06/13/07 A slightly lower winter wheat production forecast

Farm and Ranch June 13, 2007 USDA's June crop production report issued this week pegged U.S. winter wheat production this year at 1.61 billion bushels. That's down less than one percent from the previous month's estimate and 24 percent larger than the 2006 crop. While the Pacific Northwest had some hot dry weather recently, USDA left Idaho's winter wheat yield forecast unchanged at 81 bushels an acre. Washington's estimated yield was also unchanged at 66 bushels an acre. In Oregon however, yield prospects were dropped from 60 to 55 bushels. That Easter freeze this spring in the Central Plains and Midwest got a lot of attention but USDA chief economist Keith Collins says the impact wasn't all that great. Collins: "The freeze has probably shown up in the soft red states more than anything whereas the hard red states in the western areas, the Plain states, generally had good moisture and things look pretty well in most of those areas." Compared to the May estimates, soft red winter wheat production is down two percent at 341 million bushels. Hard red winter production is up slightly from a month ago at just over one billion bushels. White winter wheat is down one percent from May at 237 million bushels, of which 218 million is soft white. In other news, in a stripe rust update, Xianming Chen with the ARS at Pullman says stripe rust is still on the low side in the eastern Pacific Northwest. However the plant pathologist says stripe rust is in the region and according to weather forecasts, conditions will be generally favorable for the disease in the next two weeks, so Chen says check your fields more frequently if you grow susceptible cultivars. That's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.