The Smallest Wheat Crop Since 1970 Was Just Confirmed — Here's What to Do Before Fall

The USDA released its July crop production report on July 10th. The wheat number is the one I've been watching all season — and on Thursday, it was officially confirmed.

Total US wheat production for 2026: 1.536 billion bushels. The lowest since 1970. That is 56 years.

Winter wheat — the class that makes your bread flour and all-purpose flour — came in at 990 million bushels. Down 29% from last year. Hard Red Winter wheat, which is specifically the bread wheat grown across Kansas and the Southern Plains, is the smallest crop since 1958.

Today I'm breaking down what this means for your pantry — flour, bread, pasta, crackers, cereal, and the downstream effects on feed grain costs — and what the summer window you're in right now means for what to do before the farm-to-retail lag brings these numbers to your grocery shelf.

Transcript

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Last Thursday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture uh released its July crop production numbers. And the wheat numbers stopped me cold. The smallest wheat crop that the United States has produced since 1970. Let that sink in for a second. 1970. 56 years. That is how far back that you have to go to find a smaller harvest than the one that is being counted right now as combine harvesters work their way through what is left of the Great Plains wheat fields. It's mind-boggling. I want to walk you through what happened, why it happened, and most importantly, what it means for the flour, the bread, the pasta, crackers, cereals that are sitting in your grocery store right now, today, and what they're going to cost you this fall. Because here's the thing about a wheat harvest that I don't think most people know. Once it's counted, the number does not change. That's it. That's the number we have. So the number that we are dealing with this year hasn't had seen a smaller number since before 1970. The crop is in the field right now. The damage from the drought is locked in, okay? And the yield shortfall is not forecast anymore. It's just fact. That bag of flour on your shelf right now, it was made from last year's wheat. Did you know that? It was priced at last year's wheat prices. And that's really important to know. What you buy in September and October will be made from this year's wheat. And that is what today is about. So let's get into it. Hello everyone, and welcome to Sutton's Days. If you're new here, my name is Lisa. We are all about pantry preparedness. And today I'm trying to stay cool in the pantry because it's horribly hot here. Now, I'm going to start with exactly what the USDA said because I want you to have the real numbers, not you know, a summary of a summary of a summary. And so excuse me for a second, but the USDA's July crop production report, released July 10th, okay, today's the 13th, uh, puts total U.S. wheat production for 2026 and 27 at 1.536 billion bushels. Sounds like a lot, right? It's not. Um, that is the lowest U.S. wheat production since 1970 and 71. Not the lowest in a few years, not the lowest since the pandemic, you know, the lowest in 56 years. That's how serious you should be taking this. For context, last year's wheat crop came in at 1.985 billion bushels, and this year's crop is 449 million bushels smaller. That is a 23% decline from last year in total wheat production. One year. The most serious damage is the winter wheat. That's where the most serious damage has occurred. The class of wheat that literally makes the bread flour, uh the all-purpose flour, you know, the hard red wheat your family uses every single week. Winter wheat production is now forecast at 990 million bushels. That is down 4% from the USDA's own June estimate. So what they estimated in June, it has decreased. Meaning the numbers got worse, not better, as harvest progressed. And it's down 29% from last year's winter wheat crop of 1.402 billion bushels. Yeah. 29% in one year. The hard red winter class, okay, which is specifically the wheat used to make bread flour, all-purpose flour, um, and the higher protein flours that professional bakers and serious home bakers depend on, is the hardest hit category of all of them. Now, the hard red winter production is now forecast at just 471 million bushels, and that's 41% below last year. The USDA's very own economic research service said it plainly in their July wheat outlook. The 2026 hard red winter wheat crop is the smallest since 1957 and 58. That's 68 years. So when you take it down to just that one particular kind of crop, it's even worse. Now let's talk about Kansas because Dorothy, I don't think we're home anymore. Okay. Kansas produces more winter wheat than any other state in the country. Kansas wheat is the backbone of the American bread flour. That is a 43% decline in the state most responsible for the bread flour, for your bread flour. That is a 43% decline in the single state most responsible for your bread flour in one growing season. Just one. The yield in Kansas came in at 33 bushels per acre. Last year it was 51 bushels per acre. The drought did not just