AMMO Workshops & Winter Wheat Crop

AMMO Workshops & Winter Wheat Crop

I’m Lacy Gray with Washington Ag Today.

AMMO, the Agricultural Marketing & Management Organization consisting of local suppliers, accountants, attorneys, marketing companies, and lenders is once again offering several Farm Management Training Workshops taking place in January, February and May. The next workshop, “Making Sound Capital Management Decisions”, will be held January 21in Coulee City and will cover such topics as whether to buy new or used equipment, the pros and cons of renting equipment, negotiating a new farm lease, and the cost of farm expansion or bringing a family member back into the family farm business. Pre-registration for the workshops is required. For workshop dates, times and information visit AMMO’s website at lcammo.org.

Winter wheat growers here in the state seeded approximately 1.65 million acres of winter wheat for harvest in 2014. That amount is down 2% from the area seeded in 2013 and 3% below 2012. Due to well below freezing temperatures in December some winter wheat crop may have endured freeze damage, but the true extent will not be known until early spring. That and the lack of normal snow cover for this time of year is causing concern for wheat growers. USDA meteorologist, Brad Rippey, talks about concerns now for the Pacific Northwest winter wheat crop.

RIPPEY: In the Pacific Northwest we do have some recent dryness related concerns. Now the good news for the northwestern wheat - the white winter wheat - is that it was extremely well established. We had a very wet start to the growing season in September and so good moisture early on helped to get that crop well established. We had snow cover during the December cold wave in the Northwest but more recently we’ve had warm dry conditions, so if that trend were to continue in the Northwest, we may have some drought related concerns developing towards spring.

That’s Washington Ag Today.

I’m Lacy Gray on the Ag Information Network.