Wheat Price Forecast 2025/26: USDA Data & Trends

Reviewed February 2026 against USDA Economic Research Service (ERS) and USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) reporting.

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USDA’s Economic Research Service put the 2025/26 season-average wheat farm price forecast at $4.90 per bushel in its February 2026 outlook — down from the $5.52 per bushel final price USDA NASS recorded for the 2024/25 marketing year. That’s the direct answer to where wheat prices are headed: a lower season-average forecast than the prior year’s actual, driven by supply and demand balances USDA updates monthly. Everything below explains how that number is built, how it compares across wheat classes, and how to pull a fresher figure than the one printed here.

Table of Contents

• Current Wheat Price Forecast: What USDA Says
• 2024 US Wheat Yield by Class
• What Moves the Season-Average Price
• How to Track Wheat Prices Yourself
• Wheat Revenue Calculator
• Monitoring Wheat Condition With Satellite Data
• Global Wheat Market Context
• FAQ
• Try it: Enter values above to calculate.

Current Wheat Price Forecast: What USDA Says

The figure that answers “wheat price forecast” most directly is USDA ERS’s season-average farm price (SAFP) projection, published in its Wheat Outlook series. For the 2025/26 marketing year (June 2025 through May 2026), ERS’s February 2026 report set that forecast at $4.90 per bushel. That compares against $5.52 per bushel, the final season-average price USDA NASS confirmed for the completed 2024/25 marketing year in its November 2025 Agricultural Prices release. The year-over-year forecast implies a decline of roughly 62 cents per bushel, or about 11%, driven by larger global supplies weighing on farm-level returns.

This SAFP is not a single spot quote — it’s a production-weighted average across the marketing year, blending cash prices received by US farmers across regions and wheat classes (hard red winter, soft red winter, hard red spring, white, and durum). It is the number USDA itself uses to project farm income, and it’s revised monthly as new NASS price data comes in.

Because this is a forecast, not a closing figure, ERS revises it through the marketing year as harvest results, export sales, and stocks data come in. If you need the current number rather than the one printed here, USDA ERS publishes the Wheat Outlook monthly at ers.usda.gov’s Wheat Outlook series — search for the latest WHS-numbered release, since each month’s PDF replaces the prior one.

2024 US Wheat Yield by Class

Price forecasts are only half the picture — yield is the other input that determines what a harvest is actually worth per acre. USDA NASS’s Small Grains Summary for 2024 recorded a US all-wheat average yield of 51.2 bushels per acre. Broken out by class, winter wheat averaged 51.7 bushels per acre, spring wheat hit a record 52.5 bushels per acre, and durum wheat came in at 39.3 bushels per acre. Total 2024 US wheat production across all classes reached 1.971 billion bushels.

The spring wheat record is worth noting on its own: at 52.5 bushels per acre, it topped winter wheat’s 51.7 bu/acre average for the same crop year — a class-level reversal that a national average alone would hide. This is the kind of detail a season-average price forecast can’t convey by itself; yield and price move together to determine per-acre revenue, which is why both numbers matter for anyone budgeting against next season.

What Moves the Season-Average Price

The gap between the $5.52/bu final 2024/25 price and the $4.90/bu 2025/26 forecast reflects supply-and-demand rebalancing that USDA tracks through several channels:

• Global production levels. Larger world wheat supplies relative to demand put downward pressure on US farm prices, since US wheat competes in the same export markets as production from the Black Sea region, the EU, and the Southern Hemisphere.
• Domestic stocks-to-use ratio. USDA’s World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) reports, issued monthly, track how much wheat carries over relative to annual use — a tightening ratio typically supports price, a loosening one pressures it.
• Export competitiveness. US wheat classes compete on price and quality specification against exporters in other regions; a stronger dollar makes US wheat less price-competitive abroad.
• Input costs on the production side. While input costs don’t set the market price, they determine grower margin at any given price level — a $4.90/bu price means something different to a farm’s bottom line depending on fertilizer, fuel, and land costs that season.

Weekly cash grain prices — the more granular, near-real-time complement to the season-average forecast — are reported by USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service. AMS publishes wheat price quotes and cash grain reports covering multiple delivery points and wheat classes, updated on a weekly cycle. Those reports are the right source if you need a current cash bid rather than a marketing-year average: see USDA AMS wheat price reports.

How to Track Wheat Prices Yourself

Because every figure in this article carries a vintage — a specific marketing year or report date — the more durable value here is the method for pulling your own current numbers rather than relying on any single snapshot. Three USDA sources cover the full picture:

1. USDA NASS Agricultural Prices (monthly, farm-level)

NASS releases the Agricultural Prices report around the 15th of each month, covering farm-level prices received for wheat and other commodities by marketing year. This is the source for the $5.52/bu 2024/25 final figure cited above, and it’s the report to check for the current in-season price as the 2025/26 marketing year progresses. Set up a recurring check against USDA NASS Newsroom releases and filter for wheat farm prices by marketing year.

2. USDA ERS Wheat Outlook (monthly, forecast-level)

ERS publishes the Wheat Outlook report monthly, containing the season-average price forecast along with supply, demand, and trade projections. Each release supersedes the last — the $4.90/bu figure cited here is from the February 2026 edition, and a March or April 2026 release will carry a revised number as new data comes in.

3. USDA AMS Market News (weekly, cash-price level)

For growers and buyers who need current cash bids rather than a season average, AMS’s weekly market news reports cover cash grain prices at specific delivery points by wheat class.

