Milling & Baking News - April 16, 2013 - 21


damage remained a concern to the
already drought-stressed hard red
winter crop, especially after another
freeze last week hit the same areas of
western Kansas, eastern Colorado and
parts of the panhandles of Texas and
p
Oklahoma. Crop analysts again indiO
cated damage had occurred, but said
c
it would take a week or more to deteri
mine the extent.
m
“For hard red winter wheat, it’s too
late; there’s no way to bail it out,” Dal
vid Salmon, owner of Weather Derivav
tives, a Belton, Mo., agricultural and
t
energy weather consulting service,
e
said. “The hard red winter crop will
s
be mediocre. There are just too many
b
little problems and one big one – dryl
ness in the southwestern sector.”
n
The U.S.D.A.’s first 18-state comprehensive winter wheat condition
p
ratings as of March 31 indicated the
r
crop rated 34% good to excellent, 36%
c
fair and 30% poor to very poor, little
f
changed from the historically low fic
nal rating for the season on Nov. 25,
n
2012, of 33% good to excellent, 41%
2
fair and 26% poor to very poor and
f
far worse than the first spring 2012
f
rating of 58% good to excellent, 30%
fair and 12% poor to very poor. In the
second update as of April 7, the overall winter wheat ratings improved
slightly but remained well below the
ratings on the same date for the previous year’s crop.
“The good to excellent ratings in
early April were the lowest for the
winter wheat crop since 2002,” Paul
Meyers, chief agricultural economist
at Foresight Commodity Services, Inc.,
said. “Hard red winter yields will be
below average, but by how much is
the question. The next eight weeks
will be critical.”
There was a wide disparity between
hard winter and soft winter wheat
states. Without weighting the states
for the amount of wheat grown, the
average good to excellent rating on
March 31 for the top seven soft winter
wheat states was 62% compared with
21% for top seven hard winter states,
with poor to very poor ratings averaging 7% for the soft winter states and
41% for the hard winter states.
How much impact the additional
moisture has on the struggling hard
red winter wheat crop remained to
be seen, but there was little question
soil moisture conditions improved recently. The U.S. Drought Monitor as
of April 9 showed considerable contraction from just a week earlier in the
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area of exceptional drought (the most
severe classification) that had covered
most of Nebraska, although pockets
of exceptional drought remained, and
extreme drought persisted across the
heart of the hard red winter wheat
region, including most of Nebraska,
large parts of South Dakota and Kansas, and sections of eastern Colorado,
Oklahoma and Texas.
Wheat acreage up 1% from 2012
In its annual Prospective Plantings
report released March 28, the U.S.D.A.
forecast total planted wheat area for
harvest in 2013 at 56.4 million acres,
up 1% from 55.7 million seeded for
harvest in 2012.
Winter wheat area seeded in 2012
for harvest in 2013 was estimated at 42
million acres, up 2% from 41.3 million
acres last year and up slightly from

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wheat above the trade forecast.
Mr. Meyers expected winter wheat
production as well as the total 2013
wheat crop to be down 5% from last
year when the outturn totaled 2,269
million bus.
While the U.S.D.A. will not issue
a 2013 winter wheat production estimate until its May 10 Crop Production report, soft wheat millers
at the North American Millers’ Association division meeting in Palm
Coast, Fla., in March forecast soft red
winter wheat production in 2013 at
492.3 million bus, up 17% from 419.8
million bus in 2012. If the forecast
is realized, the 2013 crop would be
the largest since 613.6 million bus in
2008. Crop forecast panelists indicated production would be up in all major regions. The millers also forecast
soft white winter wheat production

Corn and wheat futures prices
per bu
$11.00

$9.50

$8.00
Minneapolis wheat
Kansas City wheat
Chicago wheat
Corn

$6.50

$5.00

May June
2012

July

Aug.

Sept. Oct.

the January estimate of 41.8 million
acres. The winter wheat estimate includes 28.9 million acres of hard red
(down from 29.1 million estimated in
January), 9.67 million acres of soft red
(up from 9.42 million) and 3.39 million
acres of white wheat (up from 3.27
million).
Farmers intend to plant 1.75 million
acres of durum in 2013, down 18%
from 2.1 million last year, and 12.7
million acres of spring wheat other
than durum, up 3% from 12.3 million
in 2012. The forecast spring wheat area
includes 12.1 million acres of hard red
spring wheat.
The U.S.D.A. all-wheat planting
number was near the average of
trade expectations of 56.4 million
acres, with the spring wheat other
than durum number above the average trade estimate, durum well
below the trade average and winter

Nov.

Dec.

Jan.
2013

Feb. March

April

in 2013 at 225.4 million bus, up 8%
from 208.3 million bus in 2012.
While U.S. wheat exports have
lagged 2011-12, rumors during the
past couple weeks of large sales of
soft red winter wheat to China were
at least partly confirmed on April 11,
when the U.S.D.A. said China bought
360,000 tonnes of U.S. soft red for shipment in 2013-14. Trade sources were
confident the total amount bought by
China was much larger, in the area of
1 million bus or more, with additional
reports forthcoming.
U.S. wheat stocks above expectations
Wheat stored in all positions on
March 1 totaled 1,234 million bus, up
3% from 1,199 million bus on March 1,
2012, the U.S.D.A. said in its March 28
Grain Stocks report. Indicated disappearance of wheat during the December 2012-February 2013 period was
Milling & Baking News April 16, 2013 / 21

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Milling & Baking News - April 16, 2013

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