Weather In Walla Walla Washington

Washington wheat growers benefit from cooler weather

Wheat farmers might be the only people in Washington not complaining about the state's recent run of cool, wet weather.

It's giving them a late but bountiful harvest, and helping balance the paltry crops coming out of the country's drought-ravaged Plains states.

Washington is expected to leapfrog over Texas and Oklahoma in winter-wheat production this year, making it second only to Kansas, where production is down 24 percent.

"It's kind of rare that we'd be No. 2," said Bob Hoff at the farm-news network Northwest Ag Infonet in Spokane.

"The cool, wet spring helped boost our yields, which is the opposite of what happened in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, where they had a severe drought," he said.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture expects Washington's winter-wheat yields to be 72 bushels an acre, just one bushel short of the state record from 2000.

Prices are strong, too, because investors have flocked to commodities markets as an alternative to stocks.

Soft white wheat, which represents 78 percent of Washington's wheat acreage, is used for doughnuts, cookies and crackers and fetches relatively low prices compared with other types of wheat.

But Washington is lucky this year that it leans on soft white wheat, because other types, like those used in bread, are discounted if they do not have high levels of protein. That has happened to some farmers this year whose crops have not had the hot, dry weather that helps create higher protein.

The price for soft white wheat in Portland, where exporters ship much of it to Asia, is hovering around $6.75 a bushel, about 30 cents higher than it was a year ago.

"Coupled with our high yield, it makes a very valuable crop for us this year," said Stephen Guy, an extension agronomist at Washington State University.

The state also does not rely heavily on wheat planted in the spring, like other northern states do. Spring wheat has a shorter growing season than winter wheat, which is planted in the fall and harvested the next year.

10 Colleges with the Best Health Services | Cappex College Blog

With all the excitement of your college search, it’s difficult to have the foresight that you might wind up under the weather a few times during your college career.

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