Many factors go into commodity prices. Wheat is no different.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Grain Market News report for Aug. 18, hard red winter wheat prices in Kansas were averaging anywhere from $6.69 to $6.83 per bushel, much higher than they were a year ago. In the same report in 2025, those same locations were reporting prices from $4.17 to $4.24 a bushel.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture in the Aug. 12 World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report, lowered its 2026-2027 United States wheat production and ending stocks forecasts while raising projected corn exports, soybean production and rice production.
Concentrating on wheat, increased prices could be attributed to a decrease in production numbers. USDA forecast production at 1.531 billion bushels, down 5 million bushels from July. The reduction reflects lower harvested area and yield, with hard red winter and durum wheat accounting for most of the decline, according to reports.
Guy Allen, a senior economist at the IGP Institute at Kansas State University, said on Kansas State University’s Agriculture Today, there’s several variables at work.
“Wheat’s an interesting market, particularly from the global perspective, and particularly when you bring in this Russian-Ukraine conflict,” he said. “It’s got a lot of focus here recently, particularly with the increase destruction of critical infrastructure, as well as the sinking of some boats on that.”
Destruction of the critical infrastructure is going to hurt the region’s ability to export wheat from Ukraine, and it’s not going to be an easy process to rebuild.
“It’s not going to come back as fast as a lot of people think, which puts that whole export capacity of a third of the world wheat trade coming out of Ukraine and Russia significantly at question,” Allen said. “And that’s really what’s driving the volatility in the in the wheat market today.”
Even though Russian wheat production remains at 85 million metric tons, with just over half—46 million metric tons—are pegged for export.
“(The) Ukraine situation, production is at 24.5 million metric tons, up 1.4 million, but with their exports coming at 13.5 million metric tons, that gives a combined exports of just under 60 million metric tons,” Allen said. “But I’d say there’s a big question mark over that number.”
Allen said in the Southern Hemisphere, Australia is experiencing some dry weather and about half of the wheat crop has faced drier than normal conditions over the last 60 days.
“That crop gets harvested in late October, November, so definitely dropping some yields on that,” he said.
Australian wheat crop estimates for 2026 were rated at 28 million metric tons, compared to 36 million metric tons last year.
“So that’s down 8 million tons from the previous year,” he said.
Imports to China have been estimated at 6 million metric tons, up from the previous year about a half a million tons, according to Allen.
“That’s going to be definitely in the more milling type of wheat on that,” he said.
Dan O’Brien also commented on wheat during the segment Allen was in, and the K-State grain economist said the August WASDE report did show modest tightening up of ending stocks, but the rest of the supply-demand balance sheet didn’t change too much from the last report.
“Small drop in projected yields down from 47.9 to 47.8,” he said. “The stocks to use figures, probably the most notable thing nationally here was two years ago, 24-25, marketing year, we were at 43.4% stocks to use. All U.S. wheat last year, 45% and now we’ve declined for last couple months. Now we’re down to 38.3%.”
There’s still quite a bit of supply according to O’Brien, sitting at 717 million, but there’s issues going on.
“We’re getting contacted, people wondering about the hard red winter wheat crop and its impact on the market overall,” he said. “You look at the hard red winter wheat crop for the 25-26 marketing year that ended May 31. We had 437 million bushels of ending stocks, 56.4% stocks to use, and that was based on 804 million bushels of U.S. hard red winter wheat.”
This year, the crop size was at 463 million bushels and “almost cut in half in the ending stocks,” according to O’Brien.
“We had exported 321 million of hard red winter wheat out of the U.S. in that last marketing year,” he said. “Now we’re projected down to 210 ending stocks projected at 49%.”
In a year things can change, and O’Brien is curious with prices moving higher, how farmers will make decisions on whether or not to plant any hard red winter wheat this coming year.
Allen agreed.
“Particularly in Kansas now, price has done quite a bit of work,” he said. “But you know, with the drop we’ve seen in wheat production in the last few years, I’m still optimistic price is going to have to do a bit more work to price more planted acres into winter wheat planting.”
Kylene Scott can be reached at 620-227-1804 or [email protected].
