The price of bread in the U.S. is rising to all-time highs. One of the top contributing factors to its increase is the 2022's rising price of wheat.

The following chart shows the price per bushel of wheat grown in the U.S. from 1866 through 2021, with a preliminary average for 2022 based on available prices reported from January through May.

In 2022, the average monthly price of a bushel of wheat has ranged from a low of $7.45 in January to a high of $11.40 in May, with an overall average of $9.36 during those months. That's 25% higher than 2012's nominal record peak of $7.48 per bushel. It's also more than double the 2019 pre-pandemic low of $4.08 per bushel.

Adjusting the prices for inflation, the price of a bushel of wheat is returning to levels last seen in the high inflation years of the 1970s and 1980s. The next chart shows the available inflation-adjusted history for wheat prices in the U.S.

With inflation factored in, 1917 represents the year with the highest wheat prices thanks to the prolonged impact of World War I and a low wheat harvest 1917. It wasn't until after World War II that the introduction of widespread irrigation and other improvements in agricultural technologies greatly increased the productivity of American farmers and the amount of wheat they produced. Those improvements led to generally falling prices outside periods of high inflation, and particularly, outside periods with high petroleum prices.

References

U.S. Department of Agriculture. National Agricultural Statistics Service. Quick Stats: Survey > Crops > Field Crops > Wheat > Price Received > Wheat - Price Received, Measured in $/BU > Total > State > Kansas > 2020-2021 > Annual > Marketing Year. [Online Database]. Accessed 22 July 2022.

Measuring Worth. The Annual Consumer Price Index for the United States, 1774 - Present. [Online Database]. Accessed 22 July 2022.

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