U.S. flour production totalled 21.3 million tonnes in 2025, down 0.9 per cent from 2024 levels, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

That is the smallest output in 14 years.

Things are trending differently in Canada, where mills produced 2.68 million tonnes of wheat flour in 2025, a 7.7 per cent increase over 2024 levels.

The Canadian National Millers Association was contacted for this story but did not respond in time to meet publication deadlines.

DTN lead analyst Rhett Montgomery thinks the slowdown in U.S. flour production is linked to a relatively recent fad.

“You continue to see a dietary move away from wheat,” he said.

Gluten intolerance is on the rise and so are wheat-free diets, but he isn’t ringing the alarm just yet.

“I don’t know if I’d be overly concerned,” Montgomery said during a recent DTN webinar.

“Bread and wheat have been the cornerstone of food and human consumption for thousands of years.”

Greg Horstmeier, DTN’s editor-in-chief, said what might be a cause for concern is the newly published Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which placed meat protein at the top of the pyramid and grains at the very bottom.

“It’s kind of a complete 180 from what we saw as a recommended food pyramid in the past,” he said.

“We’ll have to see how that changes things, whether that alters this (gluten-free) trend even more.”

WHY IT MATTERS: The dietary guidelines form the foundation of federal nutrition programs.

Horstmeier just returned from the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association’s annual convention.

“They were certainly happy with where meat is on that food pyramid,” he said.

The same can’t be said for the country’s millers, who in a recent press release called the new pyramid a “major shift” in the government’s approach to nutrition.

The guidelines de-emphasize whole grain consumption, calling for two to four servings a day compared to six to 11 servings in the original food pyramid introduced in 1992.

The guidelines also call for Americans to significantly reduce the consumption of highly processed refined carbohydrates, such as white bread, ready-to-eat or packaged breakfast meals, flour tortillas and crackers.

The document refers to refined grains as “sugar in disguise.”

The North American Millers’ Association (NAMA) said milled grains have been foundational to diets and health for centuries.

“NAMA urges the administration to look more closely at the beneficial role that fortified and enriched grains play in supplying critical nutrients like fiber, iron, and folate,” the organization said in the press release.

“Stigmatizing grain foods as highly processed undermines U.S. farmers and the high-quality, American-grown products they make possible.”

NAMA said it will be lobbying in support of all grain foods as the U.S. administration implements the new dietary guidelines in federal nutrition programs in the coming years.

The National Association of Wheat Growers called the guidelines “unintentionally confusing.”

“Wheat, wheat flour and foods made from wheat have been nutrient-rich, life-sustaining staples for tens of thousands of years and deserve clear, continued support as a central part of our nation’s diet,” NAWG said in a press release.

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Typically grain processors buy wheat three to four months in advance. But millers in Asia, including Indonesia, the world’s No. 2 wheat importer, are currently covered for about two months, and in the Middle East, most grain processors only have up to 45 days of supplies, two millers and a trader said.

The limited supply held by flour makers reduces their buffer against any production shortfalls that would trigger a rally in world prices, with global reserves already projected to reach a nine-year low, and fuel food inflation.

Farmers are hoarding their crop as global wheat prices Wv1 have slumped to their lowest since 2020 on solid output in Australia and Argentina and on improved growing conditions in major exporting regions including the U.S. and Black Sea region.

Wheat sales in Australia, the world’s fourth-biggest wheat exporter, are running at half the pace of last year at 500,000 tons contracted for November shipment.

At the same time, farmers in the U.S. and parts of the Black Sea region are storing grains gathered earlier this year in silos, hoping for higher prices, industry players said.

“Farmers are not happy with the current price being offered to them,” said a grains trader at an international trading firm in Singapore. “Farmer selling is very slow and it is not just Australia where the harvest is going on, it is the same situation in several exporting countries.”

