Governor Kathleen Sebelius last week said she will seek a federal agricultural disaster designation for every county that meets the 30% crop production loss threshold because of an early April freeze that damaged wheat statewide. With a USDA secretarial disaster declaration, farmers and ranchers will be eligible for emergency low-interest loans to cover up to 100% of actual production and physical losses. And, Kansas ranks first in the nation in flour milling, wheat gluten production and...

Black stem rust has already laid waste to wheat harvests in Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia though it hasn t yet contributed to major food or social problems in these countries because wheat isn t a staple crop for most of East Africa. Rick Ward, coordinator of the Global Rust Initiative, fears that if new rust-resistant wheat varieties aren t developed soon, then devastating losses of wheat production in places like Egypt will trigger all sorts of destabilizing effects, ones that could have...

Crop conditions improved in most of the winter wheat belt, and that should undermine wheat futures prices, the analyst said. A floor trader noted that while Illinois' conditions declined, neighboring Indiana, another soft red wheat producing state, improved by six percentage points reducing concerns. Department of Agriculture reported Monday that 56% of the winter wheat crop was in good-to-excellent condition, up 2 percentage points from the previous week and above traders' expectations of...

High wheat and energy prices knocked British agriculture, food, and engineering group Carr's Milling's first half profits by 12. The company said the fall in its adjusted pre-tax profit figure was almost solely down to the impact of wheat prices in its food division. Carr's said UK agriculture as a whole was a challenging market place this year compared to last. The company said this reflected the continuance of a low farm gate milk price (with farmers receiving as little as 17p ( 0. It's...

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Stung by slow domestic wheat purchases, India on Monday moved to import the grain for a second year in a row, issuing a tender to buy one million tonnes from overseas markets. India, the world's second-largest wheat producer, was forced to order imports totalling 5.5 million tonnes in 2006 after a poor crop, with each subsequent contract pushing up prices. Analysts said wheat is being quoted at $220-240 per tonne on the global markets amid shrinking supplies. But...