Spring Wheat Planting More than Half Finished

May 15, 2024

US spring wheat planting blew well past the halfway point this past week and is now nearing two-thirds complete.

Monday’s USDA crop progress report showed the national spring wheat crop at 61% planted as of Sunday, up from 47% a week earlier and just shy of the average pre-report trade guess of 62%. Planting is progressing well ahead of last year and the five-year average pace at 35% and 48%, respectively.

Planting in Minnesota jumped 20 points on the week to 71% complete, compared to just 22% last year and 41% on average, while Montana was 63% done, up 11 points from a week earlier and 7 points ahead of average. In the top production state of North Dakota, planting advanced 17 points to reach 49% complete, versus 17% last year and 34% on average. The South Dakota crop was 88% planted, up from 79% a week earlier and ahead of 76% last year and 73% on average.

The US spring wheat crop was 25% emerged as of Sunday, up from 12% the previous week and 7 points ahead of average.

The Minnesota crop was already 40% emerged, compared to only 17% on average, while emergence in Montana was 5 points behind average at 18%. The North Dakota crop was 18% emerged, 5 points ahead of average, and South Dakota was 20 points ahead at 57% emerged.

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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