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USDA Projects Smallest US Wheat Harvest Since 1972 Due to Plains Drought
- giantg2 5mo agoIt will only get worse for the next generation as the aquafers are continuing to be depleted.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- dakolli 5mo agowe live in a closed greenhouse system, the water just doesn't just disappear and most of the Earth is covered in it. Plenty of countries completely rely on desalination already, I think we'll be fine. I'm much more concerned about everyone becoming a moron from using AI. edit: cloud seeding too.
- atomicnumber3 5mo agoThe problem is that aquifers are really cool natural filters, and only refill as fast as groundwater moves through the soil. So they're a finite resource. Instead of depleting them, people who want to farm in deserts should probably start desalinating or whatever themselves instead of assuming subsequent generations will do it.
- mothballed 5mo agoThe government made it literally the only way to claim much of the land out west[]. They require that you come up with an agricultural land including plan for watering crops on that acreage in order to claim the land. And you're required to execute the plan to get the deed. In fact, this is the only remaining way I know of to more or less 'homestead' federal land in a way that results in a permanent deed. The rest of the homesteading type stuff was revoked back in like the 70s or 80s. [] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Land_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Land_Act
- datsci_est_2015 5mo agoIs this relevant in 2026? Are people still claiming land via the 1877 Desert Land Act?
- mothballed 5mo agoYet it's still active. As a pure anecdote, I know of someone doing it right now. https://www.blm.gov/sites/default/files/Desert%20Land%20Entries.pdf https://www.blm.gov/sites/default/files/Desert%20Land%20Entr...
- JumpCrisscross 5mo agoIs this an opportunity that opened up with this administration? Or has the BLM been quietly processing these for the last century?
- mothballed 5mo agoAFAIK it's been available since the 1870s but after the 20s they clamped down a lot harder on ensuring you were actually irrigating it and had agricultural plans. I'm not sure if the BLM has relaxed their discretion under Trump.
- tekla 5mo agoDo you think laws go away just because they're old? The Colorado River compact came into effect in 1922 and I'm almost surprised literal fist fights haven't erupted over it during the modern negotiations.
- datsci_est_2015 5mo agoI think laws become less relevant over time for many reasons. There are entire books written about silly and obsolete laws, e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trenton_Pickle_Ordinance_and_Other_Bonehead_Legislation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trenton_Pickle_Ordinance_a... The age of a law or regulation is likely a strong indicator for its relevance in modern times, especially if it’s regarding something quite niche.
- pixl97 5mo agoThis is by far the dumbest post in this thread by a mile. It's funny saying AI will make people dumber when you've obviously don't understand this issue in the first place. Food security is human security. When you take a huge percentage of a countries grow able land out because it stops raining then food proces go up, often dramatically. Desalination uses far more power than AI ever would.
- hnthrow0287345 5mo agoAnd if we wait until large scale desalination becomes profitable, it will be too late to respond quickly without massive upheaval and deaths. This is where capitalism drives humanity off a cliff.
- Imustaskforhelp 5mo agoPlants require a ton of desalinated water and Animals who eat plants as such require desalinated water too. There are countries in middle east like UAE, Saudi arabia etc. which rely on desalination but they are relying it for the clean drinking water, not for the food generation. They import almost 90% of their food iirc. The amount of energy required to desalinate all water and the environmental impacts to get that energy would literally be quite catastrophic and I am not even sure if it would be even feasible and food prices would literally skyrocket or food would simply be produced even more less by magnitudes of order.
- shagie 5mo agoThe middle east tends to import hay and food for their livestock from other countries rather than growing it locally. https://www.fas.usda.gov/data/commodities/forage-and-hay https://www.fas.usda.gov/data/commodities/forage-and-hay https://wits.worldbank.org/trade/comtrade/en/country/QAT/year/2023/tradeflow/Imports/partner/ALL/product/121410 https://wits.worldbank.org/trade/comtrade/en/country/QAT/yea...
- Tangurena2 5mo agoAlfalfa/hay uses so much water that cultivation of it is banned in Saudi Arabia. They import large amounts from the US - basically we're exporting water.
- vel0city 5mo agoDesalination isn't really much of an option for deeper inland and much higher than sea level areas. Tell me, which ocean is Dodge City KS going to pull from?
