CHICAGO (Reuters) — Temperatures dropped well below freezing in the southern U.S. Plains wheat belt early Tuesday and likely hurt some fields already stressed by drought, but the relative immaturity of the crop prevented more widespread damage, meteorologists said.
“Most of the injury will be to the more advanced crops in irrigated fields of the southwest, but permanent production cuts are not very likely, at least not from this single bout of cold in the central Plains,” agricultural meteorologist Drew Lerner of World Weather Inc. wrote in a note to clients.
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Another forecaster, the Commodity Weather Group, projected production losses across the southern belt at one percent.
“Our thinking is that total loss to the belt out of this will be something on the order of one percent, if it follows (typical) scenarios,” said Joel Widenor, a Commodity Weather Group meteorologist.
Temperatures fell early Tuesday across the central Plains, with a few locations hitting minus 7.2 Celsius, Lerner said.
Winter wheat is most resistant to freeze injury during its winter dormancy, but the crop loses hardiness as it resumes growing in the spring.
Cooler-than-normal weather this spring and drought in parts of the Plains have slowed the crop’s development.
“We are running behind in Texas and Oklahoma, where the biggest concerns were,” said Sterling Smith, futures specialist with Citigroup in Chicago. “The fact we only had a little bit of the wheat headed means that even less was in the boot stage. That means that the amount of damage was probably less than what the market initially priced in.”
Temperatures are expected to moderate in the Plains Tuesday night as the cold shifts eastward into the Mississippi River Delta and the Tennessee River Valley. The threat of frost injury to the southeastern soft red winter wheat crop, which is used in cookies and snack foods, was slight, forecasters said.
“The coldest air moves into the soft wheat belt tonight but should not threaten any permanent damage, and there are no other threats in the forecast for wheat areas,” the Commodity Weather Group said.
