Sub-freezing temperatures stretched from the Northern to the Southern U.S. last week, and with a lack of snow cover in many of those areas, there are fresh concerns it caused some winter kill damage to both classes of winter wheat.
The damage is just being assessed as temperatures warm up and allow the crop to thaw out, but the full extent might not be known until later in the season.
Drought Grips the Wheat Belt
Agronomists and producers often joke that winter wheat has nine lives. And the crop might have used one of those last week when production areas plunged into the deep freeze.
“At the height of the recent cold wave, the 19th through the 21st of January, subzero temperatures were noted across the Great Plains as far south as the northern Panhandle of Texas, and we saw widespread -20-degree readings and below across the Northern Plains,” says Brad Rippey, USDA Meteorologist.
Farmers are currently monitoring for signs of winter kill in both the hard red winter wheat crop in the Great Plains and soft red fields in the lower Midwest.
While 27% of U.S. winter wheat crop is under drought conditions, the Northern Plains wheat areas were especially dry.
“That lead to poor development of the crop last autumn,” Rippey says. “Poor establishment and some uneven emergence. “So, that crop already weakened by drought may have been finished off in some cases by the bitter cold of January.”
Many of those wheat fields also had a lack of insulating snow cover. However, the potential impact of freeze damage on yield potential might not be fully realized until well after the crop breaks dormancy.
“It will be several weeks before we know the full extent of any winter kill, and we will be monitoring further reports from USDA NASS, including the Feb. 5 state stories report, that will provide updated conditions,” Rippey says.
At the end of December anywhere from a quarter to one-third of the winter wheat was rated poor to very poor, with Nebraska and South Dakota in the epic center of the Northern Plains drought.
Impact on Prices
As damage concerns enter into the markets, Arlan Suderman of StoneX Group says the temperatures were ripe for damage to winter wheat exposed to such cold temperatures last week.
“I’ve walked to thousands of wheat fields, and they don’t always follow the textbook,” says Suderman. “What the textbook tells us is you can start getting damage when the temperatures drop five degrees below zero and colder. And we saw those types of temperatures without sufficient snow cover all the way from the Texas Panhandle to the eastern Midwest. If you look at the Plains’ hard red wheat crop, where the cold was most intense, two-thirds of the crop had conditions ripe for winter killed damage.”
Suderman points out it’s difficult to sustain a rally in the wheat market until you have proof significant damage occurred.
“We won’t have that until the crop breaks dormancy in another four to six weeks, so that’s why the market kind of hesitated and paused again after a quick rally on it,” Suderman says. “But with the world supplies tightening up, I do think it does provide some support underneath this market, particularly with problems with the Black Sea crop, as well.”
