This Week In Ag #166
Amber waves of grain? More like light ripples.
US growers are projected to harvest the smallest wheat crop in over half a century. That’s due to both how much was sown and how much will be reaped.
Farmers planted the lowest number of wheat acres since World War I. Declining acreage has been trending for many years. Growing up, like on most Midwest farms, wheat was a staple of our operation. We needed it for straw to bed our livestock. It provided cash flow in the summer. Helped manage risk within a crop rotation. Provided a cover crop on hilly ground (okay, hilly by Illinois standards). And in some years, we’d double crop by planting soybeans after wheat harvest. Now, you can drive a long way before spotting wheat fields in the Cornbelt.
Severe drought throughout the Great Plains has decimated crop yield outlooks in many areas. Among the top seven wheat-producing states, only 15% of the acres are rated as good-to-excellent. Huge spikes in crop input costs, especially fertilizer, made growers gun-shy about further feeding their crop. Yields in America’s top wheat state, Kansas, are projected to decline 38%.
Logically, one would assume wheat prices would rise dramatically. But after hitting its two-year high at the beginning of last week, prices plummeted 50 cents per bushel by week’s end. At $6.35 on the Board of Trade, prices are slightly above the 15-year mean when adjusted for inflation. But when you factor in the basis (the local cash price minus the futures price, which takes into account shipping), prices are at or even below $6 in many areas.
You may be asking: what will this mean for the price of bread and other baked goods at the grocery store? Oh, they’ll continue to increase. They already are. Grocery prices are rising at their fastest monthly pace in four years. But it’s not because of the prices farmers get for their wheat. It’s driven by runaway fuel, freight and handling costs.
A loaf of bread typically contains about one pound of wheat. Even at the current July Board price of $6.35 per bushel, that equates to about one dime’s worth of wheat per loaf of bread. So even major price fluctuations in commodity wheat prices have nominal impact of bread prices.
Related Posts
Bio Energizer® Improves SVI by 50% at Citrus Plant Wastewater Treatment
A citrus plant struggled with poor settling in the clarifier of its wastewater treatment, which caused the sludge blanket to remain high. Even at a low flow rate of 1.2 million gallons per day (MGD), the high sludge blanked allowed less than 18” of free board. The slightest flow increase caused solids to carry over
Huma Gro®: Practically Perfect in Every Way for Strawberries
Successful strawberry farming presents many unique challenges. As with every other type of crop, each farm will have its own challenges related to soil, soil tilth, soil pathogens, soil nutrient cycling, nutrient availability, plant vigor, irrigation needs, etc. Combined with those challenges are strawberry farming cultural practices related to continuous cropping and soil fumigation—with the
BHN’s Lyndon Smith to Speak at New AG International Africa Conference
Bio Huma Netics, Inc., President and CEO Lyndon Smith has been selected to speak at the New AG International—Africa Conference, to be held April 6–8 in Marrakesh, Morocco. The full conference title is “A 360-Vision of Specialty Fertilizer, Precision Ag, Irrigation, and Biostimulant Developments in Africa.” Mr. Smith’s presentation, titled “The biostimulant effect of humic
