Price spike pumps up shipments, eases river shutdown problem

A fortunate spike in the price of wheat has helped farmers get a step up on the looming shutdown of the Snake and Columbia River waterways.

The Army Corps of Engineers is closing the river to barge traffic for 14 weeks beginning Dec. 10 as it performs in-depth maintenance on eight dams. The Dalles dam will be closed from Dec. 10 through March 18, preventing any shipments upstream on the Columbia and Snake Rivers.

While the shutdown would have otherwise put a crimp in the ability of farmers to sell this year’s crop, worldwide events paved a path for farmers to sell the crop right now.

Drought conditions prompted Russia to put on an export embargo, which pushed the Portland price for soft white wheat above $7 per bushel late last month. The price has hovered between $6 and $6.50 since.

"These are great prices," said Curt Claassen with Farm Commodities. "I keep telling people we never expected them to be this high."

Main Street grain brokers like Claassen reported this week that most of this year’s bumper crop is down the river already.

Gary Behymer, general manager of Almota Elevator, estimated 60 percent of the grain taken in by his firm’s farmers has already been sold and readied for shipment to the Portland markets.

That should be fortunate for farmers, as moving grain to the coast will be tougher with the locks shut down.

Getting certificates of transport to bring in more rail cars to move grain to the coast could add more than 15 cents per bushel, if the cars come in at all.

Stan Patterson, president of the Washington & Idaho Railway Co., said grain car supply typically tightens in December when corn from the midwest is shipped from inland storage to oceanside ports.

This year’s wheat crop rates are among the highest on record, according to figures released this month by the National Agricultural Statistics Service.

David Knopf, statistician for the agency, estimated farmers reaped just shy of 148 million bushels of spring and winter wheat off 1.71 million acres in 2010.

Winter wheat, of which 85 percent was soft white, yielded a statewide average of 69 bushels per acre, which Knopf said was ten bushels over the 2009 yield and the third largest on record. Spring wheat produced 52 bushels per acre, seven over last year.

Detailed county by county records will not be available until February, said Knopf.

With Russian wheat off the market, U.S. farmers should yield a big take from the bumper crop.

The Washington Grain Alliance is predicting this year’s crop could earn the state’s wheat growers around $70 million.

In addition to the usual customers in Asia and the Middle East, the Russian embargo created an increased demand in Egypt, which turned to soft white wheat from the U.S., said Tom Mick, CEO of the grain alliance.