reduce the crop, it nearly halved it. Now I want to be fair here because there's a little bit of good news tucked in there, okay? Um, and I think you deserve honestly the complete picture because there's going to be bad, but there's going to be good. Corn and soybeans actually came in stronger than expected. So that is really good news. The USDA raised its corn production estimate to 16 billion bushels and soybeans to 4.475 billion bushels. Those are strong crops. They're doing good. And that matters for feed grain prices and for animal protein costs, because if their feed costs go up, so does the meat cost. And a few states, Illinois, Michigan, Washington, actually had record or near record wheat yields. So this is a plains drought story, not a nationwide agricultural failure. And that's something to keep in mind. Now, also, while we're thinking about that, global wheat supply is not in crisis. Russia and Ukraine had favorable growing conditions, for all things considered, uh, for their winter wheat. So global ending stocks, while down from last year, remain adequate. We'll just say adequate. The USDA held the projected farm price for wheat at $6 per bushel, elevated from last year's $5.06, but not that dramatically higher. Now, here is why all of that context matters because it all does. Not one single part of that is forecasting what's coming. Okay. It does not fully offset the domestic story, and that's important. The U.S. is not a major wheat importer. Uh, we grow most of what we eat here, and the class of wheat that we are the most short on, the hard red winter wheat, uh, the bread wheat is not easily substituted with Russian or Ukrainian wheat for U.S. millers and bakers. All wheat is not created equal for anybody that's not familiar with wheat. What you buy at your grocery store, the products that you buy, they're made from American wheat. And American wheat, specifically the kind that goes into bread flour, is at its lowest production in 68 years. I'm gonna spend a few minutes, not a whole bunch, on how we got here because I think, you know, understanding that helps you understand why this is not a one-season anomaly. And I think that's super important because kind of like the beef, you know, it's gonna take a while to recover. Now, the southern plains drought, that's that's a fact. The southern plains are in the middle of a drought, it's horrible. A lot of places are in the middle of the drought, but the Great Plains, specifically Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, and the Texas panhandle, have been under significant drought stress for most of 2025 to 2026, uh, that entire growing season. Winter wheat is planted in the fall, kind of like you do your garlic if you do hardneck garlic, okay? And it goes through uh dormancy during the winter and then begins growing again in the spring. It is harvested in June and July. So exactly like garlic. Now, throughout the entire cycle, fall planting, winter dormancy, spring emergence, summer harvest, right? The southern plains experienced below normal rainfall and above normal temperatures. So it was much drier and it was much warmer. The USDA crop conditions report tracked the deterioration in real time. By early spring, winter wheat across the Great Plains was rated at just 26% good to excellent. The five-year average for that same time period is typically closer to 50%. Now, drought does two things to wheat. It reduces the yield, okay, fewer bushels per acre, and it increases abandonment. Farmers simply walk away from the fields because it doesn't make sense to keep throwing good money after something bad. You know, they're too stressed to harvest economically. It just doesn't make sense. This year saw significantly higher abandonment than average across the plain states. There just comes a time when it's just not worth tossing time and money at Kansas's harvested area this year was 5.95 million acres. Last year it was 6.8 million. That 850,000 acre reduction, fields that were planted but not harvested represents wheat that was written off because the drought made it uneconomical to bring in. Now the fertilizer is a compounding factor, honestly. I covered this on Monday of last week. The fertilizer disruption from the Strait of Hormuz conflict that began in February has raised nitrogen fertilizer prices 18 to 30 percent. Wheat is a nitrogen hungry crop. I mean really hungry. So wheat fertilizer becomes expensive. Farmers make a choice, they have to apply less or plant fewer acres. This year, many plains wheat farmers did both. They planted less and they applied less. Now, total winter wheat planted in 2026 was 31.52 million acres. That is 4.9 percent below last year, and the lowest planted area since records began in 1919. Let me say that again, okay? The lowest planted area since records began in 1919. Not the lowest in a decade, not the lowest since records began, you know, since 1919. So the crop was hit, it was hit twice. Fewer acres planted because fertilizer got expensive, and then drought devastated the acres that were planted. The result is the number that the USDA confirmed on Thursday. 