Windfall harvest in store for nation’s wheat farmers

Bolstered by expanded acreage and anticipated bountiful yields, the nation’s farmers will likely harvest a huge wheat crop this season, amid prices forecast to match the second-highest average on record, a new report says.

The Agricultural Department’s Economic Research Service cited several factors coming together this season for the expected windfall.

Consumer interest in low-carb diets is waning.

Supplies of carry-over wheat are low following last year’s drought in the Great Plains.

Also, more wheat is likely to be fed to animals amid an expanding ethanol industry that has driven corn prices so high that feeders are looking for alternative crops to fatten their livestock.

Farmers, spurred by high wheat prices last fall, planted 3.5 million more acres of winter wheat than the previous season. And with the return to more normal weather after the drought, all of those added acres are expected to produce high yields across the nation.

In Kansas, wheat conditions are the best they’ve been in about six to seven years, said Mike Woolverton, grain marketing economist at Kansas State University. “I don’t know if we can call it a record harvest, but the best in years,” he said.

Washington farmers planted about 1.85 million acres of winter wheat, the same as the previous two years. In Idaho, farmers planted about 780,000 acres of winter wheat.

A bushel of soft white wheat – the dominant variety grown in Washington – fetched $5.80 on Monday from grain buyers in Portland.

When projections of spring-planted wheat are added, the total planted area for wheat in the United States is forecast at 60 million acres – 2.7 million acres more than last season, the Economic Research Service said. That means the nation’s farmers will likely harvest 358 million more wheat bushels this season, or about 2.17 billion bushels of wheat.

That would be more than enough to offset decreases in carry-over supplies that had fallen to the lowest levels in a decade because of the prolonged drought, the agency said.

Much of this year’s crop is not expected to be exported because of high U.S. wheat prices and increasing world production. The agency forecast 925 million bushels of wheat will be exported, 50 million more bushels than a year ago.

Feedyards are expected to feed 155 million more bushels of wheat to livestock this year as more corn bushels are diverted to ethanol production. Expanded ethanol production in the United States has raised the price of corn.

More wheat also is expected to be used for food, but that increase is slower than the population growth. The agency said consumer interest in low-carbohydrate diets that started in 2000 appears to have slowed.