Lowest Planted Wheat Forecast in Six Years

The first winter wheat plantings forecast for 2026 was released by the USDA recently. Anthony Perliman is with the US days National Agricultural Statistics Service. Planted acreage is estimated at nearly 33 million acres. That is down half a percent, or 163,000 acres, from 2025, and this would be the lowest planted area since 2020. Bryan Irey, regional manager with Crossroads Co Op and market analyst, further breaks down the January USDA wheat data.

"They had all winter wheat seedings at 33 million acres. That was 600,000 acres above the average trade guess of 32 point 4 million acres. And the breakdown there was 23 point 5 million acres of hard red winter wheat versus the average trade guess of 23 million soft red winter 6.1 million acres versus the average trade guess of 5.9 million. So wheat took a little bit of a blow there as well. And then to cap that off, we added about 25 million bushels to wheat carry out feed and residual number, which makes sense that they did that with cheaper corn around, we probably aren't going to feed higher priced wheat."

Most states had a reduction in wheat planted acres, with a few southern states having an increase. And the agency noted that California and Nebraska had significant wheat planting reductions.