Winter Wheat Acres Seen Bouncing Back for 2027 Crop

U.S. winter wheat seedings fell to 31.2 million acres last year, the lowest since 1909, according to USDA records. The decline has run four straight seasons, and no official acreage count for this fall exists yet.

The better odds belong to the 2027 crop. A retreating Southern Plains drought, an El Niño promising heavy winter rain and a sharp increase in USDA crop insurance rates give growers three separate reasons to plant wheat. None of them lifts the price a grower receives.

What did last year's planting season look like?

The numbers framing this fall's decisions:

• Winter wheat seedings fell four years in a row.
• Last year's seedings sank to 31.2 million acres, a 117-year low and the smallest in USDA records since 1909.
• Wheat futures sold off more than $2 a bushel from the start of September.
• U.S. wheat export shipments ran 36% below the prior year.
• Most of Kansas and eastern Colorado were drought-free by early November, per the U.S. Drought Monitor.

Planting of this year's crop ran at a historically slow pace through the fall, and growers had largely finished by early November. USDA will not publish official planted acreage until mid-January, when it releases its annual Winter Wheat and Canola Seedings report. Until then, the agency's weekly condition ratings offer the only public read on the crop, and the acreage figures above remain estimates rather than final counts.

Why might 2027 bring more acres?

The strongest pull is money that arrives before harvest. USDA's Risk Management Agency 2027 crop rate for hard red winter wheat in Kansas and Oklahoma rises to $8.11 per bushel, up from $5.61. The $2.50 increase, roughly 45% more per acre, is the clearest single argument for seeding wheat instead of leaving ground fallow.

Tanner Ehmke, CoBank lead economist for grains and oilseeds, put it directly: "Winter wheat acres are going to be up for a number of reasons." The higher insurance price leads his list. "Farmers in much of the Plains also have the ability and incentive to eliminate fallow from the rotation because they have a full profile of soil moisture," he said.

Rain completes the case. The drought that gripped much of the Southern Plains in recent years has receded from many key growing areas, with widespread fall rainfall leaving most of Kansas and eastern Colorado drought-free as of early November, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle remain under drought, but AccuWeather's Chad Merrill told Farm Futures he expects an El Niño-driven "very robust subtropical jet stream" to deliver heavy rain to Oklahoma and Texas this winter. That rainfall remains a forecast, not a measured outcome.

Why are prices still under pressure?

The market has not rewarded the acreage argument. Exports ran 36% below the prior year in shipments, and reports and rumors of Russia-Ukraine peace talks, or at least a cooling of hostilities, have kept futures under pressure through much of the fall. Speculators bet heavily against wheat late in 2026, and that position has worked for months. A sizable jump in U.S. plantings would not obviously support the bulls either.

Downside pressure eventually exhausts itself and buyers step in, but bottom-picking carries real risk. Producers do have history on their side, because each of the past three years produced a late-winter or spring rally. The 2026 upswing was steep, fueled by the U.S.-Iran war. The 2024 and 2025 rallies were much more modest and short-lived, which makes another surge of that scale a poor planning assumption.

What does this change for a wheat grower?

The change is a bigger floor under the crop, not a higher price for it. An $8.11 guaranteed rate per bushel covers more of a weak marketing year than $5.61 did, which is why acres can rise while futures trade more than $2 below their early September levels. The decision belongs to the risk calculation made at seeding, not to any price forecast, and growers still carry input and land-preparation costs well ahead of harvest.

USDA's mid-January Winter Wheat and Canola Seedings report will confirm or refute the acreage rebound, and if the past three years are any guide, the pricing window for the 2027 crop opens late in the winter rather than at planting.