Bread from wheat field to loaf: grown, graded, shipped, milled

By Alykhan Virani. Published 2026-10-10.

Part 3 of the series From source to store.

In 2025 a pound of white pan bread sold for an average of $1.87 in US stores (the annual mean of the monthly prices ERS reports), and the farm value of its ingredients was 6.0 cents, or 3.2% of the price (USDA ERS price spreads). That share was 6.5% in 2022 and 3.6% in 2024 (USDA ERS). Wheat is only part of that farm value, because bread also holds other farm-grown ingredients, and the rest of the price covers processing and marketing (USDA ERS, Amber Waves, August 2018). “Wheat” here means wheat grain unless the text says flour. For who grows and buys it, see the earlier post.

How it is grown

Wheat comes in two seasons. Winter wheat is sown in the fall and harvested the next summer, and spring wheat is sown from mid-March through May and harvested in late summer or fall (USDA ERS). The site’s harvest calendar, built on USDA Foreign Agricultural Service crop calendars, shows the United States sowing winter wheat in September and October and cutting it in June and July. Canada sows spring wheat in April and May and harvests in August and September.

Output grew through yield, not land. Harvested area averaged 218.6 million hectares in 2022 to 2024, up 0.2% on ten years earlier, while yield rose 13.8% to 3.66 tonnes per hectare, for 800.3 million tonnes (FAOSTAT, three-year averages).

A combine harvester cuts the crop and then threshes, separates and cleans the grain. Wheat can be cut at 20% moisture, but many farmers wait until it dries to 15% or less, because drying and market discounts cost money while a longer wait costs yield through shatter in the field (University of Arkansas Extension). The harvest moves north: on 18 July 2025 Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas were winding down, while Colorado was 47% harvested and Nebraska 35% (US Wheat Associates).

Wheat is sold by class. In the United States, according to the USDA ERS wheat sector page (accessed October 2026), hard red winter makes up about 40% of production, hard red spring about 25%, soft red winter 15% to 20%, white wheat 12% to 17% and durum 3% to 6% (USDA ERS). Hard red winter is mainly bread flour, soft red winter goes to cakes, cookies and crackers, and durum goes to pasta (USDA ERS). Protein tracks the class. Among 2024-crop samples, hard red winter averaged 11.9% protein, hard red spring 14.1%, northern durum 14.3% and soft red winter 9.8% (US Wheat Associates, 18 July 2025; simple sample averages at 12% moisture). The gluten-forming proteins sit in the kernel’s starchy endosperm (American Society of Baking).

From field to elevator

Trucks carry the crop from the combine to a farm bin or an elevator, a commercial store that buys, dries, holds and ships grain. On 1 December 2024 the United States had 7,922 off-farm storage facilities with 11.8 billion bushels of capacity for grain and oilseeds, and on-farm storage capacity was 13.6 billion bushels (USDA NASS, January 2025).

Moisture decides how long grain keeps. Oklahoma State extension puts the limit for binning wheat at 13% moisture, because normal aeration is too slow to dry wetter grain, and notes that stored-grain insects thrive at 24 to 29 degrees Celsius (Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service, BAE-1101, 2010 edition). See moisture content.

Then comes grading. A representative sample is about 2,500 grams, never under 2,000, drawn by licensed samplers with probes from trucks and railcars, while export ship and barge lots go through mechanical diverter samplers (USDA FGIS Grain Inspection Handbook, Book I, July 2020). The grade “U.S. No. 2 Hard Red Winter” has two parts. The class, hard red winter, covers all varieties of that type, one of eight classes in the standards (7 CFR 810.2202). The grade, No. 2, requires at least 58.0 pounds per bushel (26.3 kilograms) of test weight, and at most 4.0% damaged kernels, 0.7% foreign material, 5.0% shrunken and broken kernels and 2.0% of contrasting classes. Wheat that is musty, sour or heating is Sample grade (7 CFR 810.2204). The 2024 hard red winter crop samples averaged 61.4 pounds per bushel and graded No. 1 (US Wheat Associates, 18 July 2025).

Elevators also blend. At an export elevator each lot is weighed, sampled and held in a shipping bin during grading, and grain that fails returns to the elevator by belt; an operator blends wheat from different bins to meet the contract grade (USDA AMS, Export Elevator Overview).

Moving it

In 2022, 58% of US wheat bound for export ports moved by rail, 32% by barge and 10% by truck (USDA AMS modal share report, September 2024). One barge load is 1,500 short tons, equal to 15 jumbo hopper railcars or 58 large semi-trailers (USDA AMS Grain Transportation Report glossary). In 2023 the New Orleans region shipped 25% of US wheat and 63.4 million tons of grain and oilseeds, the most of any port in a Rosario Board of Trade ranking, ahead of Santos in Brazil (62.3 million) and Rosario in Argentina (42.4 million); the unit is as reported (Rosario Board of Trade, as reported in USDA AMS Grain Transportation Report, 6 June 2024).

In normal years about 80% of Argentina’s grain, meal and oil exports leave from the Up-River Paraná ports around Rosario (Bolsa de Comercio de Rosario, 2021 article). Rouen handles 50% of French maritime grain exports and on average 15.5% of EU grain exports to non-EU countries (HAROPA PORT fact sheet, undated). Ukraine’s Black Sea grain corridor ran through Odesa, Chornomorsk and Yuzhny in 2022 and 2023 (UN, Black Sea Grain Initiative).