990 million bushels of winter wheat, the lowest in more than a generation. Now I want you to understand what I said, okay? Fewer planted acres than any year since 1919. Over a hundred years of records, and then a drought on top of that, and then a fertilizer shortage on top of that. The combination does not produce a moderate shortfall, you know, but it does produce the numbers that we got. Now, uh the rice surprise worth knowing. Yes, rice. While we're talking about uh the July USDA, you know, report, there is a rice number in here that I want to flag because I have not seen it covered in the pantry preparedness space. I don't know how many in the pantry prepared in a space dive deep the way that I do, but you know, here I am. U.S. rice ending stocks for 26 and 27 are projected down 28% in a single month from June to July, yes, because producers in the Delta region planted fewer rice acres this year in response to unfavorable rice prices. They planted less because it wasn't profitable enough. And you know, they don't owe us anything, guys. I want you to remember that they owe us nothing, okay? So if they cannot make a profit, if they can't at least break even, then I absolutely get it. This is a significant one-month reduction in rice supply. The U.S. imports more rice partially to offset this, okay? But rice is now in a tighter position than it was 30 days ago. For anyone who stores rice as a pantry staple, and honestly, I think everyone should to some extent. This is worth knowing. Rice prices may face upward pressure in the back half of this year from the domestic supply constraints that are separate and in addition to the wheat story. Okay, so I'm gonna try to translate all of those agricultural numbers uh into plain language about what you are going to see at your grocery store, because at the end of the day, that's what we care the most about. Okay, and I want to be as precise as I can here because there is a specific lag. We've been talking about this since you know February, but there is a specific lag between what happens at the farm level and what you see on the shelf, and you need to know that to understand where we're at today. Understanding that lag helps you understand exactly when to act, and that's as important as knowing that you need to act. Okay, farm prices versus retail prices, and there's a lag that you need to know. There's a time frame between when one impacts the other. Okay. The USDA they track two separate price systems uh farm level prices and what farmers get paid for their grain, and retail prices, what you pay at the grocery store. Two completely different animals, okay? Farm level wheat prices have already moved dramatically. The USDA's own economic research service reports that farm level wheat prices increased 14.7% from April to May of this year in a single month. And they were 31.2% higher in May 2026 than they were in May of 2025. So it just keeps compiling, you know. That's the farm side of it, though. That's that's what they are having to deal with. The retail side, it lags slightly, roughly uh six to 12 months behind that. So flour mills, they buy wheat, they process it, right? They sell flour to bakers and food manufacturers on contract, and those manufacturers price their products for retail channels. So that's how that line works. None of that happens overnight. What this means practically for you, for me, for literally everybody, the flour that you are buying today was priced before the worst wheat crop damage was confirmed. They didn't know it was coming down the pike. Okay. The flour that you buy in September and October will be priced after mills have adjusted their input costs for this harvest. That is when the retail price moves. This fall just keeps getting better and better, doesn't it? Now, there are specific products to watch, and we're going to go through those because uh these are the categories where you will feel it the most uh in order of impact. So that's what I want you to know, okay? In order of impact, bread flour, and all-purpose flour. This is the most direct path from hard red winter wheat to your kitchen. Bread flour is hard red winter wheat. The hard red winter wheat crop is the smallest since 1958. Flour prices at retail lag the farm products by months, but they're heading up. So, bread number one, commercial bread manufacturers use the same the same wheat, okay. Their input costs are rising. They are already using up every single shrinkflation reformulation tool available, uh, smaller loaves, thinner slices, we've seen it, adjusted recipes. The price pressure, the price pressure from this wheat crop will add to what was already moving, what we're already experiencing. And bread prices have been crazy for a while, which is why I always tell people learn to make your own bread seriously. Now, pasta is made from a different wheat. It's made from durham wheat, uh, separate class, but it's still affected. The USDA report shows durum production also lower this year, with harvested areas down 16% from 2025. Pasta prices have been relatively stable. As most of you have mentioned, prices have just started going up about 25-30 cents or so. Um, that stability, it's now under