- HelloMcFly 5mo agoThe energy required to transport water from the coast to our major agricultural areas would be astronomical, and the resulting brine waste would create its own environmental crisis. If we get to a point where we're forced to bypass natural water cycles entirely, our native ecologies will have already collapsed. At that point, we'll be trying to engineer our way out of a total ecological apocalypse as masses starve in bread lines.
- dopa42365 5mo agoand desalination is so efficient/cheap at scale already that it barely affects water prices in those countries (less than 10% already, further shrinking every year as methods improve)
- shagie 5mo ago> Plenty of countries completely rely on desalination already Let's take Kansas... the largest producer of wheat in the US. https://www.statista.com/statistics/190376/top-us-states-in-wheat-production/?srsltid=AfmBOoodNF3dqIkb5oSV_luqpgiiTFXNyNZsTmch18flkq5jVzVD-c2V https://www.statista.com/statistics/190376/top-us-states-in-... Kansas wheat crop down 38% from last year https://youtu.be/QjrhAXzEGDc https://youtu.be/QjrhAXzEGDc Kansas cannot run on desalination plants ... there's no salt water. The gulf coast of Texas is 1000 miles away. While aquifers do regenerate (Groundwater levels in the Kansas High Plains aquifer see first overall increase since 2019 https://kgs.ku.edu/news/article/groundwater-levels-in-the-kansas-high-plains-aquifer-see-first-overall-increase-since-2019 https://kgs.ku.edu/news/article/groundwater-levels-in-the-ka... ) I'm going to point out that news article has seven years of declines previously. The aquifer that Kansas draws upon is the Ogallala Aquifer ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer ) and you can see the rate of depletion at https://www.climate.gov/news-features/featured-images/national-climate-assessment-great-plains’-ogallala-aquifer-drying-out https://www.climate.gov/news-features/featured-images/nation... - there are spots in Kansas where the groundwater dropped by 150 feet from before it was tapped with deep wells to 2015. Yes, most of the earth is covered by water. Getting that water to Kansas and Nebraska and North Dakota, however, is a problem.
- NDlurker 5mo agoWe didn't get much snow in ND over the winter. Hasn't rained much this year either
- shagie 5mo agoIf you can find climate data... for example, in Wisconsin 2012 our snowfall looked like https://www.aos.wisc.edu/oldsco/clim-history/stations/msn/msn-sts-2011-12.gif https://www.aos.wisc.edu/oldsco/clim-history/stations/msn/ms... and the overall water year precipitation chart was https://www.aos.wisc.edu/oldsco/clim-history/stations/msn/msn-rts-wyr-2012.gif https://www.aos.wisc.edu/oldsco/clim-history/stations/msn/ms... PBS program on the 2012 drought - https://www.pbs.org/video/wpt-presents-wisconsin-drought-2012/ https://www.pbs.org/video/wpt-presents-wisconsin-drought-201... And what the fields looked like ... http://www.wcwcw.com/feature96.html http://www.wcwcw.com/feature96.html (also has a national map, and all of Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, and Illinois were in bad shape - Wisconsin looked pretty good by comparison in that map). If you've got similar data for ND... (digging) https://www.ndsu.edu/agriculture/sites/default/files/2026-05/April2026Climate_0.pdf https://www.ndsu.edu/agriculture/sites/default/files/2026-05... page 2 has the precipitation chart. North west ND looks bad.
- andsoitis 5mo ago> Plenty of countries completely rely on desalination already There are only 3 countries that do: Bahamas, Maldives, and Malta. Other countries that depend heavily, but not completely: Qatar, Kuwait, UAE.
- downrightmike 5mo agoQatar, Kuwait, UAE. And these guys rent out tons of farmland in the USA to grow crops because they can flood irrigate and get five crops of alfalfa a year to feed their livestock. Desal isn't useful for anything but a stop gap
- 8note 5mo agohuh? we live in an open system at any scale except the whole universe and even that is gaining energy the earth is slowly losing both hydrogen and oxygen, and has tons of energy coming in from the sun into the scale of a field, or a state or a country or a continent, theres very obvious flows of the water cycle introducing water via rain/snow, and removing it via evaporation, seepage, and rivers. the only closed system is if you make one of those wine fermenter biospheres, and even there its open to energy coming in via light the second law will keep applying
- bell-cot 5mo agoYes - but at current rates, it won't take anything like an actual generation to get substantially worse.
- mikey_p 5mo agoIs anyone actually irrigating wheat?? Edit: I'm being downvoted because someone found a source that says 3% of winter wheat in Montana is irrigated. My point still stands, while yes some percentage of wheat is irrigated it is extremely uncommon.
