USDA pegs US winter wheat seedings at six-year low
Date:01-15-2016
U.S. farmers planted the smallest number of acres to winter wheat since 2010, and plantings of one class, hard red winter wheat, were the lowest in at least 30 years, according to government data released on Tuesday.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated U.S. winter wheat seedings for 2016 at 36.609 million acres, down 7.2 percent from 2015. The figure fell more than 2 million acres below the low end of the range of trade estimates.
The USDA estimated seedings of hard red winter wheat, at 26.5 million acres, the lowest in records dating to 1986-87.
"The biggest surprise in this report was the winter wheat seedings. If we don't get sharply higher durum and spring wheat seedings this spring, the trade might be looking at an extremely low U.S. all-wheat area for 2016," said Terry Reilly, senior commodity analyst for Futures International.
Also on Tuesday, the USDA said U.S. corn and soybean supplies ballooned to record levels during the last three months of 2015 following bountiful harvests of both commodities and cutbacks in usage.
But corn and soybean production was smaller than previously estimated, the government said.
"The thought was that big crops get bigger and they actually reduced the production for (U.S.) beans and corn and pulled back the yields as well," said Dax Wedemeyer, analyst with U.S. Commodities.
CBOT soybean futures, which were trading lower before the report was released, surged to their highest level since Dec. 7. Corn futures also rallied into positive territory.
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