Wheat prices up due to shortage caused by April freeze
Corn yields should be favorable this year, although some corn in coming in with a light test weight and wheat prices are up mainly due to the April freeze.
Brian Rees, Lyon County Extension Agent, said from what’s he’s been hearing corn yields are good, however, instead of a test weight of 56-57 pounds, some of it has been coming in between 48-50 pounds.
“I think there’s going to be some light test weight corn,” Rees said. “I think there’s also going to be some pretty decent corn around.”
Rees said if the corn crop had received one more rain, it would have improved the crop greatly.
“We would have had some really good corn,” he said.
Wheat prices are up, Rees said. Friday morning prices of wheat was at $7.71 a bushel, according to the quote received by The Gazette from Bunge North America. Rees said because of the high wheat prices, there’s been discussion in the corn belt of Iowa and Illionois for those farmers to plant wheat. This would take corn out of production and likely could drive the price of corn up, Rees said. Bunge quoted corn at $3.30 a bushel.
“We may be looking at shrinking corn acreage,” Rees said. “...that’s all speculation.”
Rees said the rising wheat prices matches the shortage of wheat, which is a result of this year’s late freeze over Easter weekend.
“It wasn’t just us,” Rees said. “It was a very large area. It hampered a lot of yield.”
Although the wheat harvest is over, the freeze is still hitting farmers hard — something many farmers didn’t expect until they started looking toward planting wheat this year, Rees said.
“Simply (with) some of the guys trying to get wheat seed,” Rees said. “It’s pretty hard to find decent quality wheat seed that actually fits this area. Not only were the wheat fields (hit) so was the seed production fields.”