Middle East by a lot of their wheat from Russia. After Russia did that the Ukraine did the same because they were suffering from the same weather patterns so the first big price spike that we saw in 2010 was due to the export ban put into place by Russia. After that, the world prices stayed high because of the excessive rain in Canada, they had a lot of sprout damage and then the flooding in Australia, they also had a lot of sprout damaged wheat in their harvest and so that brought  us to this year and we are not off to the best start with our crops this year. Hard red  winter is suffering in the United States from a drought in Texas, Oklahoma, and parts of Kansas and so the hard red winter wheat crop is going to be a little short and then in the northern plains you’ve probably seen some of the flooding that they have had in North Dakota and Minnesota so there is concern over the hard red spring crop and how quickly those areas are going to dry out and how many acres are going to be seeded to wheat.