- pragmatic 5mo agoNo.
- burnerburner000 5mo ago[dead]
- tdb7893 5mo agoIt seems like most significant agriculture extension programs have advice for irrigating wheat, so presumably someone is doing it, even if it isn't common. If drought is reducing yields significantly I wonder if the amount is going to start growing. E.g. https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/considerations_for_raising_irrigated_wheat https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/considerations_for_raising_irr... https://extensionpubs.unl.edu/publication/ec731/2009/pdf/view/ec731-2009.pdf https://extensionpubs.unl.edu/publication/ec731/2009/pdf/vie... https://ucanr.edu/blog/uc-small-grains-blog/article/irrigation-wheat-and-other-small-grains-drought-year https://ucanr.edu/blog/uc-small-grains-blog/article/irrigati... https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/considerations_for_raising_irrigated_wheat https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/considerations_for_raising_irr... https://waterquality.colostate.edu/documents/factsheets/00556.pdf https://waterquality.colostate.edu/documents/factsheets/0055...
- shagie 5mo agohttps://kswheat.com/david-leonard-put-wheat-under-pivot-win-kansas-irrigated-wheat-category-2022-national-wheat-yield https://kswheat.com/david-leonard-put-wheat-under-pivot-win-... > Leonard’s operation near Goodland is a diversified operation with a mix of dryland and irrigated acres in addition to a small cow-calf operation. Encouraged by his PlainsGold seed rep, he entered the yield contest for the first time in 2022. His entry came from a field planted to certified seed wheat that followed pinto beans, which provided some moisture profile. > “Our soil will hold about 1.8 inches of moisture per foot,” Leonard said. “So, if we have six feet of subsoil, we have some gas in the tank. We had some of that last year, but we don’t have that this year.” > From planting until harvest, the field only received 6.2 inches of moisture, so Leonard pumped another 10 inches of water to help the wheat crop along. He also furtigated nitrogen through the pivot to further boost yields. The widespread drought conditions last growing season meant it was too dry for even the weeds to grow, so he did not apply any fungicide. --- https://api.mountainscholar.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/9a987bd3-5641-4f0d-be95-7943ae648268/content https://api.mountainscholar.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/9... Page 6: > The four major grain crops grown in Kansas (corn, soybean, grain sorghum and wheat) have experienced upward trends in yield (Figures 7 – 10). Corn yield has had the most dramatic increase for both irrigated and dryland production with irrigated corn yield improvements of approximately 2.5 bushels/acre for the each year of record, This result is more than twice the dryland rate of 1.1 bushels/acre. The average irrigated yield increase is 0.59 bu/ac, 0.60 bu/ac and 0.31 bu/ac for soybean, grain sorghum and wheat respectfully. Irrigated yield increase trends have been larger than for dryland. Page 8 figure 10 shows the yield trends for wheat - both irrigated and dryland since 1974.
- redsocksfan45 5mo ago[dead]
- evanjrowley 5mo agoSame region all the new data centers are being built. Unfortunately, humans can't eat data like they can wheat.
- Jgrubb 5mo ago"All the new data centers" are being built everywhere.
- dgellow 5mo agoThey are planned everywhere, if they are actually being built is a different story
- jeffbee 5mo agoLargely not. Data center people aren't idiots. They site their projects in places with water and power, or if not power then at least gas. I don't think you'd be able to point out a project that actually exists and is competing for a scarce local water resource.
- bluGill 5mo agoData centers don't use much water on the scale of things. The numbers look big in isolation, but most people have no idea how much water a country really needs and isolating the numbers makes data centers look bad.
- jeffbee 5mo agoAbsolutely. It's tiring to squeeze all the facts into every post, though.
- wholinator2 5mo agoBut aren't they trying to build data centers outside of smaller localities, where they do exist somewhat in isolation? Water cannot just be transported thousands of miles, water itself exists in isolated pockets. Straining the water resources of towns is a problem! You can't just say "the US is big so if you look at the maximum possible widest numbers, it looks small". You have to look at the actual human impact. I think data centers look bad because of the human impacts that I've seen, not some highly abstracted spreadsheet.
- btbuildem 5mo ago> growers expanded plantings of soybeans, which require less fertilizer than grains like corn and wheat It's not the drought per se, it's input costs. Farmers are favouring crops that need less nitrogen and potassium. Commodities have responded accordingly.
