Futures and Commodity Market News

Mon May 12, 2008

Breaking financial news 24/7 courtesy of TradingCharts.com Inc. / TFC Commodity Charts

May 09, 2008 (Amarillo Globe-News - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- A little mud down on the farm is good news as some crops mature while others go into the ground.

Farmers are planting corn and cotton, and will start putting in grain sorghum soon.

Tuesday's rain set up promising conditions for getting the crops started. In wheat fields, the moisture helped crops that survived the dry winter, but 70 percent of the dryland wheat didn't last long enough to soak up the rain, said Brent Bean, Texas AgriLife Extension Service agronomist.

Farmers planted about 2.2 million acres of wheat in the Panhandle this year, and 750,000 of that was on irrigated land.

A good rain can be worth a million bucks to farmers, but in this case make that 75 million bucks. That's what the past rain event contributed to irrigated wheat, corn, sorghum and cotton farmers' pocketbooks, said Steve Amosson, Texas AgriLife Extension Service economist.

His estimate is based on $12 per acre to put 1 inch of water down.

"Put it all together, including things like benefit to pastures, and it's $100 (million) to $150 million," Amosson said.

While the moisture ranged from light to a couple of inches, it will last only a short time.

"It's going to stay around a couple of days," Bean said. "If you have 85 degrees with high winds, wheat is using a third of an inch a day. This will help for three or four days, but it's important."

Keeping that wheat growing -- it's now heading out, flowering and setting grain -- is even more important than usual this year.

Prices are hovering in lofty territory at about $8 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade, and an irrigated acre produces about 50 to 55 bushels in the Panhandle. Dryland fields produce about 21 bushels.

Farmers are trying to finish planting corn and working on getting cotton into fields by Thursday.

Before the rain, irrigation was needed to get the seedlings up and out of the ground.

"The rain is maybe more important now for farmers with wheat and corn. He can shift his water to where he really needs it," Bean said. "Some people were having to move their water over to their corn to get it to emerge and let their wheat suffer."

But even with the first significant rain of the season, farmers will be watching the sky for more.

"This may be enough moisture to plant on, but we don't have a lot of deep moisture unless the field was fallow last year. If it had a crop, it's dry," Bean said.

FINALLY WET

Regional rain totals:

Amarillo: 0.86 of an inch Tuesday, 1.43 inches below normal for year

Dalhart: 0.68 of an inch, 2.48 inches below normal

Borger: 0.91 of an inch, 2.88 inches below normal

Guymon, Okla.: 0.66 of an inch, 1.99 inches below normal

To see more of the Amarillo Globe-News, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to
http://www.amarillonet.com. Copyright (c) 2008, Amarillo Globe-News, Texas
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email
tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to
847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303,
Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

Kevin Welch

Copyright (C) 2008 Amarillo Globe-News, Texas

Please read the End User Agreement.
By accessing this page, you agree to the terms and conditions of the End User Agreement.

News provided by COMTEX