01/17/05 World weather and winter wheat

Farm and Ranch January 17, 2005 Outside of the United States many of the winter wheat growing areas of the northern hemisphere have been experiencing a mild winter. USDA agricultural meteorologist Mark Brusberg says that's been the case in Europe, the former Soviet Union, and Asia. Brusberg: "We are seeing some areas where the mild weather is eliminating the risk of winter kill, but at the same time it has eroded the snow cover to the point that the crops are vulnerable to winter kill. So they are sort of in a catch-22." A worst case scenario for those areas would be a dry frontal passage followed by very cold temperatures. Brusberg: "Some parts of the world can get down to minus 10, minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit and as farmers know, if there is no snow cover that could cause serious harm to the crop." Brusberg says this isn't an imminent problem but is something worth keeping an eye on. When he spoke at the Pacific Northwest Farm Forum in Spokane last week, climatologist Art Douglas of Creighton University said temperatures in western Russia this winter have been in the upper 30`s, into the 40`s and even up into the 50`s down into the Ukraine. Douglas: "This is not a forecast. I would just worry about the state of the winter wheat, because the winter wheat is going to be very active and we know that Russia can still get pretty cold in February and March. So I would worry about winter kill if they had a cold outbreak. Other than that, they have had a good westerly flow. They have had a lot of moisture going in. So, from a moisture standpoint there should not be a problem." I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.