Fundamentally Speaking

The 2022 U.S. winter wheat crop at 1.104 billion bushels (bb) is the smallest crop since 1970 based in part on the continued fall in winter wheat acreage planted in the U.S. with this year's 33.27 million acres seeded down close to 10 million acres or 23% from what was planted just ten years ago.

Also based on drought conditions in a number of key winter wheat producing states, the national 2022 U.S. winter wheat yield of 47.0 bushels per acre (bpa) is the lowest since 2015.

This chart shows the 22-year capitalized annual growth rate (GAGR) for planted area and production on the left-hand axis vs the 2000-2022 trend yield increase for the top 18 winter wheat growing states and the U.S. on the right-hand axis.

We also report the five-year average percent of U.S. winter wheat production for each of these 18 states in the grey rectangle.

We start off by noting that in the U.S. the CAGR for planted winter wheat area has trended down by an average of 1.2% since 2000 with the CAGR of winter wheat production off by an average of 1.6% per year as the U.S. wheat yield has only risen by 0.40 bpa per year since 2000.

There really is only one of the top states, Montana, that has shown any increase in either winter wheat planted area or production since 2000 with that states CAGR for planted area up 1.4% and that for output up 1.3%.

The best the others can do is three large white winter wheat producing states of Idaho, Oregon, and Washington that show basically no growth in either category.

On the other hand, we are seeing big declines over the past 22 years in Arkansas and California for both winter wheat planted area and production as California has seen no growth in wheat yields since 2000, no doubt linked to water issues and this plagues other drought ridden states like Oklahoma with yields increasing by just a 0.10 bpa trend per year since 2000 and TX at 0.09.

The state seeing the best yield growth has been Illinois at up 0.85 bpa per year and then MI at 0.72 bpa.

Kansas is by far the largest winter wheat producing state in the union but since 2000 planted area has fallen by an average of 1.3% per year and even with yields increasing by an average of 0.4 bpa per year, winter wheat output in the Jayhawk state has still fallen by an average of 1.6% per year since 2000.

(c) Copyright 2022 DTN, LLC. All rights reserved.