USDA updates spring wheat production

Farm and Ranch November 10, 2011 The late wheat harvest this year prompted USDA to go back and resurvey some farmers this fall and that has resulted in changes to the Small Grains Summary issued in September. USDA chief economist Joe Glauber says the changes were reflected in yesterday’s USDA reports.

Glauber: “They ended up bringing down the spring wheat crop and the durum crop such that all-wheat production declines by about four-tenths of one percent. So we are now looking at a production number of around two-billion bushels for wheat. Again, not a lot of change on the wheat balance sheet. We did take down ending stocks a bit to 828 million bushels, pretty much reflecting the drop in production.”

But that drop was in hard red spring wheat production. The survey found more soft white spring wheat in Washington, 615-thousand more bushels than in the September report. Wheat production numbers were unchanged in Idaho and Oregon.

And while U.S. wheat ending stocks overall were dropped nine million bushels from last month’s report, the forecast for white wheat carryover next May increased one million bushels to 112 million. Global wheat ending stocks were raised slightly.

The USDA again lowered its forecast for average wheat prices this marketing year, dropping it a dime to $7.40 a bushel.

The U.S. corn crop is pegged at 12.3 billion bushels, down one percent from last month.

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