Winter wheat planting is well underway in South Dakota and acres will be down from last year. Reid Christopherson, Executive Director of the South Dakota Wheat Commission says planting conditions are good across most of the state due to improved moisture. And planting pace is running close to the 5-year average.
He says winter wheat acreage is projected to be down in the state again this season. Wheat prices are at 10-year lows and below breakeven levels and so that’s discouraging farmers from planting wheat.
However, Christopherson says the prices aren’t low enough to trigger significant LDPs on wheat and so not many farmers have taken payments.
He says in 2015 South Dakota farmers planted 1.15 million acres of winter wheat which was down nearly 20-percent from the previous season. Spring wheat acreage was also down around 25-percent this year from the 2015, with production down 23-percent.
