News
Spring wheat production shrivels up in drought
National crop updates have indicated for weeks that spring wheat yields would suffer because of drought.
Now as harvest advances, USDA’s Economic Research Service is lowering production estimates for hard red spring, white, and durum wheat.
Hard red spring is grown mostly in the Northern Plains, where extreme drought conditions continue to plague the Dakotas and Minnesota.
University of Minnesota Extension crops educator Jared Goplen tells Brownfield wheat yields have ranged from near 90 bushels on heavier ground to 10 to 15 bushels per acre on lighter soil.
“And in some cases, these fields aren’t very far apart. So there’s just a lot of different variables that have went into that small grain yield this year.”
ERS has reduced the size of the U.S. hard red spring wheat crop more than 40 percent compared to a year ago to levels not seen in more than 30 years.
USDA also expects exports of this class of wheat to contract to the lowest volume in over a decade.