Ocean bulk carriers are sized by deadweight tons. The USDA AMS glossary lists Handymax at 35,000 to 50,000 deadweight metric tons and Panamax at 50,000 to 80,000 in one entry and 60,000 to 70,000 in another (USDA AMS Grain Transportation Report glossary).

The trade tables show the lanes. In 2024 Egypt was Russia’s biggest wheat customer at $3.06 billion, 33.8% of Russia’s wheat export value, and Russia, Ukraine and Romania together supplied 86.4% of Egypt’s $5.20 billion of wheat imports (CEPII BACI). The United States sold $1.07 billion to Mexico, 15.9% of its exports, Australia sold $953 million to China, 16.8% of its exports, and Nigeria bought 66.1% of its $2.10 billion of wheat from Lithuania, Poland and Latvia as recorded by CEPII BACI, which can include re-exports (CEPII BACI). See Egypt, Russia and Ukraine.

The site’s benchmark, US hard red winter at the Gulf of Mexico, was $347 a tonne in September 2026, a No. 2 hard red winter export price at the US Gulf (World Bank Pink Sheet). The Pink Sheet does not state an Incoterm; an FOB price leaves out ocean freight and insurance and a CIF price adds them (see FOB, CIF and Incoterms).

Milling, baking and getting it to you

A kernel is 83% endosperm, 14.5% bran and 2.5% germ by weight. White flour is endosperm alone, and whole wheat flour keeps all three (American Society of Baking). Break rolls crack the kernel and release endosperm, sifters separate the bran, and reduction rolls grind the endosperm to flour (BakeInfo NZ). The share of grain that becomes flour is the extraction rate. Straight-grade flour runs 75% to 76% for hard wheat and 72% for soft wheat, against 100% for whole wheat (American Society of Baking).

Flour exports (HS 1101) were worth $5.9 billion in 2024, 10.3% of the $57.5 billion of wheat grain exports (HS 1001), and weighed 13.3 million tonnes against 194.3 million, or 6.8% (CEPII BACI; see producing, exporting and processing).

In the sponge and dough method, 60% to 90% of the flour is fermented for 2 to 8 hours at 24 to 29 degrees Celsius before a final mix of 8 to 16 minutes; the American Society of Baking calls it popular in small bakeries and largely replaced in commercial ones by faster systems. The Chorleywood process, developed in Britain, replaces long fermentation with 2 to 5 minutes of mixing at 11 to 13 watt-hours per kilogram, 5 to 8 times the energy of a straight-dough mix (American Society of Baking).

Retail adds the rest. White pan bread cost $0.93 a pound in 2000 and $1.87 in 2025, a nominal rise of 101%, while its farm value went from 3.1 cents to 6.0 cents a pound (USDA ERS price spreads).

Where the chain is thin

The Black Sea matters because Russia and Ukraine together sold 24.1% of the world’s wheat export value in 2024 (CEPII BACI). From 1 August 2022 to 17 July 2023 the UN-brokered Black Sea Grain Initiative moved 32.9 million metric tons of food commodities to 45 countries in 1,004 voyages by 730 vessels (UN). Ships bound for the Mediterranean pass the Bosporus, about 700 meters wide at its narrowest (WorldAtlas), where the 1936 Montreux Convention gives merchant vessels freedom of passage in time of peace (Montreux Convention).

Rivers are another. In October 2022 low water cut loads per southbound barge by 20% to 27% and barges per tow by 17% to 38% (American Commercial Barge Line, as reported by USDA), and shipping a ton from St. Louis to the Gulf cost $90.45 a ton by barge on 4 October 2022, up 218% on a year earlier (USDA AMS Grain Transportation Report, 6 October 2022). On the Paraná, the gauge fell to minus 33 centimeters in August 2021, the lowest since December 1970 (Bolsa de Comercio de Rosario).

Rail carried the largest share, 58%, of US wheat to export ports in 2022 (USDA AMS modal share report, September 2024). In the week ending 13 October 2022, bids for November delivery of shuttle railcars averaged $1,700 per car above tariff, $1,400 more than the 2019 to 2021 average for that week (USDA AMS Grain Transportation Report, 20 October 2022).

Export bans can close a door. India moved wheat exports from free to prohibited on 13 May 2022, with exceptions for shipments backed by letters of credit issued by that date and for government-approved sales to other countries (DGFT Notification 06/2015-2020; PIB, 14 May 2022). After the 2010 drought, Russia’s wheat crop was 41.5 million tonnes, over 20 million below 2008 and 2009, Russia banned wheat exports on 5 August 2010, and global wheat prices rose 20% in both July and August (Hunt et al., Weather and Climate Extremes, 2021). See export ban.

Rain at harvest lowers test weight: the 2025 hard red winter crop averaged 60.0 pounds per bushel against 61.4 for the 2024 final (US Wheat Associates, 18 July 2025), and rewetted kernels swell and lower test weight (University of Arkansas Extension).

Follow the data

Start with the wheat commodity page and the wheat price history. The trade flows report lists the largest wheat corridors, and the harvest calendar shows when each country cuts. For terms, see incoterms, chokepoint and freight rate.

Prices are monthly averages of benchmark quotes and lag the market. Nothing here is investment advice.

Prices are monthly benchmark averages that lag the market; informational only, not investment advice.