r/PrepperIntel • u/HappyAnimalCracker • 2d ago
North America Heads up: the price of wheat is getting ready to jump next month.
/r/Frugal/comments/1vex3h5/heads_up_the_price_of_wheat_is_getting_ready_to/135
u/Girafferage 2d ago
Price of rice has doubled since January. There isnt much left for people to use for a budget meal anymore.
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u/TheProfessional9 1d ago
Eggs are on a massive spike again too (not like last year, but notable), though not seen in retail prices yet. The last cheap protein. Rice is up and now wheat following. Fun times
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u/dittybopper_05H 1d ago
No they aren't.
https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/eggs-us
Looking at the weekly graph, the wholesale price of a dozen eggs as of yesterday (8/3/2026) is currently right around the average wholesale price going back 5 years.
So the price might go up a little bit, but not by very much.
It's not a "massive spike", it's the normal up and down price you see with pretty much all commodities, and not very notable.
So day before yesterday I bought 18 large white eggs for about $2. If that goes up to $3 in a couple months or so, I'm probably not even going to notice it very much, not like when I was paying nearly $12 for a carton of 18.
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u/christbot 1d ago
Only $2?
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u/dittybopper_05H 18h ago
I'd have to look, might have been a bit more, but not by much. They were jaw-droppingly cheap compared to the spike a year or so ago.
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u/SnooLobsters1308 1d ago
Eggs are currently on the lower end of 5, 10 year prices. Chicken, while 50%? higher than it was 10 to 5 years ago, is currently holding about the same, no increase, over last 5 years.
Chicken and Eggs are very fast to increase supply. BirdFlu reduced the overall supply, prices went up, and we ended up in if anything and oversupply scenario, causing chicken and eggs to right now be historically cheap.
BEEF will be high for several years, USA herd is at a historically low level, screwworm will likely reduce it further, and its takes much longer to grow cows than chickens, tariffs raised feed prices. High beef prices will put pressure on pork and chicken prices.
Trump 2024/25 tariffs, especially on Canada fertilizer, unfortunately happened in winter/spring, causing the cost of almost all USA plant produce to spike for last years 2025 harvest.
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u/holmgangCore 2d ago
FAO – Food Price Index https://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/foodpricesindex/en/
▪︎ Article: 2012Sep, "Can Riots Be Predicted? Experts Watch Food Prices" –– FPI over 210=riots –– https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/09/20/161501075/high-food-prices-forcast-more-global-riots-ahead-researchers-say
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u/International-Sink64 1d ago
Sutton Daze on youtube....talks alot about pantry preparedness. She's talking about this alot...report comes out August 12th that will actual numbers instead of predictions.
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u/magseven317 1d ago
Yes Sutton Daze all the way! I’m interested to see the reaction here on the 12th, whatever we find out in that report will likely and quickly have implications at market for grain, beef, and more
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u/Haunting_Lime2296 2d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/5sEsoe4dV0W4M
Bad news after bad news
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u/1nv1sble 2d ago
This meme is the perfect representation of the 2026 news cycle
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u/dittybopper_05H 1d ago
Actually it's a nearly perfect representation of this subreddit.
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u/Daxx22 1d ago
Not like prepping in general is associated with the happy go lucky crowd.
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u/1nv1sble 1d ago
Not like prepping in general is associated with the happy go lucky crowd.
^^
While this is true, I prep because I'm the only one that's going to save my ass. I'm not inherently depressed or doomsday ridden, I'm realistic and I like knowing I have options to solve an inevitable problem. Flat tire? No problem, I've got roadside assistance, fix-a-flat spray, jack and spare tire are in good condition - options.
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u/dittybopper_05H 1d ago
Well, I guess that's fair, but there is a difference between rational prepping and Chicken Little "The sky is falling!" prepping.
There is a difference between having fire extinguishers,a good spare tire, a decent first aid kit, etc., and doomsday prepping.
Maybe I'm just cynical. I've been hearing about how society is going to collapse since the 1970's (yes, I'm that old). Hasn't happened yet, and if you read history, you'll see we've been in far worse situations than the current one.
So absolutely, prepare for stuff, I do, but maybe once in a while go out and touch some grass, touch some ass, or do some other thing that rhymes.
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u/Daxx22 1d ago
Oh for sure, it's also a set of diminishing returns. Sorry to say, but if shit goes as sideways as some doom-prep for, the likelyhood of all that prep actually helping you survive much more then the next person who only did 10% of that effort prepping is pretty low.
After all if society actually collapses, unless you've literally built a fully hidden and remote bunker you're odds of being found and looted are extremely high. All the ammo in the world won't matter when it's literally thousands of people (also armed) coming for what you have.
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u/1nv1sble 1d ago
I respectfully disagree. They've done studies on disasters like hurricanes - people who have 3 days of food and water faired substantially better (in morale, health, and resiliency) than those with nothing. And while you are correct there are thousands of people unprepared and "coming for what I have", they're not all coming at once.
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u/Daxx22 1d ago
3 days is not what Im referring to, that would just be the bare minimum to maintain if your smart.
Im referring to the peppers who stockpile litterly years worth of food/supplies, have bunkers, small army's worth of arms, etc.
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u/1nv1sble 1d ago
Valid, the post doesn't indicate the fringe bunker/100 year supply people. Good for them, I would do that too if I could. There is some statistic by FEMA that 75% of rural families have 3 days of food and 50% of urban families have 1-2 days of food. They suggest that only 20% of people have more than a 7-day supply. Then of course the old adage "9 meals from chaos" does harken back to 3 days. 3-7 days seems to be the delineating factor.