Farmers hold out

In the physical market, Black Sea wheat with 12.5 per cent protein is being offered at $265 (C$369.25) a metric ton, including cost and freight (C&F) to Asia, down from $275 (C$383.19) a couple of weeks ago. New-crop Australian Premium White wheat is quoted near $280 (C$390.15) a ton, C&F, down from $290 (C$404.09).

“Prices have come off pretty dramatically. And personally, yeah, I am not selling any wheat at the current stage,” said Cordell Kress, a farmer from Rockland in the northwestern U.S. state of Idaho.

“If you are not needing money right away, it is kind of just, store it or hold on to it and hope for better prices or some other problem in Russia or Australia that will cause our prices to go up here domestically.”

Kress grows primarily soft white and hard red spring varieties of wheat.

In Australia, farmers are selling other crops instead.

“You have very strong sales of chickpeas for cash flow, and now we are getting strong sales of canola into the current prices,” said Rod Baker at Australian Crop Forecasters in Perth.

Tight supply ahead

Along with lack of supply from farmers, high interest rates have deterred millers from stocking up on wheat, leaving them exposed if prices rise.

“Lower supply cover does leave us vulnerable, but with high interest rates it doesn’t make sense to hold large stocks,” said one Dubai-based purchase manager at a flour mill in the Middle East.

Even with robust southern hemisphere production, global wheat stockpiles are projected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to shrink to a nine-year low by mid-next year.

“Wheat crops in the northern hemisphere still have to go through crucial development stages, any issues with the weather until harvest in July can trigger a rally in prices, given how tight the inventories are,” said Ole Houe, director of advisory services at IKON Commodities in Sydney.

In a slight reprieve for millers, attractive interest rates have prompted Russian farmers, who had been withholding their crops, to change tack and sell crops so they can deposit money in banks.

But top wheat exporter Russia might be running out of supplies. Moscow’s grain export quota, to be in place from February to June, could be nearly three times smaller than the 29 million tons a year earlier.

— Additional reporting by Peter Hobson in Canberra

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Winnipeg-based P+H said Tuesday the work already underway at its inland facility on Highway 21 just south of Kincardine will boost unloading speeds on grain deliveries and “expand storage capacity for farmers and customers in the region.”

P+H said the enhanced site “will be dedicated to serving the robust demand for high-quality wheat” from the company’s four southern Ontario flour mills.

The site upgrades, which are expected to be completed early next year, will be done in two phases, a company representative said Thursday via email.

The first phase will include automated systems to increase loading speeds. Those plans call for bigger receiving pits, a new dryer and wet storage system, a self-weighing kiosk for trucks, and a probing station, P+H said.

“Once completed, the new facility will offer faster unload times for producers eliminating lineups and enhancing food safety and quality control capabilities.”

Also, P+H said, self-loading capability for outbound trucks will be added, so as to “reduce wait times and improve overall efficiency.”

In the second phase, P+H said Thursday, the facility’s storage will be expanded to double its current capacity of 10,000 tonnes.

On top of the efficiency boost the upgrades will provide, “they will also benefit our customers by allowing them to unload their grain quickly and easily, reducing wait times and improving their overall experience,” Bruce Humphries, the Kincardine site’s general manager, said Tuesday in the company’s release. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

UPDATE, April 6: Article updated to include comment from P+H.

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As a food scientist, I study the effect of processing on the quality and safety of fruits and vegetables, including flour.

While no one is going to turn into a zombie from eating pancakes in real life, flour is often contaminated with fungi that can produce mycotoxins that make people sick. Proper processing and cooking, however, can generally keep you safe.

People have been eating bread made from wheat for approximately 14,000 years and cultivating wheat for at least 10,000 of those years.

In 1882, “drunken bread disease” was first documented in Russia, where people reported dizziness, headache, trembling hands, confusion and vomiting after eating bread. Long before that, Chinese peasants were reporting that eating pinkish wheat, a key sign of fusarium infection, caused them to feel ill.

Wheat, corn, rice and even fruits and vegetables can be infected with fungi as they grow in the field.

