Wheat Fields In Crisis At Harvest Time

Wheat is traditionally a resilient crop. But now, a brutal combination of climate extremes has pushed this year’s crop to the brink of collapse. Farmers across the Central Plains are facing one of the most challenging harvests they’ve seen.

What’s happening now is a combination of a few weather conditions. 

First, we’ve had an abnormally warm winter. This told the crops to develop early, depleting critical subsoil moisture long before the typical spring growth spurt.

But immediately after that, there have been intense temperature swings, quickly fluctuating from 80°F to under 20°F, causing great stress on the crops, confusing them and affecting their growth cycle. 

All of this, combined with an ongoing and devastating drought across the Plains, creates a perfect storm to bring a crop known for its resilience to a complete loss.

And climate change is making this worse, according to meteorologist Sara Tonks. Studies have shown that a warming planet can cause an increase in the frequency of extreme day-to-day temperature changes.

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This week’s data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture  — on the 18 states that planted 90% of the 2025 winter wheat acreage — explains just how bad this year’s conditions are.

Last year, 18% of the crop was rated poor or very poor. This year, that number has more than doubled to 40%. And it’s getting worse over time — in just a single week, it grew by 3%.

Some farmers will be yielding so little that they’re completely abandoning fields and opting out of harvest due to the costs.

Merrill Nielsen, a wheat farmer from Kansas, had his crop completely destroyed and won’t be harvesting at all, as reported by The Guardian. Typically, he can get into the upper-40s to mid-50s for bushels per acre. But this year, he was told his fields would yield two bushels per acre at best.

Winter wheat production is forecast to be down 25 percent from 2025, according to the USDA.

The impacts of this could be severe, since a poor harvest in the U.S influences everything from grocery store product prices to livestock feed costs to global grain trade.

The winter crop harvest period will begin in just the next few weeks and should be complete in July — that’s when farmers and consumers will have the final results of what was salvageable. 

weather.com content writer Ada Wood enjoys exploring the stories that science and climate teach us about our natural world and how it influences the way we live in it.