pressure. So, again, crackers, cereals, and packaged baked goods are all wheat-driven, all exposed to the same input cost increases filtering through from the farm to the processor to the shelf to you. And here's the one that catches people off guard the most because most people don't think about it, because I wager a guess that probably 75% of the country believes in the meat fairy. Okay. Wheat is also used in feed rations for poultry and livestock. When wheat gets expensive, feed costs rise. Higher feed costs eventually show up in chicken, pork, and eggs. It's a downstream effect, slower than the flour impact, but it's real nonetheless. Now, there's an honest counterweight to this, if you will. Before I get you know to what to do, because that's going to be important, and I hope you stick around for it. I want to give you the honest counterweight because I think uh knowing that full picture is important, not just one side of it, you know. Global wheat supplies are not in crisis. And I, you know, I can emphasize this a million times. So they are not in crisis. Russia and Ukraine, the world's largest wheat exporters, had good crops this year. Global ending stocks are down from last year, but not catastrophically. Not like we're doing here, you know. Some analysts argue that the U.S. domestic wheat shortfall will be partially offset by cheaper imports, keeping retail bread prices from moving as dramatically as the farm price suggests. But the USDA uh actually forecasts cereal and bakery products to grow 1.1% in 26, slower than the 20-year historical average. Bonus. They are not currently projecting a dramatic bread price spike. Check that out. So here is here's what I'm getting out of that divergence. You know, the ERS forecast was built before the July 10th crop production numbers came in. Those numbers were worse than in the June estimate. So they gave that forecast without knowing what the numbers were. Winter wheat came in 4% below what the USDA expected just one month ago. The July numbers may not yet be fully reflected in the retail price forecasts. So we'll see what kind of update we get out of them, if any. What I'm confident in is the direction is up for wheat-derived products in the back half of 26. I'm confident of that. No doubts whatsoever. How far up is going to depend on global supply dynamics. That's going to be, you know, the factor there. Import decisions, how millers use and manufacturers manage their margins. That's going to be the stuff that I can't predict. What I'm recommending is not based on a worst-case scenario, because you know, it's based on the direction of the data. And that's why I make the recommendations that I do. Because I'm not listening to one source, because one source is never accurate. You know, you need to catch it from all the different angles that it's hitting. And the fact is that even though we don't typically import a ton of wheat, and that most of the bread products that we consume commercially are made from hard red winter wheat, this shouldn't be too bad. Now there is a window, the same window that I've been talking about for months, uh, for wheat-based staples. Same kind, same window. It is that same window that we are watching close slowly but surely, you know? And I want to talk about timing because I think it's the most actionable part of this conversation, and it's not enough just to know it. We need to take action. I cannot stress this enough, okay? Right now it's mid-July. I can't believe it's already mid-July. The flour in your grocery store shelf is made from wheat that was harvested in previous seasons and priced at the previous season costs, not this year's. Okay. So the 2026 harvest is still being counted and weighed. And that's important to know. The full price impact of this shortfall has not yet worked its way through the mill, the processor, and the retailer to you. That means the flour you buy this month, the flower that you buy this week, okay, is likely the cheapest it we will be for the next 12 months. Not the absolute cheapest ever, but the cheapest in the near-term window. So six to nine months from now, the millers will have processed the 26 harvest, the processors will have renegotiated their flour contracts at new input prices that will be higher, okay? And the retailers will have adjusted shelf prices accordingly. That is when the full impact of a 29% drop in winter wheat production reaches your grocery bill. So let me back that up real quick. Six to nine months from now. Six to nine months from now is when it will be the most painful and those prices will hit. What am I doing? I am buying flour right now. I'm also buying wheat right now, but not in a panic. Okay. I have a good store of wheat, and I'm more than confident that I can outlast a couple of years just with my various kinds of wheat. Now, my commercially ground flour, I rotate through that pretty quick because I feed other people. It's not necessarily what we use here, but I feed other people with it. I use it in videos for you guys sometimes, you know. Um, and so I will be making sure that that's topped off before this window closes, but not in a panic method. You