Wheat
CME Group - CBOT
The bread grain whose price is now set on the Black Sea, not the Great Plains.
Top Producers
share of 2025/26 production
Top Consumers
share of 2025/26 consumption
Main Uses
global wheat use by category, 2025/26 (USDA)
Top Exporters
share of 2025/26 exports
Top Importers
share of 2025/26 imports
Global production
roughly 800 million tonnes
as of 2025
Largest exporter
Russia, roughly 45 to 50 million tonnes
as of 2025
Black Sea share of world trade
roughly one third
as of 2025
All-time futures high
above $13.50 per bushel (March 2022)
as of 2025
Largest importer
Egypt
as of 2025
Wheat feeds more people than any other crop, with global production around 800 million tonnes, and it is the most politically sensitive commodity in the world: bread prices have toppled governments from 18th-century France to the Arab Spring of 2011. The benchmark future is CBOT soft red winter wheat, but the price-setting supply now comes from somewhere else entirely. Russia is the world's largest wheat exporter at roughly 45 to 50 million tonnes a year, about a quarter of world trade, and together with Ukraine and Kazakhstan the Black Sea region ships roughly a third of all traded wheat. Moscow's export taxes, informal price floors, and harvest outcomes matter more to the world wheat price than anything that happens in Kansas.
The market learned that lesson brutally in February and March 2022. Russia's invasion of Ukraine closed the ports of the world's largest exporting region overnight, and CBOT wheat went limit-up day after day to an all-time high above $13.50 per bushel, surpassing the 2008 food-crisis record. The Black Sea Grain Initiative of July 2022 reopened a corridor for Ukrainian exports until Russia withdrew from the deal in July 2023; Ukraine then improvised a coastal shipping route that restored most of its volume. Prices spent 2024 and 2025 back near $5 to $6 per bushel as consecutive large Russian harvests rebuilt the surplus, demonstrating how quickly wheat's war premium decays when the grain keeps flowing.
Wheat is really several markets in one. CBOT trades soft red winter wheat used for cakes and crackers; KC hard red winter (also a CME Group contract) is the bread wheat of the southern Plains; Minneapolis hard red spring is the high-protein blending wheat; and Euronext milling wheat in Paris prices the EU crop. The spreads between the classes trade actively on protein scarcity. Because wheat grows on every inhabited continent and is harvested somewhere in the world in every month of the year, it carries lower weather concentration risk than corn or soybeans, but its buyers, North Africa and the Middle East above all, are the most price-sensitive and politically exposed in the grain trade.
How It Trades
| Venue | CME Group - Chicago Board of Trade (plus KC hard red winter and Minneapolis spring wheat; Euronext Paris for EU milling wheat) |
| Benchmark contract | CBOT Soft Red Winter Wheat futures (W, electronic ZW) |
| Contract size | 5,000 bushels (roughly 136 tonnes) |
| Price terms | US cents per bushel |
| Settlement | Physical delivery via shipping certificates at approved warehouses, primarily on the Ohio and Mississippi river systems |
| Typical curve | Persistent carrying-charge contango in surplus years, often near full financial carry; inverts in supply shocks such as 2022 |
| Liquidity | Deep and liquid; CBOT wheat trades roughly 100,000 contracts a day, with KC wheat about half that |
Where It Trades
approximate share of global futures volume, 2025
Supply and Demand
Top producers
- China: roughly 140 million tonnes, consumed domestically
- European Union: roughly 120 to 135 million tonnes
- India: roughly 110 to 115 million tonnes, mostly domestic
- Russia: roughly 82 to 90 million tonnes, the world's largest exporter
- United States: roughly 50 million tonnes
- Ukraine: roughly 22 to 28 million tonnes despite the war
- Australia and Canada: roughly 30 million tonnes each, major exporters
Production is dispersed, but exportable surplus is concentrated: the Black Sea region supplies roughly a third of world trade, which is why Russian harvest weather and export policy set the global price.
