Highlights: Wheat
USDA sees US wheat acres at 49.9 million (20.1 million hectares), up 9% from 2022 and 8% above the five-year average. Winter wheat planted area is up 13% at 37.5 million acres, with 26.0 million acres of Hard Red Winter, 7.8 million acres of Soft Red Winter, and 3.7 million acres of white winter wheat. All spring wheat acres will be down 2% from a year ago with Hard Red Spring at 9.9 million acres and durum up 9% to 1.8 million acres.
All US wheat inventory on March 1st was 946 million bushels, down 8% from last year. Note that wheat stored on farms is 227 million bushels, 30% more than a year ago while off-farm stocks are down 16% at 719 million bushels. Yes, US wheat stocks were 12 million bushels higher than expected, but at the lowest level in ten years.
With a war in the world’s bread basket (#1 & #5 wheat exporters), very little rain for four years in the US hard red winter area and two to three feet of snow for another 10 to 14 days on most of the North American spring wheat fields (#2 & #3 wheat exporters), the worst drought in 60 years in the Argentina (#7 wheat exporter), and (#6 wheat exporter) Australia’s new crop wheat production will be down 10 to 15 million mt less than the crop they just harvested due to the end of La Niña, wheat is way too cheap.