have to know how much you actually use so that you're not wasting it. Commercially ground flour is only good for a year to two tops if it's stored properly in an airtight container. If you freeze it, it stops the clock if it's left in the freezer. Let me make sure to point that out, okay? But it's not good for five or ten years. And I don't care who's saying it, because many of you discovered the same thing that I discovered when I was told the wrong information, and you discovered it when I passed it on to you. It smells like turpentine. You cannot ingest it. It may not kill you, but you'll wish it had because it tastes that bad. Okay. So please just verify your sources, and AI is not it, you know. So a bag of all-purpose flour sitting in your pantry, you know, uh in its paper bag, lasts 12 to 6 months if the moths and the mice don't get to it. Put it into an airtight container, take it out of the paper bag. If you take it out of the paper bag and put it into an airtight container, you can put it into Mylar, absolutely, but with the understanding that all that's doing is protecting it for a year or two tops, depending on where you live and the conditions that you live in. Okay. That right there, that right there is the highest leverage purchase in your entire pantry budget. Not the flour itself, the mylar that protects it. Okay, so where do you get mylar? Go to thestackedpantry.com and you'll see the mylar company that I recommend that I use on a regular basis. It's worth protecting your investment. Now, what kind of quantities do I want to look at getting? Because everybody asks that and it's so variable. I cannot do a blanket statement, okay? But I'm gonna try to give you some targets uh rather than vague recommendations, but honestly, you should know how much you go through, okay? For a family of four, uh, here's what a meaningful buffer looks like for wheat-based staples, and that's what you want to think about. So, all-purpose flour, easy enough. All-purpose flour, 50 pounds. It sounds like a lot, unless you do baking around the holidays, you start making your own bread, then you start going through more of it, you know. Uh, we go through roughly probably eight to ten pounds a month, and that's not a lot. That's really not a lot, okay? So that's just regular baking, that's some random loaves or some experiments that I'm trying, you know. 50 pounds uh at that rate is like a five to six month supply. 100 pounds is a year. So do the math from there. Now, bread flour, if you're gonna get very specific, uh 25 pounds if you bake bread. If you do not make, you know, bake bread, start with all purpose. You don't need bread flour, you know. Um, flour works just fine. Now, uh, pasta, here's another one, okay. 20 pounds, at least two varieties, because everyone's like, you gotta have certain shapes. Okay. Uh pasta lasts, you know, two to three years, give or take, in its original packaging, if you don't get mice or moths. So, as with everything else, put it into airtight containers or mylar it with an oxygen absorber. Uh, buy it now before the Durham prices move even farther because the prices are going to keep going up. Now, oats. Oats are good for so many things. Uh, they're separate grain from you know what we're talking about from wheat. They're not affected by this specific shortfall, but they are the other foundational grain in most pantries. And currently they're priced well. You can do a lot with oats, and you can even mill it into an oat flour. Yes, you can. Rice. 50 pounds, put it in quartz size, mylar bags, oxidant absorber, take those bags, put them into a bucket. Okay, that way you're only pulling out as you need it. And it's if you do a little or if you do a lot, if you, you know, if you eat a little or a lot. Rice is a good thing to stock up on right now. It lasts four decades, okay? For the reason that I mentioned earlier, U.S. rice ending stocks just dropped 28% in one month. Rice is in a tighter position than it was 30 days ago. White rice, only white rice. What kind of white rice? White rice. It doesn't matter after that, okay? Whatever kind of white rice that you like is what you should stock. You do not need to add this all in one week. So don't go killing your budget, okay? Add one category per week across July and August. By Labor Day, you will have a meaningful buffer at today's prices. Now I'm going to tell you about the Make Your Own Connection. Yes, okay. I want to take a few minutes here to connect you with uh plans that I've got that are starting this coming Sunday. The Make Your Own Pantry Staples series. Uh, everything that you can think of, you know, I'm going to be bringing you demonstrations on how to make it yourself out of the supplies that you keep in your pantry. Now, if I think that they're garbage, I'll tell you. If I don't, I'll tell you that too. Um, any way that we can save money and make our own instead of putting it in the pockets of the you know corporations is a beautiful thing. Because when you make your own, you know, baking mix from flour or you know, baking powder and salt, uh, you're not dependent on commercial products that are about to get more