Top consumers
- China
- India
- European Union
- Egypt (the world's largest importer)
- Indonesia, Turkey, and North African states (major importers)
Major uses
- Milling into flour for bread, noodles, and baked goods
- Livestock feed when wheat prices fall near corn
- Seed and industrial uses (starch, gluten)
Fifty Years of Genetic Advances
| Era | Advance | How it changed the field |
|---|---|---|
| 1960s | Green Revolution semi-dwarf varieties | Norman Borlaug bred short-strawed wheat carrying Rht dwarfing genes that resisted lodging and roughly doubled yields, averting famine in Asia. |
| 1980s-1990s | Marker-assisted breeding | DNA markers let breeders stack disease and quality genes faster, improving rust resistance and milling quality without transgenics. |
| Roughly 2003 | Clearfield wheat (imazamox tolerance) | BASF herbicide tolerance bred via chemical mutagenesis, not gene insertion, so it stays non-GMO and clears export markets. |
| 2004 | Roundup Ready wheat shelved | Monsanto withdrew its glyphosate-tolerant wheat before launch after milling and export buyers, especially in Europe and Japan, refused GMO wheat. |
| Roughly 2018 | CoAXium (quizalofop tolerance) | A second non-GMO mutagenesis herbicide system from Colorado State, Albaugh, and Limagrain widened chemical weed-control options. |
| 2020s | Gene-edited and CRISPR wheat | Edited lines for disease resistance and lower asparagine (less acrylamide in baking) are in field trials, regulated apart from transgenic GMOs. |
Wheat is the major exception among row crops: there is no genetically modified wheat sold commercially anywhere. Gains came from conventional breeding, mutagenesis, and, lately, gene editing.
US Average Yield: Wheat (all wheat)
bushels per acre; All-wheat yields stayed near 13 bushels into the 1930s, then roughly quadrupled on semi-dwarf varieties, fertilizer, and better agronomy, passing 50 bushels in recent years. Source: USDA NASS, Crop Production Historical Track Records (April 2026)
What Moves the Price
- Russian crop weather, export volumes, and export tax policy
- Black Sea war risk: strikes on ports, shipping insurance, corridor politics
- Northern hemisphere winterkill, spring drought, and harvest rain quality damage
- Monthly USDA WASDE and International Grains Council balance sheets
- Import tenders from Egypt, Algeria, and Saudi Arabia, the cash market's visible demand signal
- Ruble and dollar exchange rates, which set Russian farmer selling incentives
- Indian export bans and stock policy, which periodically remove the residual supplier
- Class spreads: protein scarcity in hard wheats versus soft wheat surplus
Moments That Made the Market
1972
The Great Grain Robbery: Soviet buying of US wheat triggers a tripling of prices and reform of USDA reporting.
1980
The US grain embargo against the USSR fails to bite as other exporters fill the gap, a lasting lesson in sanctions leakage.
2008
Wheat leads the global food crisis; Minneapolis spring wheat trades above $24 per bushel on a protein squeeze.
2010
Russia bans wheat exports after a catastrophic heatwave; prices spike and food riots follow in importing countries.
2022
Russia invades Ukraine; CBOT wheat goes limit-up repeatedly to a record above $13.50 per bushel.
2023
Russia exits the Black Sea Grain Initiative in July; Ukraine improvises a coastal export corridor that keeps grain moving.
2024-2025
Back-to-back large Russian crops push wheat down near $5 per bushel, fully unwinding the war premium.
What Changed Since the 2010 Handbook Era
- Russia went from re-emerging exporter in 2010 to the dominant price-setter of world wheat, displacing the US Gulf as the benchmark origin.
- The February 2022 invasion of Ukraine produced the fastest wheat repricing in the contract's history and made war risk a permanent input.
- Export restrictions became routine policy tools: Russian export taxes, the 2010 Russian ban, and India's 2022 ban.
- Euronext Paris milling wheat grew into the hedging benchmark for the Atlantic basin alongside Chicago.
- Algorithmic and weather-model-driven trading compressed the market's reaction time to crop news from days to seconds.