11/02/06 Promoting 2006 crop wheat overseas

Farm and Ranch November 2, 2006 The Wheat Marketing Center in Portland recently completed the analysis on the 2006 Pacific Northwest soft white wheat crop. That includes results from milling and baking tests. Johan Oades of U.S. Wheat Associates Portland, Oregon, office says he along with Dave Shelton of the Wheat Marketing Center and Brian Sorenson from the Northern Crops Institute leave for Asia this Saturday to help explain the data to potential overseas buyers. Oades: "And we will be presenting crop quality seminars in Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Philippines, and Thailand. So we will present all of this data along with supply and demand information for the various classes of U.S. wheat." Oades says with the tight supply of hard wheats in the world and high price levels buyers may be a bit less discerning about quality. But he says soft wheats are relatively more abundant in the world. Oades: "And so customers can still afford to be quite discriminating. And in the case of our soft white wheat crop with the higher average protein those that are buying the very low protein maximums are going to pay considerable premiums for it this year, as they are for club wheats, like club wheats mixed in soft white to make western white wheat, which is purchased by some of our Asian customers." The average protein for this year's PNW soft white wheat crop was up over last year at 10.5 percent. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.