US winter wheat recovers – a little

US winter wheat, having got off to its worst start in history, in terms of official crop condition, recovered marginally in the week to Sunday.

The improvement was led by Texas, where drought eased after, in the US Department of Agriculture’s words, “most of the state received from trace amounts up to 2 inches of precipitation this week with areas of East Texas, the Upper Coast, and the Coastal Bend receiving as much as 3 inches”.

Texan crop condition improved by 10 points, in terms of the proportion of winter wheat rated “good” or “excellent”.

Neighbouring Oklahoma, where farms received an average of 0.8 inches of rain, saw smaller improvement, of 3 points. North in Michigan, where “grain events were beneficial for wheat emergence”, crop condition gained 6 points.

However, the crop is not out of the woods yet, with the Texas rating, even after its marked recovery, still only registering at 14% good or excellent. The figure in Colorado fell by 6 points after “another mostly dry week”. The rating in Montana dipped by 8 points.