In “The Last of Us,” an epidemiologist theorizes that climate change is causing the fungus to mutate so it can infect humans. The unfortunate reality is that fungi have become more of a problem in recent years as warmer temperatures encourage their growth.

A 2017 study found that over 90 per cent of wheat and corn flour samples in Washington, D.C., contained live fungi, with aspergillus and fusarium predominant in wheat flour.

While sorting after harvest removes most contaminated wheat, small amounts of fungi can still make it into the flour.

The good news is that most fungi and other micro-organisms die at 71-77 degrees C. Pancakes are typically cooked to an internal temperature of 88-93 C. Other cakes and breads are cooked to internal temperatures anywhere from 82-99 C.

So, unlike in “The Last of Us,” as long as you bake or fry your dough, you’ll have killed the fungi.

The problem comes when people eat the flour without cooking it first, such as in raw cookie dough or licking the bowl clean. Both raw egg and raw flour can contain micro-organisms that make people sick.

Public health officials are most worried about E. coli and salmonella.

Most people don’t realize that the flour they buy at the store is raw flour that still contains live micro-organisms. Flour is rarely commercially treated to be safe to eat raw because consumers almost always cook flour-based foods.

While consumers can also attempt to heat-treat raw flour at home, this isn’t recommended because the flour may not be spread thinly enough to kill everything in it.

Some fungi and micro-organisms can create spores to survive adverse conditions. These spores can survive cooking, drying and freezing. There are even 4,500-year-old yeast spores that have been re-awakened and made into bread. These fungal spores rarely cause serious illness in people, except in those with weakened immune systems.

Chemicals can be added to food to stop fungal growth. These additives include sorbates, benzoates and propionates. However, you almost never see these additives in flour or pancake mix because fungi can’t grow in a dry powder. The fungi either grew on the wheat in the field or on the bread after it is baked. For that reason, you may see these additives in bread but not in a powdered mix.

Unfortunately, while normal cooking can kill the micro-organisms, it doesn’t destroy the mycotoxins. Eating mycotoxins can cause problems ranging from hallucinations to vomiting and diarrhea to cancer or death.

Some of the common mycotoxins found in grain include aflatoxins, deoxynivalenol, ochratoxin A and fumonisin B.

The oldest known case of mycotoxin poisoning is recorded as a disease called ergotism. Ergotism was mentioned in the Old Testament and has been reported in Western Europe since A.D. 800. It has even been suggested that the Salem witch trials were caused by an outbreak of ergotism that led its victims to hallucinate, though many have disputed this idea.

Ultimately, you don’t need to worry about eating pancakes. Farmers use many techniques to minimize fungal growth and remove moldy grain, and the government keeps a close eye on mycotoxin levels during crop production and storage.

Just make sure you cook your bakery products before eating, and don’t eat anything that has started to mold.

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India will allow food processors to import duty-free wheat against a commitment to export flour, the order said.

After a sudden rise in temperatures in mid-March shrivelled the wheat crop, India, the world’s second-biggest producer of the grain, banned overseas sales of the staple to secure supplies for its 1.4 billion people.

Wheat exports from India, also the world’s second biggest consumer of the staple, surged after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine hit supplies from the Black Sea region, resulting in a jump in global prices.

After banning wheat exports in May, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi restricted wheat flour exports in August to keep a lid on local prices.

The ban on wheat exports boosted demand for Indian wheat flour and the country’s flour exports jumped 200 per cent during April-July 2022 from a year earlier, lifting prices in the local market.

Close on the heels of the ban on overseas sales of wheat, India restricted rice exports as scant rains in the east affected planting of the most water-thirsty crop.

India’s protectionist measures have stoked fears of food shortages in some of the world’s most needy and vulnerable countries in Asia and Africa.

— Reporting for Reuters by Mayank Bhardwaj in New Delhi.

