Growers are expected to sow the largest amount of U.S. land to winter wheat in nine years, encouraged by strong market prices, in part a result of the war in Ukraine, and forecasts of better growing conditions in the drought-hit central and southern Plains. Winter wheat accounts for roughly seven of every 10 bushels of wheat harvested in the nation.
While it is harvest time for crops such as corn and soybeans, the planting season for winter wheat is now underway. At the start of this week, one-sixth of winter wheat territory had been planted, according to the USDA. Winter wheat is planted in the fall, lies dormant during the winter, sprouts again in the spring, and is harvested in late spring and summer.
In a seasonal outlook, the National Weather Service said on Thursday that “drought improvement/removal is likely” in the central and southern Plains, the heart of winter wheat production, through the end of the year. The USDA said that 47 percent of winter wheat land is in drought at present, and while that’s up 1 percentage point from last week, it’s 10 points lower than at this time in 2022.
According to the results of a survey by Farm Progress magazine, farmers are planning to increase plantings of winter wheat by 5 percent. That would mean 38.7 million acres of winter wheat, an increase of nearly 1.9 million acres from this year and the largest total since 39.7 million acres in 2015.
In results released last month, Farm Progress said farmers would plant 2 percent more soybeans and 1 percent less corn next year. Winter wheat would account for half of the overall increase of 3.8 million acres in plantings for the three leading U.S. crops.
“It is likely that wheat acreage expansion will be a segmented phenomenon and will depend heavily on weather conditions across the U.S. Plains,” said the magazine. “Even with a bigger winter wheat acreage expected, it will still be the ninth-smallest winter wheat area sown.”
Winter wheat plantings have seen a long decline, bottoming out at 30.45 million acres in 2020. The last time plantings exceeded 40 million acres was in 2014, and the last time they topped 50 million acres was in 1996. Corn and soybean plantings have expanded in recent decades at the expense of wheat.
Growers also said they would plant more spring wheat, leading to all-wheat acreage of 52.7 million acres, up 2.9 million acres, and a potential crop of 2.06 billion bushels. In comparison, this year’s wheat crop is estimated by the USDA at 1.734 billion bushels. The agency was scheduled to update its estimate on Sept. 29 in its Small Grains Annual report.
The 2022 wheat crop fetched a record average price of $8.83 a bushel. The USDA estimated a season-average price of $7.50 a bushel for this year’s crop, the third highest. The 2024 wheat crop will average $6.33 a bushel, projected a University of Missouri think tank earlier this month, still one of the highest prices in the past 20 years.