Wheat production in 2017/18 expected to fall sharply

USDA published the first 2017/18 marketing year wheat balance sheet in this month’s World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates. Record-low winter wheat plantings combine with newly-reported harvested area and yield forecasts to indicate a sharp decline in winter wheat production. Low prices—especially for hard red winter wheat that qualified millions of bushels for loan deficiency payments—appear to have turned a number of growers away from wheat and toward crops such as soybeans, pulses, and corn in the new marketing year. Down 25 percent from 2016/17 to 1,246 million bushels, winter wheat production is the lowest since 2002. Other spring and durum wheat harvests are also forecast to be down year to year, leading to a projected total wheat production of 1,820 million bushels. If realized, total wheat production for 2017/18 will be nearly 500 million bushels or 21 percent lower than in 2016/17. In addition to low plantings, a late April snow storm affected large portions of the hard red winter wheat belt, lowering crop condition ratings in affected States, though the full extent of the weather event on winter wheat production is unclear at this time. This chart appears in the ERS Wheat Outlook Newsletter, released in May 2017.

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