- embedding-shape 5mo ago> growers expanded plantings of soybeans A year ago China stopped buying soybeans from the US is seems ("China Bought $12.6 Billion in U.S. Soybeans Last Year. Now, It’s $0." - https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/business/china-soybean-sales-farmers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/business/china-soybean-sa...), was that resumed, or who are all these new soybeans going to? Is it all for national use instead of export?
- Forgeties79 5mo agoChina has a tendency to shift to self-reliance or importing from more pliable neighborswhenever they execute policies like that. So even if they’re buying again, I highly doubt it is at the same rate it once was
- cogman10 5mo agoI expect other nations are still consuming US soybeans. China stopped because it was particularly negatively targeted by US tariff policy. But make no mistake, it has caused problems for farmers. The report from my small hometown farmers is that everything, except for beef, is down right now while the prices of inputs like fertilizer are high. Some of the farmers in my hometown have already sold their land to megacorp farmers in response because they simply can't survive.
- fullstop 5mo agoIt wouldn't surprise me, at all, if the soybeans rotted away with no consumers.
- 5mo ago
- ericpauley 5mo agoTitle claims "due to plains drought" but the article text largely attributes this to increased planting of soy for its lower fertilizer requirements (related to Strait of Hormuz).
- fullstop 5mo agoHas the USA's potash supply been reduced due to strained relations with Canada? They are our top supplier, by far.
- koverstreet 5mo agoAre you forgetting the nitrogen? :)
- bluGill 5mo agoThe US provides a lot of its own supply there.
- colechristensen 5mo agoNitrogen is pulled out of the air which is free but the process requires hydrogen which is acquired from disassembled methane, the price of which is a significant contributor.
- 8note 5mo agoUS shale oil notably has a lot of natural gas - methane. the methane isnt the issue, building and operating the processing plants is
- colechristensen 5mo agoHard to find exact data but 60-80% of the cost to manufacture ammonia comes from the cost of natural gas. Feel free to look a price charts for both to see the correlation.
- belzebub 5mo agoWhy do we have a drought USDA?
- superxpro12 5mo agoWell if we dont test for it, then is there really a drought???
- 9rx 5mo agoLittle to no rain.
- Tangurena2 5mo agoFarmers have been pumping water out of the Ogallala Aquifer far faster than the aquifer has been absorbing rainwater. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer
- eightysixfour 5mo agoWestern hay prices are as much as double what they were last year for feed: https://www.reddit.com/r/homestead/comments/1ta64d0/breaking_hay_prices_explode_to_483ton_as_western/ https://www.reddit.com/r/homestead/comments/1ta64d0/breaking...
- qrios 5mo agoWhen I read this thread, "Interstellar" immediately comes to mind. Thanks for sharing!
- Brybry 5mo agoI'd take that source with a grain of salt. The website's domain was created 3 months ago (site doesn't even have any entries in the wayback machine) and supposedly pulls from USDA AMS data but when I looked at reports[1][2] I didn't see double prices compared to last year. Some prices even looked lower? But it was hard to make comparisons because of report structure and data disparity. [1] CA Hay: https://mymarketnews.ams.usda.gov/viewReport/2904 https://mymarketnews.ams.usda.gov/viewReport/2904 [2] CO Hay: https://mymarketnews.ams.usda.gov/viewReport/2905 https://mymarketnews.ams.usda.gov/viewReport/2905
- gbear605 5mo agoFrom the hay prices I’ve seen recently as a consumer, they’re up by like 20-30%, but not double.
- eightysixfour 5mo agoYou may be right, but I think we'd need to wait for another report or two to be sure because the reddit post is arguing that this happened in the last few days and their statement > Last week I posted about how hay buyers and sellers were frozen, waiting for each other to move first. Here's an update.... looks generally correct. On the 2025 CO hay report you can see that last year in this period, there were 22k tons sold. This year, there were 9750 tons sold. Last year[1], the week before (4/28/2025) there were only 400 tons reported sold. Seems like there is an annual inflection point that causes prices to settle, and it wouldn't be in the report linked just yet. Meanwhile, if you do a news search for hay prices, you can see plenty of articles from different sources discussing how the drought is driving prices higher, so it appears to be at least a common discussion point. [1] CO Hay 2025: https://esmis.nal.usda.gov/sites/default/release-files/r207tp37s/5138md317/0p0985575/AMS_2905.PDF https://esmis.nal.usda.gov/sites/default/release-files/r207t...
