Fundamentally Speaking

By Joel Karlin
Contributing Analyst

The annual tour of the Kansas wheat crop sponsored by the Wheat Quality Council is finding a very poor crop that many say is the worst in years.

For participants, this should be no surprise as that crop and those in surrounding states has been subjected to a wide variety of stressful weather conditions including ongoing drought, winterkill damage, freezing temperatures in April, and now strong winds that are further desiccating both soils and plants.

The accompanying chart shows U.S. winter wheat crop conditions as of April 27 using 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 VP, 4 for P, 6 for F, 8 for G, and 10 for EX and then sum the results.

This figure is plotted vs. the harvested to planted acreage ratio given in the May crop production report and the percent of the 25 year trend of yields also reported in the May crop production report.

This year’s April 27 rating of 580 is the fifth worst rated crop for this time of year since 1990 and is about on par with the year ago 576 figure when the harvested to planted ratio was 78.0% and the May yield as 96.2% of trend.

Prior to this year, there were five years that had April 27 crop ratings below 600 and the average harvested to planted ratio for those seasons was 75.5% with the May yield averaging 94.9% of trend.

With crop development lagging, there is time for beneficial rains to boost crop conditions and hopefully yields though the latest forecasts are not too optimistic on that front.

(KA)

© Copyright 2014 DTN/The Progressive Farmer. All rights reserved.