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Around 700,000 tonnes of wheat haven’t been released from customs, causing around 80 per cent of mills producing commercially sold bread, pasta, and other goods to “cease activity completely,” according to a Sept. 26 letter from the Federation of Egyptian Industries’ Chamber of Cereals to the supply minister.

While global wheat prices have fallen to their levels before the Russia-Ukraine war, prices in Egypt have risen due to depleting stocks, said Hussein Boudy, the chamber’s deputy head.

Egypt’s importers can no longer replenish their wheat stocks amid a dollar shortage caused by a rising import bill and decreasing tourism revenues from two of its largest markets — Ukraine and Russia. Loss of confidence in the Egyptian pound by investors also contributed to the shortage.

Wheat prices rose by around 10 per cent to 9,000 Egyptian pounds (C$618.42) per tonne in the last two weeks, Boudy said, while some traders reported steeper rises of up to 15 per cent. Flour also rose by 18 per cent to 11,500 pounds (C$790.15) per tonne, traders said.

“Bigger mills… used to store for a month and a half or two, but today some mills have stocks for seven to five days.” said Walid Diab, managing director of the Egyptian Millers Company. “We are in the red zone.”

Boudy added that one company had requested to purchase from the state grains buyer’s strategic reserves.

The government “will work on the issue” of declining private sector wheat stocks, Egypt’s supply minister told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference on Sunday.

Supply crunch

As foreign currency reserves dwindled, authorities introduced rules in March that restricted access to dollars for imports.

Although wheat and other strategic goods were exempted, private sector traders say wheat import payments have nearly stopped since September and no new contracts have been signed.

Imports of corn, poultry and soybeans have also been affected, traders say.

“Suppliers understand that there’s an issue with Egypt but now they don’t want to do new business until the old stocks are released,” said one local trader.

Since early September, only 2,000-3,000 tonnes of wheat got through customs, the Chamber’s letter said. Monthly private sector needs are estimated at around 450,000 tonnes, and, according to the Chamber, mills need the immediate release of around 300,000 tonnes.

The supply crunch has caused a spike in the price of bread in some bakeries, said Hesham Soliman, a Cairo-based private sector trader.

There were no signs of shortages at bakeries, said Attia Hammad of the Cairo Chamber of Commerce, though he said some bakeries could hike prices or decrease the weight of loaves because of rising costs.

Egypt, with a population of 104 million, is typically the world’s biggest wheat importer. Private sector imports recently overtook those by the state buyer, which purchases wheat for a large subsidized bread programme.

— Sarah El Safty is a Reuters commodities correspondent in Cairo.

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The decision may spur a broader global discussion about genetically modified wheat as prices rise and concerns grow that more severe weather could threaten food security. Genetically modified (GMO) soybeans and corn have long been accepted on global markets, but are primarily fed to livestock rather than humans.

Brazil’s biosecurity agency CTNBio said its unanimous decision applied only to wheat flour. Millers had threatened to boycott Argentine grains and said they would seek legal recourse to reverse the flour decision.

“The decision was by a technical agency, but it is important to see what the Brazilian market wants. It looks like consumers in Brazil do not want GMO wheat,” said Gustavo Idigoras, head of Argentina’s CIARA-CEC chamber of grains exporters.

Brazilian flour milling association Abitrigo said it would ask the president’s office to convene a national biosecurity committee to review the decision. It said it was also evaluating legal options to suspend the ruling.

The group had already threatened to stop buying Argentine wheat if sales of the drought-resistant wheat were approved in Brazil, vowing to turn to other countries for supplies.

“It could mean a surge in demand for U.S. wheat if they reject buying it if they fear consumer backlash,” said Arlan Suderman, chief commodities economist at StoneX. “Ultimately, it comes down to the consumer. What is the consumer willing to accept?”

U.S. wheat futures hit their highest in nearly nine years on Thursday due to tight global supplies, while European wheat futures climbed to a 13-1/2 year peak.