- jmyeet 5mo agoThis is about China. The timing of this article coming out during the Trump-China summit is no accident. The article beat around the bush (pun intended) that the real issue here is that China stopped buying (or seriously cut back) US agricultural products (particularly soy) because of tariffs imposed on China last year that got to over 100% at one point. China now buys significantly more soy from Argentina instead. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz is another big factor here as fertilizer prices have massively gone up. Diesel is more expensive too. Many crops this planting season (in the northern hemisphere) haven't been fertilized like they would normally and it's too late now so that will absolutely impact food prices later this year. The Global South will be disproportionately affected. Lastly, the continued Russia-Ukraine war continues to impact Ukraine's wheat crops. Ukraine is (or was?) often called the "bread basket of Europe" because it was such a significant wheat grower and exporter. We (the world) are genuinely going to have much more expensive food prices later this year and, in some places, there will be genuine famine.
- bluGill 5mo agoYou are mostly correct, but note that China has resumed buying US soy beans in the past few months.
- alt227 5mo ago> This is about China. From what your saying it sounds more about Tariffs
- CGMthrowaway 5mo agoIDK how many people in China are laser focused on agweb.com for their geopolitical negotiations. The data comes from USDA's WASDE report which is released every month, between the 8th and 12th. There is no "timing," and people were talking about the expect wheat harvest this season for weeks ahead of Tue's report anyway
- jmyeet 5mo agoChinese citizens aren't the target audience. The US administration is. This article is basically saying "please, Mr President, get China to buy more of our agricultural goods". The "when" of media coverage is just as important as the "what" and the "when" here is while the president is currently in China. If you want to think that's irrelevant, that's a choice I guess.
- YesThatTom2 5mo ago“Dictators stay in power until there are food riots” is what every sociologist I know tells me. I hope the “riots” are in the form of voting.
- maerF0x0 5mo agoI've always wondered why we consider it ok when an illegitimate, unjust, or unhinged government uses violence, but not when people on the right side of history? Like yeah don't go smash up small businesses and murder innocent bystanders. But if Trump refuses to leave at the end of his term, I hope someone has the courage to use minimum required violence to remove him.
- Joel_Mckay 5mo ago>violence Doesn't escape despotism cycles, and just makes a country a worse place to live. Historically, without respect for people you disagree with, it only gets worse for everyone. This lesson was simply forgotten by many. =3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdVB-R6Duso https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdVB-R6Duso
- Joel_Mckay 5mo agoThis book discuses why regimes are stable. Notably starving disconnected illiterate peoples rarely change things without military cooperation. "The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics" (Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Alastair Smith) https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1610391845 https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Po... The CGP Grey youtube short is an entertaining summary of the books subjects: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs >in the form of voting. The current US representatives were voted into, out-of, and back into power. It is interesting, but will likely remain stable. =3
- s1artibartfast 5mo agoIf you enjoy pistachios, eat eat them this year, because you wont see them next year. California produces 70% of global supply and an indian summer this year ruined the crop. Many farmers aren't even planning to harvest. 20% of the remaining global supply comes from Iran, which has its own issues of drought and war.
- 8note 5mo agomy costco pistachios were grown in turkiye?
- s1artibartfast 5mo agoThat is the remaining 10%
- lukasb 5mo agoMy fault: last weekend I told my wife during a discussion of climate change "hey, at least we don't have to worry that the rains won't come and the crops will fail."
- _DeadFred_ 5mo agoI live in the middle of nowhere. The farmers here wheat crop failed last year, and DOGE prevented their insurance claims. They chose to grow oats this year because it's safer for them without the insurance backstop.
- downrightmike 5mo agoThey voted for this, but everyone suffers, just like they wanted
- mannanj 5mo agoWhat lies abundant. Seems like much of our media is just plain openly hostile to truth now. Our unaccountable leaders may have modeled and normalized this for us.
- andijati2 5mo ago[dead]
- bamboozled 5mo agoAmerica was great in 1972 so this is just more evidence America has become great again . Congratulations:)
- burnt-resistor 5mo agoSeveral European economists I follow on YT suggest Americans and Asians should prep now for a temporary food supply chain shortage, famine, and/or collapse resulting from the knock-on effects of petroleum and urea market disruptions.