In a USDA survey, growers indicated that they planted 32.6 million acres of winter wheat for harvest this spring, the smallest area since 1909 although not as small as expected by analysts. The decline in winter wheat, the dominant wheat grown in the United States, is part of a long-running shift to corn and soybeans that is projected to result in the smallest all-wheat plantings in the country since recordkeeping began.
“This represents the second-lowest U.S. acreage on record,” beaten only by 29.2 million acres of winter wheat in 1909, said the USDA. Plantings are down by 1 percent from last year and 10 percent from 2016. The last time plantings topped 40 million acres was 2014 and the last time they exceeded 50 million acres was 1996. Corn and soybeans have been more profitable in recent years and development of new varieties expanded the planting range of those crops.
The trends have left wheat as a distant third among the three most widely planted U.S. crops. Corn and soybans are projected to each take 90 million acres this year.
Still, winter wheat plantings were larger than analysts predicted. They expected a 5 percent decline from 2017’s total instead of the 1 percent that USDA reported. Sowings of hard red winter wheat, used in bread making, fell by less than analysts expected; plantings of soft red winter wheat and white winter wheat, used in cakes, pastries and crackers, would be slightly larger than last year. Hard red winter wheat is grown in the Plains, soft red in the Corn Belt and winter white in the Pacific Northwest.
Winterkill struck the hard red winter wheat crop in the central Plains at the start of this month, although the extent of losses will not be clear until spring. Winter wheat usually accounts for three-fourths of all U.S. wheat production.
The annual report on winter wheat sowings was part of a flood of USDA reports at the close of last week. The USDA said soybean production was a record 4.39 billion bushels and the corn harvest of 14.6 billion bushels was the second-largest on record. Corn and soybean stockpiles are forecast to be the largest in years when the 2018 crops are ready for harvest.