06/13/05 New winter wheat crop estimate

Farm and Ranch June 13, 2005 Thanks to some timely spring rains, the Agricultural Statistics Service is predicting better winter wheat yields for Idaho, Oregon and Washington farmers than it forecast just a month ago. In fact, Idaho growers could be harvesting a record 91 bushels an acre. That's up a bushel from last month's estimate and up one from last year's yields. Based on June 1st conditions winter wheat yields in Oregon are forecast to be 58 bushels an acre, up from 55 bushels in May, but down from 61 in 2004. Washington's winter wheat is projected to yield 69 bushels an acre, up a bushel from May and up two bushels from last year's yield. Nationally, U.S. winter wheat production this year is now pegged at 1.55 billion bushels, down three percent from the May forecast but three percent above 2004. USDA chief economist Keith Collins says the reduced production forecast has however improved the outlook for national average wheat prices. Collins: "And that caused us to raise our wheat price forecast for the 2005 crop to $2.90 a bushel, up from $2.80 a bushel." But that is down from this past year's national average price of about $3.39 a bushel. Compared to the May report hard red winter wheat production is down five percent, soft red down less than one percent and white wheat production up one percent. Soft white winter wheat production is pegged at 256 million bushels. Hard white winter at just under 29 million bushels. This is the first year USDA has separated out hard and soft white wheat. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.