Worst in South Dakota | Seventy-six percent of the winter wheat crop has been rated poor to very poor
CHICAGO, Ill. (Reuters) — The U.S. winter wheat crop is off to its worst start in early April in 11 years, hobbled by poor soil moisture in the southern Plains.
The region is dry despite recent storms that brought precipitation to a few areas.
“We are better than we have been in a while as far as having moisture on the surface, but we are still in a drought from a deep-profile moisture standpoint,” said Mark Hodges, executive director of Plains Grains Inc. in Stillwater, Oklahoma.
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The U.S. Department of Agriculture said in its first weekly national crop progress report that 34 percent of the U.S. winter wheat crop was rated in good to excellent condition.
The figure was the lowest for this time of year since 2002, another dry year when 31 percent of the crop was rated good to excellent.
On the other end of the ratings scale, the department said 30 percent of the wheat crop was rated in poor to very poor condition, up from 12 percent a year ago but down from 32 percent in 2011.
Ratings were poorest in the Plains, which produces hard red winter wheat. The outlook is better in Midwestern states, which produce soft red winter wheat.
The Midwest crop has benefited from better moisture.
In Kansas, the USDA said 31 percent of the crop was rated good to excellent. That was up from 29 percent a week earlier, according to the NASS Kansas field office.
“The northwest part of Kansas has gotten some pretty fair snowfall in the last two to three weeks, but … we still have not had widespread soaking rains, and that’s what we are going to need in the month of April,” said Bill Spiegel, spokesperson for the Kansas Wheat Commission.
“Dry weather is still the limiting factor at this point,” Spiegel said.
Ratings in Oklahoma were un-changed from a week earlier, with 27 percent rated good to excellent. Half the state’s crop was in the jointing stage of growth, lagging the five-year average of 65 percent.
The delayed maturity may have helped protect the crop when temperatures dipped below freezing at the end of March, hitting -11 C at Erick, Okla., according to NASS’s Oklahoma field office.
Wheat becomes more vulnerable to frost damage as it matures and loses its winter-hardiness.
“We may have some limited (frost) damage, but as a general rule, I think we are still in pretty good shape. It’s going to be another four to five days before we can assess it,” Hodges said.
Wheat ratings fell in Texas, where 16 percent of the crop was rated good to excellent, down from 19 percent a week earlier.
But the poorest ratings were in South Dakota, where two percent of the winter wheat was rated good, none was excellent and 76 percent was rated poor to very poor.
Similarly, in Nebraska, 10 percent of the wheat crop was rated good and none as excellent, and subsoil moisture was rated short to very short across 96 percent of the state.
“Some areas might see some continued improvement, but overall we will be pretty vulnerable heading into summer,” said climatologist Mark Svoboda of the University of Nebraska’s National Drought Mitigation Center.
Corn planting expanded in a few southern states, although soil temperatures in the core corn states of Iowa and Illinois remain too cold for seeding.
Texas farmers had seeded 54 percent of their corn, ahead of the five-year average of 48 percent.
Arkansas corn was 22 percent seeded, behind the five-year average of 32 percent.
In Louisiana, corn planting was 95 percent complete, topping the five-year average of 84 percent.
The USDA says U.S. farmers intend to plant 97.3 million acres of corn this year, the most since 1936.