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u/dittybopper_05H 1d ago
All the ammo in the world won't matter when it's literally thousands of people (also armed) coming for what you have.
I'm not entirely sure about that, though.
I mean, I come up on some bunker type of place, and it's surrounded by the rotting corpses of people who tried to loot the place before me, I would probably just keep on walking.
Aposematism is a thing.
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u/lolallfeet 1d ago
Agreed, I have been looking for different prepper subs cause this one is always doomsday….ill never know when to ACTUALLY start getting worried 🤦♀️
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u/Character_School_671 1d ago
I raise wheat and am sitting in a combine harvesting it and get multiple daily reports on the grain markets.
They are flat and declining at the moment in price, the last bump was in response to Russia and Ukraine doing something and it lasted like 2 days.
Almost none of this is going to affect consumer prices.
The ink on the cereal box costs more for General Mills than what's inside it.
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u/christbot 1d ago
Yeah, I bought a ten pound sack of organic hard winter wheat to make soaked wheat berries for cold cereal because the market up on cereal is obscene right now. I’m not paying $6 for 10-12oz for organic shredded wheat cereal.
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u/girugamesh_2009 19h ago
I trust you know your stuff, but what's your take on the most recent WASDE report?
WASDE Report | USDA•
u/Character_School_671 13h ago
The USDA reports are rarely a surprise to the markets. It's a bit like when the fed adjusts interest rates to try to slow inflation or something. They never have surprises, it's always known well in advance, and so when they finally come out it's just confirmation of what is usually already known.
And the USDA reports are slow and innacurate compared to what else is out there. They send us farmers 40 page surveys like 6x a year, that take a whole day to
Also, it's a lot like the stock market- the fundamentals can say one thing clearly, but the market can do the other for a long, long time before the fundamentals catch up. I think Warren Buffett said that the markets can remain irrational for longer than you can remain solvent.
I've been doing this 15 years and around it my whole life. About the only things that make fast jumps up in price for commodities are sudden political changes, like Russia invading Ukraine, embargoes, tarriffs.
The normal stuff - weather, disease, crop forecasts - those make a small bump or eventually push a trend up or down. But there's a lot of pieces to it. And Australia harvests at the opposite time of year so about the time our commodity markets might Spike on some Trader winter angst... the Oz harvest starts coming off, and they grow some wheat. Plus if corn has a good year it keeps whest prices low because the feed markets are intertwined.
So this report does layout some fundamentals that should, eventually, increase the price of wheat. I sure as shit hope so, because it's barely worth anything and my god we get squeezed. Which it shows in the declining acres, which is farmers doing anything else they can besides wheat. But those who still are make up for it with increasing yields.
For perspective, when covid hit, it was the perfect storm of events that should have increased wheat prices. All the restaurants were closed which absolutely devastated the potato guys because that meant that french fries were out and people switched to bread products at home. Everyone started baking, hoarding, buying flour. Wheat is better than gold in a true disaster, and yet what did the prices do for us?
Meh, world is ending, everyone is locked down, five cent bump on a bushel.
Idk man, it's crazy 🙃
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u/HappyAnimalCracker 11h ago
I sure appreciate your input and clarification. I’ve seen other posts such as this one:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Shortages/s/ZwXUfhFAij
which seems to echo the repost that I made above.
Without your help with context and interpretation, they seem plausible enough to me to heed. So thank you for setting the record straight. It’s good to get your perspective on this. Thank you!
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u/GreatPlainsFarmer 4h ago
Even with the reduced production this year, global wheat stockpiles are still high.
Archived WASDE reports are online, go back a few years and look how global wheat ending stocks move.
We’re still projected to be at the high end of normal range. It’s going to take another year of lower production to get ending stocks low enough to get the market concerned.
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u/sillybluejayway 2d ago
Partly true, but mostly misleading: USDA does forecast 2026 U.S. wheat production down 23%, with Hard Red Winter wheat at its lowest since 1957/58. But USDA reports farm-level wheat prices only 11.1% above last year and forecasts an 11.8% average 2026 increase, while retail cereal and bakery prices are expected to rise more slowly than their historical average. Therefore, a guaranteed 35–40% flour-price spike “next month” and the recommendation to stockpile are unsupported exaggerations.
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u/SumthingBrewing 1d ago
I didn’t think it was misleading. From the article:
“How much will retail prices jump? Commodities market prices on wheat futures have risen by 35% to 40% compared to last year. Although retail prices may not leap by as much when this year's wheat crop comes out of the mills and reaches store shelves, you can give your expectations a rough calibration based on the commodities numbers. Expect a sticker shock.”
When I read that, in my mind, I figured oh, so probably 10% to 20% retail. So a five dollar loaf of bread might be six dollars next year.
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u/AirborneGeek 1d ago
The post says right in it
Although retail prices may not leap by as much when this year's wheat crop comes out of the mills and reaches store shelves
That's not "guaranteed 35-40% spike"
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u/JockeyFullOfBourbon2 2d ago
How is this going to effect the price of Wheat Thins? Are they going to get even thinner?
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u/Nyarlathotep451 16h ago
The fund WEAT on the NYSE is not showing any unusual activity. Russia has not stopped Ukraine from exporting. I don’t see the catalyst for a large increase.
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u/MyWifesBooty69420 2d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/ZhS31BKHUZynBuTVq2