As you drive around the area, large piles of grain are plainly evident. The good aspect of this is a decent harvest. The not so good aspect is producers are sitting on a hundreds of millions of bushels and not thrilled about selling with current prices. Something the public may not understand is that while the grain is sitting at the elevator, the producer pays a monthly storage charge for every bushel. One dilemma producers face is that typically high prices mean that they have less to sell while low prices mean the opposite. Of course carryover stocks and world demand also play a role, especially demand. Worldwide supply and demand determine the value of the crop. Today, let’s examine this in terms of our Hard Red Winter Wheat (HRWW).
The United States and the world produce a variety of wheats: hard and soft, winter and spring, red and white. Each has a niche to fill for consumers and the livestock industry. Consumers around the world have preferences and the milling/baking industry works to meet them. In the U.S., the majority of consumers want their hard wheat products prepared minus the bran (we eliminate the “red”), they don’t prefer whole wheat products from red wheat and millers supply that demand. Simply put, we like sweeter tasting breads and hard wheat products, so we remove the red in HRWW, the tannins. Tannins are what makes red wine red and gives it that somewhat astringent (mouth puckering) quality. Many of our whole wheat products are made with HWWW (white wheat) missing the tannins. Now to the preferences of our world markets.
Most of our world markets also prefer sweeter flour products but unlike here, they mill and produce whole wheat products containing the tannins that produce a less sweet product. Therefore they prefer to buy HWWW instead of our HRWW. They buy ours when the HWWW is less available or HRWW is a much better price. Our primary competition for these world wheat markets are the Pacific Northwest and Australia where their production is almost exclusively HWWW. The obvious question is why don’t we in Kansas switch over to more HWWW? The answer is twofold – climate and plant breeders.
The tannins that produce that bitter taste in HRWW, also help keep the seed from sprouting in the head and much of the climate in Kansas at wheat harvest is favorable for head sprouting many years. NW Kansas, possesses the most consistent climate favorable for HWWW production. So why don’t we have K-State or private companies produce varieties of HWWW suited for Kansas? They are working hard, especially K-State which has released several HWWW varieties over the last two decades, however, they are still not consistently well-adapted to the climate in much of the state. There are area producers growing HWWW and Stafford County Flour Mills producers and excellent HWWW whole wheat flour. They are however getting better. In fact the K-State breeding program at Hays is almost exclusively devoted to HWWW. And remember, there is and always will be a good market for HRWW.