U.S. Wheat Associates, which promotes U.S. wheat exports, did not have an immediate comment. The group has previously said it will support commercialization only after approval in major markets and the creation of rules for handling low levels of GMO wheat mixed in with non-GMO wheat.

Just a fraction of Argentine farms have tried out the wheat variety resistant to drought and the common herbicide ammonium glufosinate developed by Bioceres SA, whose partner Tropical Melhoramento Genetico filed the request with CTNBio.

A source at Bioceres said it would seek approval from other key markets before seeking to market the GMO wheat commercially.

Some 55,000 hectares (135,910 acres) in Argentina have been planted with the GMO wheat on an experimental basis, company disclosures show.

Argentine grains exporters have asked the government to identify which farmers are growing the GMO wheat so they could stop buying from those areas.

Santiago del Solar, who grows wheat in the bread-basket Argentine province of Buenos Aires, said the ultimate decision remains in the hands of Brazilian millers and consumers.

“It’s fine that the regulators said yes, but we sell wheat to the milling industry and consumers. If they don’t accept GMO wheat, we still have a big, big problem,” del Solar said.

Argentina exported a total of 8.424 million tonnes of wheat through Oct. 19 this year, with some 50 per cent going to Brazil, which relies on its southerly neighbour for most of its wheat imports.

Argentine farmer Francisco Santillan, who also grows wheat in the province of Buenos Aires, said he will wait to see whether other countries approve imports of the wheat variety before he starts planting it.

“I think the reasonable thing to do, no matter how much Brazil accepts it, is to wait a year to see how the issue evolves in other countries that buy wheat from us,” he said.

— Reporting for Reuters by Ana Mano in Sao Paulo, Hugh Bronstein and Maximilian Heath in Buenos Aires and Mark Weinraub and Julie Ingwersen in Chicago.

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U.S. and Canadian farmers are bracing for a sharply smaller spring wheat harvest due to the driest conditions in decades, as severe weather damages crops across the hemisphere, from heat scorching cherries in the U.S. Pacific Northwest to frost chilling sugarcane in Brazil.

While overall global wheat stocks are large, the drought affects mainly the high-protein spring wheat crop that millers such as Archer Daniels Midland Co and bakers including Grupo Bimbo rely on to produce the texture and moistness in baked goods that consumers expect.

Importers from Britain to China must pay up for limited North American harvests or turn to other suppliers like Australia and Russia.

Minneapolis spring wheat futures are trading near nine-year highs, leaving Camas Country Mill in Eugene, Oregon braced to pay more, said owner Tom Hunton. He plans on passing his higher costs on to the mill’s bakery customers.

Camas Country will rely on stockpiled wheat from last year to top up this year’s supplies to produce flour. But Hunton worries about the drought carrying into next year.

“This isn’t sustainable for anyone,” he said.

In Canada, bread prices may rise as much as 6.5 percent by late this year, said Sylvain Charlebois, director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

U.S. prices are more difficult to forecast, since flour prices dropped earlier this year as lockdowns eased and fewer people baked at home, he said.

Steep dropoff

Canada’s spring wheat crop is expected at between 16 and 20 million tonnes, well off last year’s 25.8 million, said Bruce Burnett, director of markets and weather information at MarketsFarm. Just 16 percent of spring wheat in Saskatchewan and 21.6 percent in Alberta is in good or excellent condition, according to provincial governments.

The U.S. spring wheat harvest is expected to drop 41 percent from a year ago to the lowest production in 33 years, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

The USDA on Monday estimated that just 10 percent of the country’s spring wheat crop was in good or excellent condition, down from 73 percent a year ago and the lowest rating for this point of the season since the 1988 drought.

In Montana, where the USDA has deemed 42 percent of spring wheat in very poor condition and another 43 percent in poor shape, growers are buying out of sales contracts inked earlier in the season with elevators because they will not have wheat to deliver.

“I cancelled more contracts last week than I wrote. If they don’t have a crop, they have no choice,” said one commercial grain buyer who declined to be named as he is not authorized to speak to media.

