The yardsticks have been put away, and the 2026 Wheat Quality Council’s Hard Winter Wheat Tour is in the books.
After two and a half days crossing the states of Kansas, Nebraska and Oklahoma and measuring the crop over 394 stops, tour participants estimated that the 2026 Kansas winter wheat crop has a potential average yield of 38.9 bushels per acre.
Considering their estimates of abandoned acres, the official tour projection for total wheat harvested in Kansas was 218 million bushels. This is slightly higher than the USDA-National Agricultural Statistics Service prediction of 214.6 million bushels from an average yield of 37 bpa, released May 12 and based on conditions observed May 1.
Aaron Harries, vice president of research for Kansas Wheat, said if it yields in the projected range, this crop will not be as bad as 2023, but it’s well below the 2025 crop.
“It all comes down to the abandonment number again,” Harries said. “USDA projected around 17% abandonment.”
Tour participants guessed abandonment will range from 15% to 20%, while in a normal year, the state might see 4% to 6% abandoned acres, he added.
Notes from the tour
Day 1 of the tour saw routes crossing the northern half of the state, driving from Manhattan to Colby, Kan., and making 187 stops. The calculated average yield of all cars was 38.3 bpa, according to Kansas Wheat, with the northern routes estimating a higher average of 39.2 bpa and the routes to the middle of the state estimating 36 bpa.
This year’s crop has weathered severe drought stress, freeze damage and wheat streak mosaic virus complex, according to Romulo Lollato, Kansas State University Research and Extension wheat specialist. He reported via X that along the route he drove through Barton County, many fields may be zeroed out for insurance.
Harries reported from the Day 1 routes that his car observed main original tillers that had died from extreme weather followed by drought in March, and the later freeze events resulted in white heads in the field.
Day 2 of the tour took the cars on routes from Colby to Wichita, Kan., across the western and southern parts of the state and into Oklahoma. The 60 wheat scouts on the tour made 117 stops, with a calculated average yield for all cars of 39.3 bpa, according to Kansas Wheat. The wheat is at an advanced stage, with much of the crop headed.
Lollato reported that the growing conditions for this crop were anything but ideal.
“The combination of drought, freeze damage and wheat streak mosaic virus created some of the toughest conditions we have seen in years,” Lollato noted.
The likelihood of abandonment rose as some tour participants reported fields with short, drought-stressed wheat with only 5- to 10-bushel potential. Some Day 2 routes, however, were able to see fields following fallow ground that had potential to hit the 30- to 40-bushel range.
The progress of the crop is weeks ahead of schedule, with combines usually rolling in Kansas fields by Memorial Day if there’s wheat to be harvested. Lollato reported via X that Barber County wheat was already at the late soft dough stage and maturing fast, while a field in Harper County was only days away from harvest if hot and dry conditions stick around.
Day 3 saw the tour driving from Wichita back to Manhattan in the morning, with the final tour estimate released over lunch. The tour reported 30 stops through central Kansas on Day 3, with an average yield estimate of 39.7 bpa.
Harries said improved wheat genetics explains why there’s a crop standing in the field at all, despite the extreme drought and other challenges.
“The better genetics we have, you can have like an 8-inch-tall wheat plant produce a head because it’s been bred to produce grain,” he said.
However, that plant is going to be too short to be harvested with a combine, leading to abandoned acres.
“Most of the main original tillers were killed by that March freeze,” Harries said, adding that he saw freeze damage across the whole state in some form. “The wheat then set up those secondary tillers. Those secondary tillers are forming the head, but they’ve had to do it without much water. So, the odds have just been stacked against it from the beginning.
“It’s amazing to me that the plant still did what it did,” he noted. “And I think that’s still a tip of the hat to the wheat breeders.”
Findings in other states
Royce Schaneman, executive director of the Nebraska Wheat Board, reported that the state’s farmers estimate that Nebraska’s crop might make 28 bpa on average, which would result in a 16.2 million-bushel crop for the state. While it was the state’s smallest-planted acreage in some time, farmers were able to get good stand establishment last fall, Schaneman reported. However, drought crept in through the winter, and farmers are reporting heavy abandonment of acres.
