America is expected to harvest its lowest acreage of wheat since 1877, due to drought, scorched crops, high input costs and uncertainty in export markets.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Agricultural Statistics Service released estimates on June 30 that the total area of all wheat planted was 42.7 million acres in 2026, down six percent from the previous year. This was also 1 million acres below the agency’s March forecasts.
The harvested area of all wheat for 2026 is forecasted to be around 32 million acres, which would be the lowest level in about a century and a half, according to USDA data.
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The figures have renewed concern about the long-term decline of one of America’s most historically important crops and raised questions about what it could mean for farmers, food prices and U.S. agriculture more broadly.
Eric Olson, an associate professor in wheat breeding and genetics at Michigan State University, told Newsweek farm income has been “net negative for far too long,” and that farmers need to be compensated for the high quality of the crop they produce.
He said: “Harvest reductions in 2026 are due to many factors converging this year. We have faced consecutive years of heat, drought and disease pressure that have set back yields.”
Wheat is estimated to make up 20 percent of the world’s calorific intake and 20 percent of protein for the world’s poorest people.
But Olsen said he believed that wheat acres would remain at record-low levels or could even decrease slightly in the 2027 crop year.
Drought Conditions Damage Crops
Over the past year, the U.S. has experienced unusually warm conditions—May 2025 to April 2026 marked the warmest 12-month period on record for America, according to NOAA, and many of the country’s largest wheat farming states were hit with severe drought. Droughts are known to significantly reduce crop yields as the heat and lack of water can damage crops and stunt their growth.
Romulo Lollato, a wheat specialist at Kansas State University, told news outlet High Plains Journal that a lot of the wheat in Kansas—one of the state’s largest wheat producers, alongside Oklahoma and Texas—was “very short,” which he said was a “sign of drought stress.”
On top of the drought, Kansas farmers also experienced a March to April freeze and one in May, Lollato said, adding to the stress experienced by the crops, damaging overall crop yields.
According to USDA data, Kansas is one of the states predicted to suffer the largest drop in wheat harvest acreage this year compared to last. It is estimated to have 950,000 fewer acres of wheat planted. Texas is feeling the largest predicted drop—3.9 million acres less in 2026 compared to 2025—and Oklahoma is facing the second highest predicted drop, of 1.35 million acres.
High Costs Mean Farmers Are Planting Less
In addition, rising input prices have placed immense pressure on farmers, as fuel and fertilizer costs have soared following the closure of the Strait of Hormuz during the Iran conflict.
The National Association of Wheat Growers CEO Sam Kieffer in May issued a statement about the challenges facing farmers in light of the USDA’s low wheat harvest forecasts.
Kieffer said: “Across the country, farmers continue to face stubbornly high input costs, ongoing uncertainty in global markets, and the continual challenge of achieving profitability on the farm.”
He added that, as a result, many farmers are “making the difficult decision to plant fewer wheat acres.”
Per the USDA data, the predicted spring wheat planted area is at 9.39 million acres, down 6 percent from 2025, and durum wheat planted acreage is estimated at 1.83 million acres, down 16 percent from last year.
Olson said farmers “need strong markets to receive the greatest profit from their wheat crop.”
“While the U.S. produces the highest quality wheat in the world, the U.S. must compete with countries with advantages in their proximity to markets and transportation costs,” he said, so “wheat farmers need to be compensated for the value of the crop they produce.”
Other Crops Are Making More Money
Mark Sorrells, a professor of integrative plant science at Cornell University, told Newsweek that another factor at play is that “corn and soybeans have become more profitable than wheat.”
This is partly because the industry has “invested heavily in the improvement of those crops more so than wheat,” he said and that “most of the wheat varieties in the U.S. are developed by public plant breeders at Land Grant universities and they have not been funded anywhere close” to what the industry invests in corn and soybeans.
He also said that the Trump administration has placed “further restrictions on funding” for Land Grant universities, “making it less likely that they will be able to continue to develop competitive varieties.”
Sorrells added that wheat commodity prices “tend to be low relative to corn and soybeans so farmers plant what will keep them in business.”
Will Americans Pay More for Wheat-Based Food Items?
It is not yet clear how this year’s harvest will impact wheat prices.
The USDA’s first 2026/27 wheat outlook projected the season-average farm price for wheat would rise to $6.50 per bushel, up from the previous year.
However, USDA Economic Research Service’s Food Dollar data shows that farmers received about 11.8 cents of every dollar spent on food in 2024, while the remaining 88.2 cents reflected post-farm costs throughout the supply chain. This suggests that issues experienced on the farm may only affect a smaller proportion of the overall cost of food in a grocery store.
That said, changes to wheat prices can eventually feed through to flour costs and bakery products, particularly if adverse weather persists or supplies tighten further.
Olson said that “any issue along the wheat value chain from farmers to consumers can impact the price of wheat products,” as if the U.S. is not producing enough wheat, “flour mills will pay more for wheat and will pass the cost to the companies making food products who will in turn pass the cost along to consumers.”
He said that the country saw something like this in 2008 “where global wheat production was at a near record low and shook the global marketplace when wheat prices nearly doubled.”
Although, he added that America does have “sufficient wheat stocks” to “keep our flour mills running” for now.
However, if droughts intensify, production costs remain elevated and wheat continues to lose ground to more profitable crops, those stocks could begin to dwindle.
Update 7/3/26, 3:37 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with additional information and comment from Mark Sorrells.