Importers adjust

China, which normally buys modest amounts of North American spring wheat to make high-quality bread and baked goods, will likely buy more from other suppliers such as Australia, said a China-based trader with an international trading house.

Russia may make up some of North America’s shortfall in the global market. Southern Russia, the country’s main wheat-producing region, is producing wheat with higher protein than a year ago, Dmitry Rylko, head of the Moscow-based IKAR consultancy, said.

Spring wheat from Russia and Kazakhstan, however, does not have the same characteristics important for baking, such as gluten strength, as U.S. hard red spring wheat and Canadian Western Red Spring, said Mike Spier of U.S. Wheat Associates, a trade group that promotes U.S. wheat overseas.

The drought will force bakers to change how they work with flour, adding more water to compensate for dryness and making other adjustments to avoid producing crustier-than-usual buns, said Glenn Wilde, owner of Harvest Bakery in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

United Kingdom baker Warburtons buys half of its wheat from Canada, about 200,000 tonnes annually, grown by farmers to the company’s specifications. The company will pay more this year to ensure it acquires enough Canadian spring wheat, said Adam Dyck, Warburtons’ Canadian program manager, adding that many kernels may be too shrivelled to mill into flour.

Dyck said he is accustomed to seeing pockets of drought on the Prairies, but nothing this widespread.

“It’s pretty unique for this generation,” he said.

– Reporting by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg and Karl Plume in Fargo, North Dakota; additional reporting by Julie Ingwersen in Chicago; Sybille de La Hamaide in Paris, Polina Devitt in Moscow, Hallie Gu in Beijing, Pavel Polityuk in Kyiv.

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Russia, one of the world’s largest wheat exporters, has introduced a series of grain export curbs and retail price caps on sunflower oil and sugar since late 2020 that it hopes will help reduce high domestic food inflation.

While retail prices for sunflower oil and sugar were stable, they have risen for bread producers, some of them told Kommersant. Prices for margarine, packaging and transportation costs were also up, they added.

Russia’s agriculture ministry sees no reason for a significant increase in bread prices because domestic prices for wheat are down 7.2 per cent so far this year, it said.

Russian prices for bread made from wheat flour are up 4.6 per cent since the start of 2021, it added.

The agriculture ministry said bread producers were getting state subsidies in exchange for not raising their prices — two roubles (US$0.027) per 1 kg.

However, bread producers told Kommersant the subsidies met only part of their rising costs, and that some of them had decided not to seek them.

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There were also year-to-year increases in the other categories tracked by the federal agency, while whole wheat and graham flour production decreased.

Of the total wheat milling, durum made up a small percentage in 2020, accounting for 7.2 per cent of the wheat processed. However, there was a greater increase in the amount of durum milled from year-to-year than over the last few years. The 235,150 tonnes of durum milled was up 7.8 per cent over 2019, while previous year-to-year increases since 2017 have been 0.3 to one per cent.

Excluding durum, wheat milling came to nearly 3.032 million tonnes in 2020 — a 1.6 per cent rise over that in 2019.

The amount of total flour produced bumped up 1.5 per cent from 2019, at about 2.489 million tonnes. When durum is excluded, the wheat flour produced in 2020 was approximately 2.308 million tonnes, for an increase of nearly 1.2 per cent over the previous year. Flour made from durum only rose six per cent in 2020 at 181,058 tonnes.

Whole wheat and graham flour produced saw a notable step back in 2020, dropping 30.7 per cent at 87,718 tonnes.

At just below one per cent, total millfeeds (a byproduct containing flour along with bran and germ) produced saw an increase in 2020, coming to 748,197 tonnes.

The total amount of all wheat milled in Canada in 2020 represents 9.3 per cent of total wheat produced in the country. When compared to the last few years, the amounts of total wheat and total flour produced has increased, but the gains in wheat production outpaced those for flour produced.

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