Weekly USDA Wheat Ratings Dip in Kansas, Texas; Oklahoma Improves

By Julie Ingwersen

March 10 (Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service in a weekly crop report on Monday rated 52% of the winter wheat in top producer Kansas in “good to excellent” condition, down from 54% the previous week.

For Texas, the No. 2 winter wheat state by planted area, the USDA rated 28% of the crop as “good to excellent”, down from 34% a week earlier. However, for Oklahoma, the USDA rated 46% of the crop as “good to excellent”, an improvement from 35% last week, following much-needed rains in the state.

Why It’s Important

A strong winter wheat crop from the United States, the No. 5 wheat exporter, would help replenish global wheat supplies that are forecast to drop to a nine-year low ahead of the 2025 Northern Hemisphere harvest. Worries about dry conditions in the southern Plains, the main U.S. wheat belt, helped to lift Chicago Board of Trade wheat futures Wv1 to a one-week high on Monday.

Context

With the harvest still at least three months away, the U.S. winter wheat crop is starting to break dormancy and resume growth, a time when the need for moisture typically increases. Forecasts called for mostly dry weather this week in the southern Plains.

Approximately 24% of the U.S. winter wheat crop was located in an area experiencing drought as of March 4, the USDA said last week, up from 22% the previous week and from 15% a year earlier.

U.S. farmers planted 34.1 million acres (13.8 million hectares) of winter wheat for harvest in 2025, up 2% from a year earlier.

Over the winter and early spring, the USDA releases crop progress reports for select states. The government is scheduled to resume regular weekly U.S. crop progress reports on April 7.

(Reporting by Julie Ingwersen in Chicago; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips)