Record-high yields for the winter wheat crop, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. wheat production, will more than offset the smallest wheat plantings in years, says the USDA. With the larger-than-expected harvest, the U.S. wheat stockpile will top 1.1 billion bushels— twice as large as it was three years ago.
The U.S. crop, projected for 2.261 billion bushels, is being grown at the same time the crop worldwide is forecast to be the largest ever, 738.5 million tonnes, less than 1-percent larger than last year’s banner crop. The huge supply of wheat will hold down prices and encourage the use of wheat as livestock feed, as well as being a staple of the human diet. Even so, the wheat inventory at the end of the 2016/17 marketing year is estimated to be the largest ever.
Growers planted the smallest amount of land to wheat this year — 50.8 million acres — since 1970, when only 48.7 million acres were sown. The record is 88.25 million acres in 1981, during an export boom. Economist David Widmar says wheat acreage has see-sawed over time but the downward trend in wheat plantings stretches back 35 years, to the 1981 record. “Transitions away from wheat will likely result in additional acres of corn and sorghum,” wrote Widmar at the Agricultural Economic Insights blog.