Paul Penner has grown wheat for 50 years, and hard red winter wheat used to cover 75% to 80% of his farm.
He loves raising it, but to make ends meet on his central Kansas farm, he now devotes one-third of his acres each to wheat, corn and soybeans. Penner isn’t alone in this crop mix, as USDA estimated in last week’s Acreage report that U.S. harvested wheat acres will be the lowest since 1877.
Even in the No. 1 wheat-growing state, Kansas, corn edged out wheat for the most-planted crop, with the report putting planted corn acres at 7.05 million versus 6.9 million for wheat.
U.S. wheat production has been in structural decline for at least 30 years. A combination of U.S. policy changes, crop science, and global competition have made corn and soybeans more profitable for U.S. farmers at wheat’s expense.
U.S. wheat acreage won’t go the way of specialty crops such as barley or sorghum because it’s a food crop, say wheat experts. The U.S. still has an edge globally with consistency and quality, and there’s less competition for soft red winter, hard red spring, durum and white wheats. Crop scientists are also making advances in improving wheat’s complex genetics. But unless profitability changes, wheat will at best be an also-ran with corn and soybeans.
The seeds of wheat’s acreage decline are rooted in the same forces that have been driving economic change since the 1990s: globalization and technology. U.S. agriculture policy shifted in 1996 to a market-oriented focus with the “Freedom to Farm” bill, where the U.S. stopped managing inventories and farmers no longer needed to plant base acreage to qualify for government subsidies, says Frayne Olson, crops economist at North Dakota State University. It also coincided with the launch of the World Trade Organization during the decade.
“When they decoupled program participation and economic benefits from the planting decisions, then all of a sudden that was kind of the release valve to say, ‘well, I don’t have to plant wheat to get economic benefit,’” Olson says.
The return of the Black Sea region as a net wheat exporter after being an importer during the Soviet era added to an already-crowded field that included Europe, Canada and Australia, all of which grow an HRW wheat type and can do it cheaper than U.S. farmers.
The rise of biofuels gave corn and soybeans lucrative new markets, and private crop breeders used genetic modification technology to improve their biology. Wheat’s main market remains as a food grain, and resistance to GM technology from end users and export markets scuttled the research. With low profitability, private crop breeders conducted limited research into wheat, leaving it mostly to public researchers at universities.
Advances in wheat genetics coming
Between 2000 and 2025, corn yields per acre rose 36%, while soybeans gained 39% and wheat rose 27%, according to USDA data.
Penner, a past president of the National Association of Wheat Growers, suggests that the lack of transgenic wheat research in the ‘90s may have resulted in wheat falling behind as a core crop, while also admitting the pitfalls of GM wheat at the time.
“I think that was short-sighted,” he says, citing climate change and the need to create wheat that can thrive in drier conditions and resist diseases.
Resistance to GM wheat may be softening as Argentina developed a drought-resistant GM wheat and is selling it commercially, says Arlan Suderman, chief commodities economist at StoneX.
Yet not all crop breeders think GM is critical to improving wheat genetics. Brett Carver, crop breeder and wheat genetics chair in agriculture at Oklahoma State University, says he never felt disadvantaged by not having access to GM wheat and thinks transgenic technology is dated.
The new molecular marker technology developed after the wheat genome was sequenced in the 2010s with CRISPR technology is now cutting-edge research as it allows more precise targeting of traits. Sequencing doesn’t mean scientists have all the answers yet, but “all breeding programs have been able to up their game with the use of molecular markers,” he says.
Traditional wheat breeding is also making advances. Corteva is preparing to launch new hybrid HRW wheat for the 2027 fall planting season. In field trials, it showed a 10% yield improvement on average over other varietals and up to 20% yield advantage under heat and drought, says Jessie Alt, global wheat lead at Corteva. It’s a significant breakthrough as usually traditional wheat breeding may result in a 1% yield advantage every year.
“To have an option where farmers can see 10% or more yield advantage… it’s hard to say how exciting that step change is to bring forward,” Alt says.
The future of wheat
Unless wheat becomes more profitable, its role in U.S. agriculture may be more of a rotational tool to support more profitable crops and an option for land where higher-value crops like corn and soybeans don’t fit, say crop experts.
Dan O’Brien, grain marketing professor at Kansas State University, says no-till Plains farmers use more intensive systems where they may plant wheat, a summer crop such as corn or milo, and then allow fields to lie fallow, as wheat’s stubble and ground cover is valuable.
As a food grain, wheat’s quality characteristics matter much more than for corn or soybeans, says Olson, and in the export market, U.S. wheat can be competitive in non-HRW varieties since those are grown in fewer countries. It’s why wheat won’t become a specialty crop.
“The quality characteristics of the wheat have a big influence on the quality of the flour and the type of bread products you’re making,” he says. “So when we think about competition, we think about relative competitiveness. What can we do better than anybody else?”
With the Black Sea region being the low-cost provider, Suderman says the U.S.’s role is as the world’s storehouse for wheat, with its quality storage facilities and a marketing system that supports using them.
“We become the residual supplier to the world,” he says, when the world needs wheat.
Thus, he doesn’t see U.S. wheat acres rebounding significantly without a supply shock that can push prices higher. “In order to get a real meaningful return on profits to make wheat become popular again, we need to see much tighter global supplies,” he says.