Why Wheat Acres Keep Shrinking: A USDA NASS Long-Term Analysis

Wheat planted acres in the United States have declined dramatically over the last four decades. In the early 1980s, U.S. farmers planted more than 80 million acres of wheat in some years. By the early 2020s, that figure had fallen to around 45 million acres — a roughly 40 percent decline. The USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service annual Crop Production summary tracks this trend, and several structural factors explain it.

Wheat is grown in three forms in the U.S.: winter wheat (planted in fall, harvested following summer), spring wheat (planted in spring, harvested late summer), and durum wheat (used for pasta). Winter wheat dominates by acreage, accounting for roughly 70 percent of the total. Kansas, North Dakota, Montana, and Washington lead in different wheat classes. Kansas is the largest hard red winter wheat producer; North Dakota and Montana lead in hard red spring and durum.

The structural decline in wheat acres has three primary drivers. First, corn and soybean profitability has consistently beaten wheat profitability per acre in most Corn Belt states. When farmers compare net return per acre at typical input costs and recent commodity prices, corn-soybean rotations beat wheat in most years. The result is that wheat acres have shifted away from the eastern Great Plains and northern Corn Belt into the drier western Great Plains and Pacific Northwest where corn and soybeans don't yield as well.

Second, U.S. wheat export competitiveness has eroded against Russia, Ukraine (in non-war years), the EU, and Australia. Russian wheat production has grown substantially in the last 20 years, displacing some U.S. wheat in traditional export markets in North Africa and the Middle East. The USDA Foreign Agricultural Service Production, Supply, and Distribution data tracks the global wheat trade flows; reading those alongside NASS production data shows the demand-side pressure on U.S. wheat acres.

Third, government program changes since the 1996 Farm Bill ended the system of acreage-based wheat program payments and shifted toward direct payments decoupled from planted acres. Earlier programs implicitly rewarded planting wheat regardless of market signal; the post-1996 framework lets farmers respond more directly to price ratios between wheat, corn, soybeans, and (in the West) canola or barley. Wheat lost in that market-signal-driven comparison.

Wheat yields have grown but more slowly than corn or soybeans in percentage terms. U.S. wheat yield has risen from around 30 bushels per acre in the mid-1970s to around 50 bushels per acre in the early 2020s — about a 70 percent yield improvement over five decades. Compare that to corn's near-doubling and soybeans' doubling over the same period. The yield gap explains some of the per-acre profitability gap.

Three caveats when reading wheat data. First, wheat is reported by class (hard red winter, soft red winter, hard red spring, white, durum), and aggregate U.S. wheat figures combine all classes; the per-class numbers tell a more accurate story by region. Second, wheat is often grown in rotation with summer fallow in the dry-land Great Plains; the rotation pattern affects acreage interpretation year-over-year. Third, double-cropping wheat-then-soybeans is meaningful in the south; the wheat acres double-count if you're not careful.

For anyone tracking U.S. agriculture, the wheat decline is the longest-running structural trend in row crops. NASS Quick Stats provides the historical record; the question now is whether the decline continues or stabilizes at the 40 to 45 million-acre level the U.S. has occupied for several recent years.

Source: USDA NASS Quick Stats, 2026.