August 10, 2007

Although a group of wheat growers in Nebraska's Panhandle didn't produce quite as much hard white wheat as they thought they would, the crop still stood its ground.

With wheat harvest wrapped up across the state, hard white wheat growers were fairly happy with their results.

"In a nutshell, growers found there is no reason not to plant hard white wheat next year. This year's harvest showed white wheat produced as good, if not better, than red wheat," said Chris Cullan of Cullan Farms in Hemingford. "For the most part, everyone was happy with what they received. Progressive people know they need to be raising white wheat."Bill Foley, a wheat grower near Hemingford, said he is going to plant twice as much hard white wheat this fall as he did last year — about 200 acres total.

His dryland white wheat made a little over 40 bushels per acre."This was right in line or at least as good as the red wheat," he said.However, Mother Nature did cause some problems. Drought, hail and a late freeze reduced yields, resulting in fewer bushels of hard white wheat being delivered to the Farmers Co-op Elevator in Hemingford than growers anticipated.

"We were pretty disappointed," said Bart Moseman, grain manager of the Farmers Co-op Elevator in Hemingford. "We had expected to dump about 250,000 bushels and we had less than half that."

However, Moseman thinks they will get more hard white wheat delivered to the elevator next year.

"Farmers are getting more access to hard white wheat and more will probably grow it."

The total yield picture for white wheat may not be known yet, said Drew Lyon, dryland crops specialist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Panhandle Research and Extension Center at Scottsbluff. "Some of this year's white wheat production ... may be in on-farm storage and some of it may have gone to other elevators in the region," Lyon said. "So we may not yet have a good feel for how much hard white wheat was produced in the region. We may have to wait to hear what other elevators received and we may have to wait for something in the market to stimulate sales of the grain stored on-farm."

The elevators' perspective is simple, said Royce Schaneman, executive director of the Nebraska Wheat Board. "The elevators are willing to accept it and willing to work with hard white wheat," he said. "But it seems like they wish there were more out there. It's a volume business and the more volume you have, the better."

Cullan said yields of dryland wheat are down across the board thanks to dry conditions in the region this year. Given that context, yields for the Antelope white wheat, developed by the UNL Wheat Breeding Program, held their own compared to red varieties.

With hard white wheat being an ideal crop for Nebraska's semi-arid regions in the southwest and Panhandle, Cullan plans to raise more of the certified hard white wheat seed.

Domestic markets for hard white wheat are on the rise for cereals and breads, such as Wonder Bread, which produces a white whole-grain bread that's likely to be more popular with consumers — especially children — than the traditional brown, whole-grain variety, Cullan said.

"Make two peanut butter sandwiches, one from whole-grain white and the other from the conventional dark-colored, whole-grain bread, and see which loaf you make it out of next time," Cullan added. "I have a 6- and an 8-year-old in our home, and I know which one they want.

"This is our market — a parent buying a product that their child will eat because they like it better, and that has the whole-grain benefit to improve healthy eating habits," Cullan said.

White wheat is more desirable because it lacks the bitter flavor that comes from tannins, which give red wheat its color. Therefore, products from white wheat taste sweeter and yield more flour because the grain can be milled closer to the hull, said Drew Lyon, dryland crops specialist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Panhandle Research and Extension Center at Scottsbluff.

In addition, these products still contain the same nutrition as whole grain breads.

"This is what the consumer wants and this is what we should be growing," Lyon said. "If we want people to come to us for our product, we need to have what they want. As long as it is yielding with the reds and we aren't having other problems, we need to do it."

Schaneman agreed. "I think there are good times ahead for the hard white wheat. We continue to develop new varieties and the varieties are getting much better," he said. "It really appears to be the wave of the future and ... I would hope growers consider or make the switch to white."

With yields likely to be lower than expected, Schaneman said, white wheat seed supplies might be tight for next growing season. Growers planning to grow the crop might want to get seed ordered early.Currently the three big potential markets for hard white wheat are through Gulf ports to Latin America for bread and tortillas, through the Pacific Northwest to Asia for noodles and steamed breads and through both sets of ports for flatbread used in the Middle East and India. It's estimated that 124 million bushels were needed in 14 countries.

Australia dominates the hard white wheat market internationally, and Kansas ranks No. 1 in hard white wheat production nationally. Nebraska ranks eighth in white wheat production, behind Kansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Washington and Texas.

For more information about hard white wheat in Nebraska, visit UNL's white wheat Web page at http://www.hardwhitewheat.unl.edu/ or visit IANR News' previous news release at http://ianrnews.unl.edu/static/0706250.shtml.

Sandi Alswager Karstens
IANR News Service