U.S. wheat planted area peaked in 2008-09 at 63.2 million acres and U.S. wheat planted area has fallen 27 percent to a projected 46.1 million acres in 2017-18. It will be 16% below the 5-year average of 55.0 million acres. The increased winter wheat planted area by 360,000 acres from January 2017 estimate to 32.7 million acres. The new estimate is still 9% down from 2016-17 planted area. The increase came from hard red winter area, estimated at 23.8 million acres up 2% from the previous projection. Still, HRW planted area will be down 10 percent from 26.5 million acres (10.7 million hectares) planted for 2016-17. hard Red Winter planted area will be down 10% from 26.5 million acres planted for 2016-17. Soft red winter planted area decreased from the previous estimate to 5.53 million acres. USDA expects white wheat acres planted in both winter and spring to reach 4.12 million acres for 2017-18, down slightly from 2016-17.