In its first Crop Progress report of the year, the USDA rated 59 percent of the winter wheat crop in good or excellent condition, 15 points higher than a year ago. Despite concerns about the return of drought to the central and southern Plains, 59 percent of the crop in Kansas, the No. 1 winter wheat state, was in good or excellent condition. Conditions also were favorable in two other leading states: 61 percent good to excellent in Oklahoma and 47 percent good to excellent in Texas.
Winter wheat provides the lion’s share of the U.S. wheat crop and generally is used in bread and all-purpose flours. The crop is planted in the fall, lies dormant during the winter, and resumes growth in spring for harvest in late spring and early summer.
Next week the USDA will provide the first figures on corn planting. Corn is the most widely grown crop in the country. The United States is, by far, the world’s largest corn producer.
Global corn production will rise by 21 million tonnes — more than 2 percent — this year, estimates the International Grain Council, while wheat, sorghum, barley and soybean outputs dip. In its monthly Grain Market Report, IGC pegs the 2016 soybean crop as marginally lower than the record 323 million tonnes of 2015.
“Preliminary projections for 2016/17 point to another season of ample global grains availabilities,” said IGC. “Large beginning stocks will keep overall supplies at record levels and while consumption is seen staying strong, ending stocks could match the 29-year high of 2015/16.” At the end of the 2016/17 marketing year, grain stocks would be a comfortable 23 percent of use, equal to a 12-week supply.
Prospects for a large winter wheat crop are pulling down the futures price for hard red winter wheat grown in the Plains, said Agrimoney. The futures price for hard red wheat for delivery in May is roughly the same as the price for soft red wheat grown in states along the Mississippi River and the East. In mid-March, hard red wheat prices were 14-cents-a-bushel higher than soft red winter wheat.