Higher Yielding 2024 Hard Red Spring Crop Offers Highly Functional Characteristics

Oct 21, 2024

Grown primarily in the North Central region and shipped via the Pacific, Gulf and Great Lakes ports, hard red spring (HRS) wheat is second in production among U.S. wheat classes. USDA has pegged 2024 production at 13.7 million metric tons or 8% more than in 2023.

Planting started slightly ahead of average due to milder spring weather and adequate moisture except in some western areas. Most of the eastern area had a humid, wet growing season with higher disease pressure and higher yields, while western areas were hot and dry, with minimal disease pressure and reduced yields.

Harvest In the Gulf and Lakes exportable production area started in early August with a mix of dry conditions in the east compared rain and cooler temperatures in western North Dakota and eastern Montana before drying out. It stayed dry in western areas and hard red spring harvest was complete by mid-September.

PNW Exportable Crop Overview

The 2024 western region hard red spring wheat crop offers high grades, sound kernels, and high average protein content. Functional performance shows strong dough properties with slightly lower absorption. Baking properties are good with average bake absorption, but slightly lower loaf volumes. Due to the late season hot, dry conditions, this crop includes a wider range of yields, protein levels and kernel size. Overall, this is a highly functional crop.

Gulf/Lakes Exportable Crop Overview

The 2024 eastern HRS crop offers a high grade profile and many positive attributes. With some record yields, protein is lower than average. Overall average DON levels and lower falling numbers are not significant. Dough properties and absorption are lower with better performance in higher protein segments. Overall, this crop offers good performance attributes.

Following are initial details about the hard red spring crop that U.S. Wheat Associates (USW) will share in the 2024 U.S. Wheat Crop Quality Report and Seminars. As always, USW recommends careful consideration of the new crop quality attributes to receive the highest value possible.

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Video: Western Canadian Agriculture: Hard Times Made the World's Best Farmers

Western Canadian agriculture produced the most advanced farmers in the world not through abundance but through adversity. The crow rate fell. The wheat price went nowhere. The brown envelopes stopped.

When the subsidies disappeared, the bad farmers left and the good ones stayed. And the ones who stayed could not just grow wheat anymore. They started growing lentils and canola and peas and flax and faba beans. They built crop rotation. They got serious about agronomy because there was no government backstop. That process produced the Western Canadian agriculture Dennis Bulani describes in this clip: the most advanced, most educated farming culture in the world.

His contrast with Iowa corn and soybean farmers is sharp. At a DeKalb farmer meeting in Okoboji, Iowa, he asked what crop rotation they ran. Beans on corn stubble, corn on bean stubble. How do you fertilize? The co-op agronomist handles it. Have you considered other crops? No need. We make so much money on corn and soybeans. Western Canadian agriculture was never allowed that comfort. And now those Iowa farmers are watching soybean markets lock up with China and corn prices slide, and they do not have the agronomy knowledge or the research base to pivot. Western Canadian farmers adapted on a dime because they had done it before.

Dennis also makes the case that Western Canadian agriculture keeps adapting in real time. Low commodity prices over the past year have pushed growers to look seriously at precision spot-spray technology. He knows a neighbor who bought a sprayer with the seeing-eye system and sprayed only 80 out of 320 acres. As a chemical retailer Dennis acknowledges that will affect his sales. He supports it anyway, because if it advances Canadian agriculture and makes farmers money, that is a good outcome.

The lesson Dennis draws from the tale of two farms: continuous improvement is the only durable strategy. When canola was $22 a bushel some growers went to Arizona instead of the Crop Production Show. When the price came down those same growers came back to the research and the discipline. Products do not go on Rack Petroleum's shelves unless they pass a replicated trial first. That is what Western Canadian agriculture built through hard times: farmers who do the work whether the times demand it or not.

Dennis Bulani is CEO of Rack Petroleum and Ultimate Yield in Biggar, Saskatchewan. Dan Aberhart hosts GTF Productions, Western Canadian Agriculture's foremost live briefing platform and its foremost AI training platform for ag operators