An increase in the estimate for planted acres has produced an 8 percent increase in the size of the 2007 Nebraska wheat crop.

As harvest continues across the state, a monthly update released Thursday by the National Agricultural Statistics Service pushed the bushel projection to 84 million.

That total, based on July 1 conditions, is up from 75.9 million bushels in June.

Yield expectations compiled by the statistics service’s Lincoln field office are unchanged from a month ago, but total harvested acres are now rated at 2 million, up from 1.85 million last month.

The outlook remains bright compared to a year ago, with robust prices above $5 a bushel and predictions of a 37 percent bigger crop.

But wheat scab, rust and other problems have contributed to disappointing results in many fields in Southeast Nebraska.

A companion report released Thursday at the national level put total U.S. production of winter wheat at 1.56 billion bushels, down 3 percent from a year ago.

Clay Bradley, a Lincoln commodities analyst, said the dip in national output is more than what the private sector expected. However, “a lot of the drop was already priced in or anticipated by the market.”

The statistics service doesn’t start using field surveys to estimate the size of the corn and soybean crop at the state and national level until August.

Using a late June report on planted acres and trend yields, the latest federal forecast offered in a World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimate rates 2007 corn production at a record 12.84 billion bushels nationally, up from 12.46 billion bushels in June.

Similar gauges for soybean suggest a smaller crop of about 2.63 billion bushels, down from 2.75 billion in June.

Those changes have provoked sizable adjustments in the price outlook in the supply-demand report.

The price range on corn has dropped from $3.10-3.70 a bushel to $2.84-3.40 a bushel.

Corn’s loss is soybean’s gain. The price estimate there has been upgraded from $6.65-7.65 to $7.25-8.25.