expensive or smaller when they're reformulated. You know, when you have 50 pounds of flour stocked in your pantry, you have the raw materials for bread, pancakes, waffles, pasta, crackers, flatbreads, you know, all of it. Flour does an amazing amount of work. So this Sunday series uh starts this coming Sunday, and I hope that you'll join me for it. It's going to uh be a few different things every single week. I'm not gonna bring you just one, you know, uh that you can make on your own that you can try so that you can walk away from those corporations that are reformulating, that are doing shrinkflation, that are raising their prices. The more self-sufficient we are, the better we are. So, what could moderate this impact? I'm glad you asked, okay? First, the global wheat supply. Russia and Ukraine are the world's largest wheat exporters. That's a fact. And both had favorable growing seasons. So the global market provides a buffer that pure domestic production numbers don't capture. We won't know what or if that buffer is until it shows up. Second, the USDA's farm price forecast, the July WASDE, um, held the projected farm price for wheat at $6 per bushel, which is amazing. Okay, but it's up from last year at $5.06. So it's not dramatically higher, depending on who you ask. Um, if the USDA's price forecast holds, the retail impact on flour uh and bread, you know, maybe more modest than the production numbers are suggesting. So it's something to keep in mind. Big drops in supply do not always produce proportional uh retail price increases, especially when global alternatives exist. And so that's something that we need to keep in mind. What I'm telling you is not a guarantee one way or the other. I'm just telling you what they're reporting and how we can best prepare for the worst-case scenario. Now, third, the demand response, okay, because that's going to always factor in. When flour prices rise, some consumers switch to alternatives. Kind of like, you know, when beef prices rise, consumers switch to pork and poultry. Some commercial bakers they adjust their recipes. Reformulation, okay. Demand is not perfectly, you know, inelastic. It's not. If enough substitution happens, then price pressures moderate. So if they redo your the recipe of your favorite baked goods, you know, uh, then it might go lower. You never know if enough of them do it. Now, fourth, the next USDA report, okay, the August 12th supply and demand estimates are the next major data report that we're looking for. If the spring wheat harvest currently in progress comes in better than expected, that provides partial offset uh to winter wheat damage, partial. I'll cover that report when it comes out. So here is my honest read. Here's where I land after reading all of it. The direction for wheat derived products is up in the back half of 2026, pretty much like everything else. You know, how far up is gonna be very dependent on variables, and I genuinely just cannot know right now. Global supply flows, import decisions, and demand elasticity. That's that's all going to impact how far up or up it goes, you know. What I'm confident in, and I say this with great hesitancy, okay, but what I'm confident in the downside of acting now, buying flour, pasta, grains at July prices and you know, sealing them up properly and storing them properly, is essentially zero. There is no downside to stocking your pantry. There's never a downside to stocking your pantry. If wheat prices moderate and fall retail prices come in better than expected, you have bought your winter food supply at summer prices. Bonus, you know, you have saved money regardless. There is no version of this decision where stocking at today's prices turns out to be a mistake. So act from information, not from fear, because fear will always take you down the wrong road. The information is the USDA's July 10th report. The action is buying and sealing and storing your grain supplies this month. I have been watching the wheat crop conditions since early spring. I told you in May that winter wheat was in trouble. I mean, trouble, you know. I told you in June that conditions had not improved. Thursday, the USDA confirmed the final number, and it's the worst it has been since before a lot of my viewers were even born. Let that sink in. I'm not telling you this to alarm you. That's not my intent. I'm telling you because information changes outcomes. It always does. The family that knows this today has time to act this week, this month, before September. And the price at the flower aisle tells the same story. If this was any help at all, any, I hope that you will share it with anyone who bakes, who keeps a pantry, who has been wondering why their grocery bills keep climbing. You know, um, this video explains one more piece of that puzzle. And this is a monster puzzle this year. Wednesday, I'm going to be covering the Super El Nino forecast. Yeah. And uh the specific foods in its path because, you know, that's what we're all about pantry preparedness. That one surprised me when I read the details, and I will see you then. Until next time, everybody, be safe. Keep sacking it to the rafters, my friends.