Checking these three on a rolling basis — rather than treating any one number as fixed — is the durable habit this article is trying to hand you. A forecast like the $4.90/bu figure above will be revised multiple times before the 2025/26 marketing year closes; the NASS-confirmed final price won’t be available until after the year ends, the way $5.52/bu became final for 2024/25 only once that year was complete.

Wheat Revenue Calculator

Use the figures above as starting points, then substitute your own yield and price to estimate per-acre and total revenue for a wheat crop.

Assumptions: this calculator multiplies acreage by yield and price to estimate gross revenue, then subtracts a flat per-acre production cost you supply. It does not account for crop insurance indemnities, basis differences between your local elevator and the national season-average price, storage or drying costs, or price variation by wheat class. Default values reflect the 2024 US all-wheat average yield (51.2 bu/acre, USDA NASS) and the 2025/26 season-average price forecast ($4.90/bu, USDA ERS) — replace them with your own figures for an accurate estimate.

Monitoring Wheat Condition With Satellite Data

Yield is the variable growers have the most direct influence over between planting and harvest, and it’s also the hardest to estimate mid-season without field-level visibility. Satellite-based crop monitoring tools like Farmonaut track vegetation health indices across a field through the growing season, flagging stress from moisture deficit, nutrient shortfall, or pest pressure before it shows up in a yield check.

For wheat growers weighing input decisions against a season-average price forecast that’s already down year-over-year, tightening the gap between expected and actual yield matters more than usual — a lower per-bushel price means yield preservation carries more of the total revenue outcome. Farmonaut’s platform provides field-level health monitoring, and its satellite-based crop monitoring API lets growers or agronomy teams integrate that data into existing farm management systems, with implementation details in the API Developer Docs.

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Global Wheat Market Context

US wheat prices don’t move in isolation — the season-average farm price reflects a market where US production competes against and trades alongside global supply. The US produced 1.971 billion bushels of wheat across all classes in 2024, per USDA NASS’s Small Grains Summary, a baseline supply figure that factors directly into how ERS builds its season-average price forecasts: larger relative global supply is part of why the 2025/26 forecast sits below the 2024/25 final price.

For growers and buyers who need non-US benchmarks — UK and EU price series from Defra or Eurostat, Australian forecasts from ABARES, or Canadian figures from Statistics Canada — those weren’t part of the verified data set for this article and shouldn’t be quoted without checking the agency directly; each publishes its own wheat price and production series on a different release schedule than USDA’s.

Using Precision Data to Manage Price Risk

With a season-average price forecast down about 11% year-over-year, growers have two levers: protect yield, or manage costs against the lower expected price. Precision agriculture tools address the first lever directly. Real-time field monitoring — tracking soil moisture, crop vigor, and stress indicators across the season — lets growers catch problems early enough to intervene, rather than discovering a yield shortfall only at harvest.

• Field-level vegetation health tracking to flag stress before visible symptoms appear
• Irrigation timing informed by moisture data rather than a fixed calendar
• Variable-rate input application matched to zone-level field variability
• Storage and post-harvest tracking to reduce losses between harvest and sale

These tools don’t change the price a bushel sells for, but they influence the yield side of the revenue equation — which, at a lower forecast price, carries more weight in the final return per acre than it would in a higher-price year.

Technology in Wheat Farming

Beyond satellite monitoring, several other technologies are relevant to wheat operations managing price and yield risk together:

• AI-driven advisory systems that combine weather data, field history, and current crop condition into specific recommendations
• Drone-based scouting for finer-resolution monitoring than satellite imagery alone provides
• IoT soil sensors for real-time moisture and nutrient tracking
• Blockchain-based traceability for buyers requiring supply chain documentation

Farmonaut’s Jeevn AI advisory system layers recommendations on top of the same satellite data feed used for crop health monitoring, giving growers a specific action rather than just a raw index value to interpret.

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FAQ Section

Q: What is the current wheat price forecast?

A: USDA ERS’s February 2026 Wheat Outlook forecasts a 2025/26 season-average farm price of $4.90 per bushel, down from the confirmed $5.52 per bushel final price for 2024/25 (USDA NASS). Because ERS revises this forecast monthly, check the latest Wheat Outlook release at ers.usda.gov for the current figure.

Q: What was the 2024 US wheat yield?

A: USDA NASS recorded a 2024 US all-wheat average yield of 51.2 bushels per acre, with winter wheat at 51.7 bu/acre, spring wheat at a record 52.5 bu/acre, and durum wheat at 39.3 bu/acre. Total 2024 production was 1.971 billion bushels.

Q: Where can I find weekly wheat cash prices instead of the season average?

A: USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service publishes weekly wheat price quotes and cash grain reports covering multiple delivery points and wheat classes.

Q: Why did the wheat price forecast drop from 2024/25 to 2025/26?

A: The roughly 62-cent, 11% year-over-year decline in USDA’s forecast reflects larger relative global wheat supplies weighing on US farm-level prices, part of the balance USDA tracks monthly through its WASDE supply and demand estimates.

Q: How can satellite crop monitoring help manage wheat price risk?

A: With price forecasts down year-over-year, protecting yield matters more to total revenue. Satellite tools like Farmonaut track field-level crop health through the season, flagging moisture or nutrient stress early enough for growers to intervene before yield loss occurs.