Bread is about to get more expensive. The last time U.S. farmers brought in a wheat harvest this small, Richard Nixon was still president. The USDA told farmers on Monday that the 2026/27 crop will come in around 1.561 billion bushels, a drop of more than 400 million bushels from last year and the worst showing since 1972.
Most of the damage is in hard red winter wheat. That is the variety in most of the country's bread flour, and Reuters reports its production will drop 25% from a year earlier — the lowest level since 1957. In Texas and Oklahoma, growers are walking away from their fields; roughly a third of planted acres are being abandoned. Only 28% of the winter wheat crop rates good-to-excellent in this week's USDA report, the worst reading in four growing seasons.
Drought is just one problem for farmers. Fuel and fertilizer prices have spiked since Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, and Trump's tariff fights have raised the cost of nearly every other input. Many growers responded by shifting to soybeans, which need less fertilizer. The catch is that China, the world's biggest soy buyer, has cut its U.S. orders to a trickle.
Wheat traders reacted immediately. Kansas City July futures jumped to $7.50 a bushel, a price not seen since 2023, and the USDA bumped its projected farm-gate price by $1.50. Sam Kieffer of the National Association of Wheat Growers said farmers are still facing "stubbornly high input costs, ongoing uncertainty."
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