The Pacific Northwest wheat crop yielded at least 20% above average across the board this year, according to Mike Carstensen, a wheat farmer at Almira, Washington, who is this year's vice chair of US Wheat Associates and a Washington Grain Commission board member. "Timely rains and growing conditions were perfect to have some pretty good crops," he said. He takes over as US Wheat chair for a one-year term in summer 2027.

Higher yields meant lower protein in places. Lower-river areas and parts of the valley delivered "severely low" protein wheat as harvest began, while elevators upriver and inland saw higher levels later. Some growers protested dockages of up to 50 cents a bushel on soft white wheat testing below 9% protein. "It's not that the low protein is a bad thing, because some of that lower river always sells low-protein, it's just that there was so much of it at first, until the trade figured out what they had and could get it marketed," Carstensen said. "The market adjusts and figures it out, given enough time."

On his own 6,000-acre dryland farm, where he sows about 3,000 acres of soft white and club wheat each year, the crop was 20% above average with one frost-damaged field and pockets of low protein. "In every field you could see results of frost damage. With just a normal growing year, we would have had a monster crop across the whole PNW," he said. He is about a third of the way through seeding, pausing for rain — "we never complain about moisture".

Prices are "not too bad, they're still just a little short from actually covering the costs," Carstensen said, citing fuel in particular. "You just can't do that forever. We can't really cut back, because we've still got to do the operations, whether it's harvest or sowing."

Across the other US wheat classes he described variable weather everywhere: soft red winter in the eastern states yielded more than 100 bushels with solid test weights in Illinois and Ohio; hard red winter was "hammered" by drought and heat to something like its lowest production in 40 or 50 years, though quality is decent and proteins of 12–13.5% give strong milling wheat — lower yields that may lift world prices; hard red spring saw frost and drought pockets but better yields than expected; durum had solid yields and quality, and desert durum was cut by early heat and no rain but is of good quality.

Source: Capital Press