A report from Colorado Wheat shares a similar story of drought hitting the crop hard, resulting in an estimated average yield of 21 bpa for a 33.6 million-bushel crop in the state.
Dennis Schoenhals with the Oklahoma Wheat Growers Association reported the group’s estimate of about 2.06 million acres to harvest, with an estimated average of 23 bpa, compared with the 39 bpa last year. That would put the state’s crop at about 47.8 million bushels.
Minimal moisture at green-up, along with unprecedented temperature swings and hail damage, have severely impacted the 2026 crop, Schoenhals said. Still, combines were beginning to roll in southern Oklahoma as of May 13.
Winter wheat crop projected to be smallest in 61 years
USDA-NASS released its U.S. Winter Wheat Production report May 12, as the Wheat Quality Council’s Hard Winter Wheat Tour kicked off.
The USDA production forecast, using the same measuring methodology and formulas as the Wheat Tour, pegged the U.S. winter wheat crop at 1.05 billion bushels, which would be down 25% from last year and the smallest winter wheat harvest since 1965. That’s a projected average yield of 47.6 bpa, down from last year’s 54.9 bpa. And that’s over 22 million harvested acres, down 14% from last year.
Hard red winter wheat was forecast to reach just 515 million bushels, down 36% from last year. Hard white winter wheat was forecast to reach just 8.03 million bushels.
Here are winter wheat yield estimates on an individual state basis:
Kansas. About 1 million fewer acres are set to be harvested than 2025, at 5.8 million acres, with an estimated yield of 37 bpa, down from last year’s 51 bpa, for a 214 million-bushel crop, down from the 346.8 million-bushel crop of 2025.
Colorado. About 1.6 million acres are set to be harvested, down from 1.87 million in 2025, with an estimated 21 bpa, down from the 38 bpa last year, for a 2026 crop of 33.6 million bushels, down by almost 45% from last year.
Nebraska. Just 580,000 acres are set to be harvested, with an average yield per acre of 28 bushels, for a production of 16.24 million bushels, almost half of what was harvested in 2025.
Oklahoma. About 2.3 million acres are set to be harvested, down slightly from 2025’s 2.8 million acres, with an average yield of 28 bpa, down from 38 bpa in 2025, for an estimated yield of 64.4 million bushels, down from 106.4 million bushels last year.
Kansas wheat crop battling Mother Nature
The 2026 Kansas crop had a favorable start, Romulo Lollato said in a K-State Extension report. The K-State Extension wheat specialist reported that timely moisture helped establish stands late last fall, and parts of the state also received decent moisture in the winter.
But then Mother Nature decided to throw all she had at the wheat crop, starting with an unseasonably warm winter. A warmer winter meant the crop did not go fully dormant and continued to grow and use up valuable soil moisture. Those soil moisture reserves are usually used in later grain production stages, Lollato said. That pushed the crop to about three weeks ahead of normal development.
“With the crop using more water, being further ahead in development and receiving less than normal precipitation, we started getting into much more drought-stress conditions throughout the crop,” he explained.
That also left the crop vulnerable to freeze damage in March and late April, when it was at elongation and flowering — two very critical and sensitive growth stages for wheat. Lollato said much of the state is losing primary tillers because of those March and April cold snaps.
Another freeze event in the first week of May may have caused sterility within developing wheat heads, further reducing potential grain yield, he said.
Kelsey Andersen Onofre, a K-State wheat pathologist, reported that leaf and strip rust also have affected the crop, with reports in south-central and southwest counties. The question for many farmers was whether they should apply fungicide to an already drought-stressed wheat crop.
Anderson Onofre said that as of May 12 for irrigated wheat with stronger yield potential, an application might be called for.
Ironically, not all of Kansas has been bone dry. Southeast, south-central and northeast Kansas have received more than enough moisture this spring to create humid and cool conditions optimal for fusarium head blight, or scab, to become a concern.
What could save the Kansas crop? Lollato pointed to moisture and cooler temperatures in the coming weeks, through the middle of May, as the crop struggles through grain fill.
Overall, the 2026 crop will show farmers just how resilient wheat can be when Mother Nature throws everything at it.