 The past few weeks we’ve seen a pretty wild wheat market, due in no small part to the Russian drought and subsequent export ban. Dan Weathington, Executive Director of the North Carolina Small Grain Growers Association out of Lumberton says that producers are taking advantage of the high prices:
“Six weeks ago you couldn’t hardly sell a bag of wheat, now you can’t find a bag of wheat, hardly. And the prices have increased, because it’s hard to find, because freight and so forth. So, I’d say definitely say the farmers are taking advantage of this. There’s one other thing that’s a player in the market in addition to Russia, is when markets spike like this all of a sudden, we have a lot of what we call paper traders, they don’t own wheat, don’t plant wheat, but they get in there and buy and sell wheat futures. That’s another factor in why these wheat prices have gone up so high, too.”
NC Ag Commissioner Steve Troxler says that at the first of the summer there was enough wheat seed in the state to plant half a million acres in the fall, with the expectation that a third would go to waste. Now there’s demand for three-quarters of a million acres. Weathington says that statement matches the planted acres they’re expecting:
“That’s pretty close to the figures that we’re projecting, about a 750,000 acre planting, we’ll harvest probably 700 to 725 of that. That’s up almost double from this past year, we had according to NASS, we had about 400, but our figures shows that we had about 350,000 acres planted in this state and averaged about 37 bushels to the acre; I believe that’s correct.”
There is some speculation that the situation in Russia is worse than what’s being told and prices should be fairly stable:
“It’ll probably stay pretty well where it’s at right now, there is talk that the Russia wheat situation imay be worse than what they’re telling us, and if it is, it can only go up from there.”
Weathington is encouraging producers to make smart decisions for their operations:
“What we encourage our farmers to do is be smart managers, do what’s made them money in the past, by planting varieties they know will do well if they can get them on their farm, and making sure they do good best management practices, soil testing check their drills, make sure they’re putting the right amount of seed out, population-wise. Once they get it in the ground, and now some of them are already contracting for next year, don’t go overboard contracting, but certainly contract a good portion that you lock in expenses as well as being able to take advantage of some of these high prices we now have.”
And Weathington had this pearl of wisdom for any producer that may be on the fence as to whether to plant winter wheat this fall:
“This wheat crop this year is what my father used to call…’son, that’s just called farming, you never know what’s going to happen tomorrow, but when it does, you have to ride the high tide with it.’ ”
Dan Weathington, Executive Director of the North Carolina Small Grain Growers Association.
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