U.S. farmers are expected to produce 1.38 billion bushels of winter wheat this year, according to the Crop Production report released today by USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS). In NASS’s first winter wheat production forecast for 2025, the nation’s production is expected to increase 2% from 2024. As of May 1, the U.S. yield is expected to average 53.7 bushels per acre, up 2.0 bushels from last year’s average of 51.7 bushels per acre.
Hard Red Winter production is forecast at 784 million bushels, up 2% from a year ago. Soft Red Winter, at 345 million bushels, is expected to increase 1% from 2024. White Winter, at 2.53 million bushels, is up 7% from last year. Of the White Winter production, 20.6 million bushels are Hard White and 232 million bushels are Soft White.
Oklahoma Farm Report’s Stevie White spoke with USDA State Statistician Troy Marshall on the heels of this month’s report to hear the numbers for Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas.
“Last week, in the state of Oklahoma, we had a group come together with OSU extension with feed and grain to talk about what that looks like,” Marshall shared. “This is based on that May 1st report of what farmers thought they would see when they got out in the wheat field for harvest.” He also highlighted the number of changes since the first day of the month, including record amounts of rainfall in many areas.
For Oklahoma, the projection for harvest acres is down 3.5% to 2.75 million acres; however, a 1 bushel per acre increase over last year is expected – 39 bushels this year over 38 in 2024. “That gives us an overall production of about 107.25 million bushels when we are said and done within that,” Marshall added. “That’s about 99 percent of where we were last year for Oklahoma.”
Marshall also detailed the wheat production numbers for Kansas and Texas, so be sure to click the listen bar at the top of the page to listen to the complete conversation. He also discussed the remaining hay stocks at the end of the season for all three states.
In Oklahoma, carry-over hay stocks were 20%, down about 5% from last year. “Hay producers used quite a bit of the hay stocks that they had here in Oklahoma,” Marshall stated.
Texas’s ending hay stocks were 7% higher than last year, and Kansas’s were 2% lower.
View the National Crop Production Report here.
