Fundamentally Speaking

This week the USDA, in its first national winter wheat condition report of the spring, showed 48% of the crop in good or excellent condition, which is down from the year ago level of 56%.

The latest U.S. Drought Monitor indicates that 37% of the U.S. winter wheat area is in some form of drought, the highest percent since the middle of last November when even worse drought conditions were easing.

This graphic shows the last fall crop conditions for the U.S. winter wheat crop (usually released the last week of November) and the first spring ratings (which are as of the first week of April).

We use our usual ratings system where we weight the crop based on the percent in each category and assign that category a factor of 2 for very poor, 4 for poor, 6 for fair, 8 for good, and 10 for excellent and then sum the results on the lefthand axis.

On the righthand axis is the percent that that the final U.S. winter wheat yield estimate deviates from the 2000-2024 trend and the final harvested to planted acreage ratio.

The final fall winter wheat rating was 688, so winter wheat conditions did deteriorate over the winter, albeit it modestly.

Last year's first winter wheat rating was 696 as the 2024 winter wheat crop was fairly decent with a final yield of 51.7 bushels per acre (bpa), the highest since 2020, coming in 100.8% of trend while the harvested to planted ratio of 78.2% was the highest since 83.6% in the 2017 crop.

The first spring condition report for the 2025 U.S. winter wheat crop is not a perfectly accurate gauge as to how the crop eventually turns out as the correlation between it and the percent final yields deviate from trend is less than 20%.

Precipitation during the head formation and filling stages appears to be the most important factor impacting yields and that is a few weeks off.

Note that back in 2017 the first spring winter wheat rating came in close to this year's figure at 662 yet final yields that year were a record based on outstanding growing conditions from April to June.

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