EAST LANSING, Mich. — Winter wheat yield is expected to decrease this year due to extremely wet and cold conditions this spring. Ohio wheat growers expect to harvest 420,000 acres, down 30,000 acres from last year. Wheat production in the state is expected to total 29.0 million bushels, down nearly 5 million bushels from last year. The yield forecast is 69 bushels, down 6 bushels from last year.
National winter wheat production is forecast at 1.27 billion bushels, up 7 percent from 2018. As of May 1, the United States yield is forecast at 50.3 bushels per acre, up 2.4 bushels from last year’s average yield of 47.9 bushels per acre.
Hay stocks on Ohio farms on May 1, 2019 were 180,000 tons, down 31 percent from this time last year.
All hay stored on United States farms, as of May 1, 2019, totaled 14.9 million tons, down 3 percent from a year ago. Disappearance from December 1, 2018 – May 1, 2019 totaled 64.1 million tons, compared with 69.1 million tons for the same period a year earlier. This marks the lowest May 1 hay stocks since the drought of 2012 and the second lowest since records began in 1950.
— National Agricultural Statistics Service, Ohio Field Office
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