03/14/05 Analysts take notice of PNW drought

March 14, 2005 While the dry conditions in the Pacific Northwest are old news here, the potential negative impact for wheat production in the region is just beginning to be noticed by grain analysts elsewhere in the U.S. Joe Victor, a vice president of Allendale Commodities in Illinois, says his company just began telling its customers about the PNW late last week. Victor: "And looking at the Pacific Northwest specifically, the Oregon, Washington and Montana region, some of the lowest record amounts of drought already. We are seeing record amounts where they just didn't have good precip. That is something that is starting to already surface not only for that Pacific Northwest region but even in North Dakota, South Dakota that we are seeing some of the driest regions already. And has the trade caught on to it? Absolutely not. We just started being a little bit more vocal about." Victor's comments came in a teleconference on last Thursday's USDA's March supply and demand reports. In its wheat report, USDA trimmed U.S. wheat ending stocks five million bushels compared to last month on better than expected exports. Most of the reduction came in hard red wheats while soft white wheat carryover was actually increased. Global wheat ending stocks were also up slightly from the February forecast. Also of note, USDA trimmed its projection of Chinese wheat imports for the marketing year by a half million metric tons to seven-and-half million. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.