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While the price of our daily bread has gone up as wheat prices soar, what tomorrow's daily bread will cost will have a lot to do with how this year's wheat crop fares.
According to the latest American Farm Bureau Federation Marketbasket Survey, a 5-pound bag of flour had the largest retail price increase, up 69 cents to $2.39.
Planted wheat area nationwide is estimated at 63.8 million acres, up 6 percent from 2007, according to a recent report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Nationwide, 2008 winter wheat planted area, at 46.8 million acres, is 4 percent above last year. Area planted to other spring wheat for 2008 is expected to total 14.3 million acres, up 8 percent from 2007.
In Nebraska last fall, winter wheat was sown on 1.95 million acres, down 5 percent from a year earlier, but 8 percent higher than the 2006 crop.
According to USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service, wheat conditions in March declined from February, with the crop rated 1 percent very poor, 9 percent poor, 40 percent fair, 45 percent good, and 5 percent excellent, behind last year's condition of 58 percent good or excellent.
According to the USDA, U.S. wheat supplies for 2008-09 are expected to be up from 2007-08 because of larger acreage and higher yields. Total use for 2008-09 is projected down from 2007-08, largely due to an expected 275-million-bushel drop in exports.
Global wheat production is expected to expand markedly in response to high prices. Food use of wheat is expected to increase in 2008-09 with the increase in population growth and rising per capita use.
Wheat prices have fallen about $1.50 per bushel since early March at the Aurora Co-op Elevator. The price at the co-op closed at $9.56 per bushel Thursday.
Last year, during March, wheat prices in Nebraska averaged $4.69 per bushel.
But, according to Mike Woolverton, Kansas State University agriculture economist, futures market for hard red winter wheat appears to be entering a down trend.
He said record-high prices last year were a result of weather and other problems in wheat-growing regions around the world. That led to record-low world wheat stocks.
"We're at a 62-year low for carryover in the U.S.," Woolverton said. "We have to go back to 1947-48 to find the last time stocks were this low."
Global stocks are at a 30-year low, he said.
Woolverton said the United States has one of the few remaining supplies of milling-quality wheat right now, and that is causing exports to soar.
Also helping boost U.S. wheat prices was a short southern hemisphere wheat crop. Woolverton said political issues in Argentina have restricted wheat exports from that country and drought in Australia led to a short crop there.
"We'll have to see how harvest in the Northern Hemisphere looks before we know how much it will do to replenish world supplies," he said.
Getting world stocks back to previous levels could take two years of good crops, during which time he expects prices to remain strong. Woolverton does believe, however, that prices will be lower by harvest time.
What concerns Woolverton is how the crop is starting to look in areas of the Great Plains.
He said a cool, wet spring is slowing crop development and the wheat is smaller than it usually is this time of year.
What could keep wheat prices high is the fact that world supplies for corn and soybeans are also tight.
"There's no margin for error in these grains right now," he said. "We need good crops and a good growing season, or these markets could get even crazier."
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