Winter wheat

USDA meteorologist Brad Rippey has the latest look at winter wheat: “Planting is complete just about everywhere except in the traditionally later planted southern and Western production areas.” 93 percent of winter wheat is planted nationwide compared to a five year average of 91 percent. “If we look at the overall planting numbers versus the emergence numbers, that's where you can continue to see some of the impacts of drought that has been affecting some of the production areas.” He says Oregon is this week's poster child for drought impacts. “Ninety eight percent planted. Five year average is ninety five percent. But as of November 8th, just forty nine percent of Oregon's wheat had emerged compared to the five year average of 64 percent. We have seen a bit of an improvement overall since the first report a couple of weeks ago. At this point, we're looking at the crop being 45 percent rated good to excellent. That's up two percentage points from last week to have to go back to the drought of 2012 to see lower conditions at this time of year. And last year at this time, we had a better looking crop that was rated fifty four percent good to excellent, 13 percent, very poor to poor. We continue to monitor several states where at least one fifth of the winter wheat is rated very poor to poor. Even though I cited Oregon as a drought affected state, we did see an improvement condition there. Last week, 22 percent of Oregon's winter wheat was rated very poor to poor. That has improved to just 14 percent.