Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Weather, other factors cited in drop of winter wheat acreage

Roxana Hegeman Associated Press

WICHITA, Kan. – The first acreage estimate of the growing season shows U.S. farmers planted fewer acres of winter wheat for harvest this year, according to a report from the National Agricultural Statistics Service released Friday.

The agency reported that the 41.9 million planted acres are down 2 percent overall from last year. Seeding began in August for the 2014 winter wheat crop, which is harvested in late spring and early summer across the nation.

But plantings of hard red winter wheat, the type primarily used to make bread, were estimated to be up 2 percent at 30.1 million acres.

Significantly more hard red wheat acres were seeded in Colorado, Montana and North Dakota, the agency reported. Those helped offset large acreage decreases in Kansas, Oklahoma and South Dakota.

Utah had a record low acreage, while North Dakota seeded a record high number of wheat acres.

“Planting conditions probably played into that,” said Justin Gilpin, executive director for the industry group Kansas Wheat. “But it also will be interesting because of the cold streak we had to see how some of that increased acreage out north will come through, whether it will be impacted by those cold temperatures or not.”

Also probably driving the increased plantings of hard red winter wheat is the fact that during the fall it had been trading at equal the value of spring wheat. Typically spring wheat, which is higher in protein and has stronger gluten content favored for multigrain artisan breads, fetches higher prices than hard red winter wheat, Gilpin said.

Kansas, the nation’s largest winter wheat producer, grows the hard red winter wheat. Kansas growers planted 8.8 million acres, down 7 percent from a year ago when 9.5 million acres were planted.

Gilpin attributed the lower wheat acreages in Kansas in part to typically double-cropped acres not being planted in the central and eastern parts of the state. This year’s soybean harvest came off later in the fall, so there wasn’t enough time to immediately seed a winter wheat crop behind it. Also, some farmers may have decided to rotate those acres with another spring-planted crop such as corn.