Twenty years ago in 2005 my parents began farming wheat in the Grande Ronde valley of Oregon. It is a crop planted annually here as both winter and spring varieties to serve as a rotation between crops like sugar beets, sunflowers, and planting seed crops such as potatoes, triticale, teff, canola, and kidney beans. Wheat has always been a backbone of our farming operation for the way it works into irrigation, rotation, and labor, but as we move into 2025 there are growing concerns facing U.S. wheat growers.

As we think about the biggest challenges of wheat today the daily market report tells us it is the value of the crop. There are always cycles in agriculture which is why many farms try to be diverse in what they plant. The price of a commodity needs to be able to cover the inputs of planting it like seed, water, labor, fertilizer, chemicals, interest on loans, equipment, and land payment.Growers do their best to secure a price for their crop at market highs or at least breakeven. However, this lengthy downturn has plummeted many farms into under breakeven prices and seems to be showing no relief in the new crop year.

Like all crops much of the wheat pricing and margin is dictated by supply and demand. Wheat is a crop that has to take into consideration the global production and markets as well. In the case of wheat there is new pressure of an agriculture super power coming into competition as Brazil proves they have the infrastructure, government support, and technical abilities to provide quality food to the world at a cheaper cost than the United States. At this time the strength of our dollar compared to other currencies is a decided bonus for countries like Brazil with fewer regulations and lower cost of production. For the first time in our history as global food producers who depend on exports to other countries to take our surplus we are going to be facing direct competition by a country who can beat our prices.

To further complicate the long term future of U.S. wheat, we are experiencing some unknown potentials for tariffs and a trade war that could inadvertently impact exports of our crop. The last few years have seen a series of geopolitical unrests affecting former grain growing regions like Ukraine but we also know that a transition of political policies in our own country can affect exports and future commodity pricing.

Like most wheat growing families we plant every season with the eternal optimism that efficient practices and maximizing the genetic possibilities of our varieties will provide enough margin to cover operating costs for another year. We accept the things we cannot control like weather and attempt to master what we can like water distribution and machinery. We cannot control the pricing of the commodity that we work so hard to grow and harvest. The factors playing into the current wheat markets include rising competition from Brazil, a strong dollar making it expensive to buy from the U.S. and an unknown effect of trade practices that could be implemented in this growing year. Yet, every morning when I drive my brothers to school we can look out to the rows of green winter wheat and know that our mid-summer days will be spent on a combine. The challenges for wheat growers in 2025 are immense, but not nearly as strong as our will to make things work.

2025 Scholarship Essay: Tanner Rovey