11/22/05 Winter wheat ratings slip

Farm and Ranch November 22, 2005 The U.S. winter wheat crop will soon be heading into dormancy in many areas of the country and when it does the crop will not be in as good a shape as this time last year. USDA meteorologist Brad Rippey has the latest crop condition ratings for the start of this week. Rippey: "The crop is rated 55% good to excellent, 12% poor to very poor. Those numbers last week were 56% and 11% respectively. Not as a good a crop as this time last year when 76% of the crop was rated good to excellent." A major problem area is the state of Texas. Rippey: "For the state as a whole in Texas 37% of the crop rated very poor to poor. That is up from 30% a week ago." Some other winter wheat states with problems though not as bad as Texas are South Dakota where 16% of the crop is in poor to very poor shape, and Oklahoma where 15 percent is rated poor to very poor. Oregon too has 16 percent poor to very poor with just 30 percent good to excellent. Washington only has four percent of its winter wheat rated poor to very poor with 58% good to excellent. Idaho's winter wheat is rated 92 percent good to excellent with just one percent poor. While emergence of the winter wheat crop nationally is ahead of normal at 91 percent its lagging in the Pacific Northwest. Just a few points behind the five-year average in Idaho and Washington but emergence in Oregon at 74 percent is ten points behind the five-year average. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.