State’s wheat harvest marks upswing

Washington’s 2009 winter wheat yield of 59 bushels per acre accounted for 96.8 million bushels of wheat, according to figures released last week by the United States Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service in Olympia.

Eighty-five percent of that total was white wheat, the primary cash crop in Whitman County.

Yields were up three bushels per acre from the 2008 crop, while the total crop was up less than one percent from last year’s crop.

Winter wheat was planted on 1.64 million acres of land last fall, which was 1.72 million acres of land seeded in fall 2007 for the 2008 crop.

The 2009 spring wheat crop yielded 26.3 million bushels, up 17 percent from the 22.5 million bushels reaped in 2008.

Spring wheat yielded an average of 45 bushels per acre, up three bushels from the 2008 crop which was damaged by a scorching spring.

Spring wheat plantings in 2009 of 585,000 acres were up 50,000 acres from 2008.

Across the nation, more than 1.52 billion bushels of winter wheat were harvested, down 18 percent from 2008. Spring wheat harvest, though, was up seven percent from 2008, as growers reaped 587 million bushels across the country.

Washington’s overall barley crop dropped despite higher yields, because farmers planted 98,000 fewer acres of barley in 2009. The total haul was 6.2 million bushels, down from 11.1 million in 2008.