(Bloomberg) -- America’s bread basket looks like it’s going gluten free: Dogged by lower prices and tepid demand, U.S. wheat farmers are poised to plant the fewest acres of winter varieties in 110 years.
That’s according to a Bloomberg survey. Analysts are predicting
another year of declines for acreage as U.S. producers face stiff competition
from global rivals gathering bumper crops. World supplies are so plentiful that
futures for hard red winter wheat are down about 15% in 2019, one of the worst
performances for commodities this year. In some parts of the southern U.S.
Plains, wheat is now cheaper than corn, making the yellow grain a better bet.
“The price doesn’t get high enough to tell us to keep planting
wheat,” said Ken Horton, who grows wheat, corn and sorghum with his sons in
Leoti, Kansas. Horton is cutting plantings of the HRW wheat variety by 30% to
about 3,000 acres.
“Any time you have cash corn higher than cash wheat, you’ll see
more acres go to corn,” Horton said in a telephone interview.
As of Oct. 27, U.S. farmers had planted 85% of their winter
wheat, up from 77% at the same time in 2018, according to U.S. Department of
Agriculture data.
However, rains in parts of the Midwest may hamper the last phase
of sowing. Some growers who double-crop wheat in soybean fields might not be
able to harvest their soy in time to seed wheat, according to Arlan Suderman,
chief commodities economist at INTL FCStone in Kansas City. That could result
in fewer planted acres of the soft red winter variety, he said.
“There’s quite a correlation in soybean-harvest pace and wheat
plantings,” Suderman said by phone.
Planted acres of all varieties of winter wheat are forecast to
decline to 31.118 million, according to a Bloomberg survey of six analysts.
That would be down from 31.159 million a year ago and above only the 29.196
million acres from 1909, the first year in USDA records. The agency won’t make
an official estimate until January.
In the Texas Panhandle, farmers are turning to cotton instead of
wheat, said Darby Campsey, director of communications and producer relations at
the Texas Wheat Producers.
“The low wheat prices have given way to other options,” she
said.
