07/16/07 PNW wheat crop slightly larger

Farm and Ranch July 16, 2007 The wheat crop farmers in the Pacific Northwest have begun harvesting is forecast by National Agricultural Statistics Service to be one percent larger than in 2006 at 275.6 million bushels. A three percent increase in winter wheat in the region is enough to offset a five percent decline in spring wheat production. Spring wheat acres are up over last year but estimated yields are lower at 68 bushels an acre in Idaho, 45 in Oregon and 43 in Washington. USDA's July crop report left winter wheat yields in Idaho and Oregon unchanged at 81 bushels an acre and 55 bushels respectively, but Chris Messer with the Washington Bureau of the Agricultural Statistics Service says yields were reduced in her state. Messer: "The average yield fell one bushel from last month's forecast to 65 bushels per acre." Total U.S. wheat production this year, both winter and spring, is forecast at about 2.2 billion bushels up from 1.8 billion in 2006 but USDA chief economist Keith Collins notes that is down three percent from the June estimate. Collins: "That's pretty significant because globally we have a very tight wheat market. In the United States we have a very tight market." USDA did raise its estimate of global wheat ending stocks from last month due to an increase in Chinese stocks, but the world carryover remains at the lowest level since 1981-82. And USDA is forecasting an all-time record high average national wheat price of $5.10 a bushel, nearly a dollar above last year and 55 cents above the 1995-96 crop year record. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.