For farmers in North Dakota surveying their wheat as harvest closes in, scorching heat is threatening yields just as crop prices rise to a three-year high.
A recent spate of 100-degree days is stressing fields in the key US wheat-growing state while escalating attacks between Russia and Ukraine put exports at risk in the Black Sea.
“I’m actually surprised they’re holding out as well as they are,” grower Jim Pellman said of his fields. Speaking during the Wheat Quality Council’s annual spring and durum wheat crop tour, he was more focused on his own farm than the ongoing turmoil in Eastern Europe.
“We’ve still got harvest season to go through, so it’s a matter of getting the bushels in the bin,” said Pellman, who farms in McClusky, near the center of North Dakota.
For Pellman, the current volatility in the market stoked by turmoil in the Black Sea is just the latest development in a conflict that has repeatedly roiled the wheat market since 2022.
Still, any reduction in American supply in the US would contribute to a decline in world supplies. While it remains to be seen how North Dakota’s wheat fields will turn out, the risks come just as global supply disruptions have sent futures soaring.
Attention on the North Dakota crop is particularly high after a May tour of wheat fields in Kansas pegged yields for the hard red winter crop there well below last year’s forecast. Overall, farmers in the US have been moving away from wheat as Russia dominates the global market. The USDA estimates total American wheat production this season as the lowest since 1970-71.
Russia, the world’s top wheat exporter, on Thursday warned that it was unsafe to navigate in the Black Sea region, citing threats from Ukraine. The two countries together account for more than a quarter of global wheat shipments. Wheat futures, which have rallied nearly 40% this year, eased by as much as 1.8% after soaring the previous day.
“It escalates and it de-escalates,” said Pellman, who also grows barley, canola, soybeans and corn. “The price of wheat goes up one day and it’s back down the next, so it’s kind of getting old news.”
Other farmers across North Dakota echoed Pellman’s sentiments during the three-day crop tour, which surveyed fields across the state to estimate potential yields. The group of more than 40 participants included milling company employees, university researchers and US Department of Agriculture staff.
Final scouting results released Thursday estimated North Dakota’s spring wheat yield at 48 bushels per acre after 218 field stops. That’s below the USDA’s latest outlook for the state of 58 bushels per acre.
Expectations heading into the tour were tempered, with growers monitoring elevated temperatures that could push their wheat to mature too fast and undercut the number of bushels per acre they see at harvest in the upcoming weeks. Earlier in the season, variable weather left some areas with too much rain and others with too little, while wind and cold also hit fields at inopportune times.
“The crop is definitely stressed a bit — maybe some of the top potential taken out — but it’s still hanging in there,” Erica Olson, director of marketing and research at the North Dakota Wheat Commission told scouts gathered Monday night to kick-off the tour.
Meanwhile, scorching temperatures in Europe also have lowered expectations for wheat out of France and Germany, coming as the war between Russia and Ukraine renews concerns about grain flows in the Black Sea region.
The turmoil between Russia and Ukraine isn’t entirely being ignored in North Dakota. “Farmers are keeping an eye on it because potentially it’ll be higher prices for them,” grower Glendon Slaubaugh said.
On Wednesday, he and others celebrated the rally that had futures for benchmark soft red winter wheat, hard red winter wheat and spring wheat all closing above $7 a bushel.
“Anytime you can get a rally in wheat prices, especially with production costs where they are, it’s a good thing,” said Jim Peterson, executive director of the North Dakota Wheat Commission. “The heat in Europe, overly wet in Canada, those are factors that hopefully we’ll continue to benefit from either via price strength or additional demand we weren’t expecting.”
Still, it’s the weather that’s foremost in growers’ minds. When crop scouts stopped to survey some wheat on James Wolf’s property in North Dakota’s Morton County, the retired farmer — who rents his land to another producer — said the recent heat and lack of rain had him worried about the coming crop.
“The guy that rents my land told me he didn’t think it paid to but he’d bring out the combine,” Wolf said. “He’ll have to to find out what the insurance is gonna be.”
The heat was also a concern for Bill Ongstad, a third-generation farmer in Harvey, North Dakota, who also lamented how growers have struggled amid tariffs and the high cost of crop inputs.
“It’s going to be 100 degrees this weekend,” said Ongstad, who farms with his son and grandson. “That’s one problem.”
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