Wheat Farming in the United States (NAICS 11114)

A Histometrics rollup primer for public-market and private investors.

NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) code 11114 is the five-digit industry for U.S. wheat farming. In the 2022 NAICS structure it contains exactly one six-digit child — 111140, Wheat Farming — so this level is effectively identical to that single national industry. This page is a short bridge: it explains why the five-digit and six-digit codes are the same thing here, gives what ground-truth statistics we hold at this level, and points you to the full 111140 leaf primer for the complete detail.

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1. Overview

Wheat is a bulk agricultural commodity — an undifferentiated staple where one farmer's grain of a given class and grade is interchangeable with the next. It ranks third among U.S. field crops, behind corn and soybeans, in planted acreage, production, and gross farm receipts, and the 2024 U.S. all-wheat crop was worth about $10.9 billion at the farm gate.[2][1]

For an investor the key facts are unchanged whether you read this level or its child: wheat farming is overwhelmingly a private, family-owned operating business; growers are price-takers in a world market; margins are thin and cyclical; and there is no pure-play, publicly traded U.S. wheat-farming company. Public-market exposure is all indirect. Full treatment lives in the 111140 primer.

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2. What's inside — and why this level equals its one child

NAICS is a nested hierarchy: each five-digit industry rolls up one or more six-digit national industries. Code 11114 rolls up a single child:

Because the parent has only one child, the five-digit industry (11114) and the six-digit national industry (111140) cover exactly the same establishments — farms whose primary crop is wheat, including wheat-seed production.[20] There is no residual "all other" sibling to net out and no aggregation across differently-behaving segments. Any figure true at 111140 is true here; the rollup adds no new economic content. For the full breakdown — the five wheat classes (Hard Red Winter, Hard Red Spring, Soft Red Winter, White, and Durum), the seed-to-bakery value chain, ownership mix, and adjacent NAICS codes that are excluded — read the 111140 primer.

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3. Size (this level's figures)

Our ground-truth caveat first. Our ingested federal business-statistics dataset holds no stat_metrics for NAICS 11114 — no establishment count, employment, payroll, or receipts figure at the five-digit level. We say so plainly rather than invent one. (The child node 111140 does carry one ingested figure: the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) size standard of $2.25 million in average annual receipts, below which a wheat farm counts as "small."[8]) Because this level equals its one child, that same standard applies here.

Undercount caveat. Even where counts exist, standard U.S. Census Bureau business statistics (County Business Patterns, Statistics of U.S. Businesses) badly undercount farming, because farms are overwhelmingly non-employer sole proprietorships, family partnerships, and trusts that never appear on payroll rolls. The authoritative source for agriculture is USDA's Census of Agriculture and its National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), which counts a farm when $1,000 or more of products were (or normally would have been) sold.[5] All the commodity figures below are USDA/NASS — not NAICS business revenue — and small, individual-ownership operations dominate this industry.

Commodity rollup (USDA, all-wheat, applies identically to 111140):

The "97,014 farms" figure counts operations classified by wheat as their main crop; many more farms grow some wheat inside a diversified rotation, so the number that touch wheat is larger. Farm count fell 43% between 2002 (169,528) and 2022 — a large but contracting industry in acreage and grower numbers, even as yield per acre climbs.[5]

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4. Investable universe (where value concentrates)

With a single child, there is nothing to allocate across — all the value sits in the same one industry, and the same indirect proxies apply. The honest headline carries straight through: you cannot buy a wheat farm on a stock exchange. Public-market exposure runs through grain merchandisers and processors (Archer-Daniels-Midland, ADM; Bunge Global, BG; The Andersons, ANDE), farmland real estate investment trusts (REITs) (Farmland Partners, FPI; Gladstone Land, LAND), farm-input makers (Corteva, CTVA; Nutrien, NTR; CF Industries, CF), equipment (Deere & Co., DE), the futures exchange (CME Group, CME), and a commodity exchange-traded fund (ETF) (Teucrium Wheat Fund, WEAT) that tracks the wheat price, not farm profits.[17] The real industry is the ~97,000 family operations plus a concentrated private layer of merchants, cooperatives, and millers (Cargill, CHS, Louis Dreyfus, Scoular, Ardent Mills, Grain Craft). See the 111140 primer for the full table, tickers, and the private value-chain owners.

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5. How the money works

A grower's economics reduce to yield (bushels/acre) × realized price ($/bushel) + quality premiums + government program payments + crop-insurance indemnities, against costs dominated by land (cash rent or opportunity cost), fertilizer (nitrogen is the big swing), seed, chemicals, fuel, machinery, and interest. At ~51 bu/acre and ~$5.50/bu that is roughly $280/acre of crop revenue — low versus corn or soybeans, and below the $6–8/bushel full cost of production once land and overhead are counted, which is why 2025/26 marked a fourth straight year of below-breakeven prices.[4] For most owners the durable return engine is land appreciation, not the annual operating margin — the reason the cleanest listed proxy is a farmland REIT rather than an operating company. Full detail — operating levers, basis, and where value-chain profit sits — is in the 111140 primer.

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6. Demand drivers

Unchanged from the child: about 42% of the U.S. crop is exported, so demand is set as much abroad (Mexico, the Philippines, Japan, Nigeria, Latin America) as at home, and the U.S. share of global wheat trade has fallen to roughly 11% (2025/26) from ~25% in the early 2000s as lower-cost Black Sea exporters gained ground.[4][1] Other drivers: the U.S. dollar and relative price competitiveness; flat, mature domestic flour demand; quality segmentation (protein, test weight, identity-preserved/organic premiums); feed and industrial use; weather and geopolitics; and crop-rotation economics that pull acres toward corn and soybeans when their margins look better.[1][9]

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7. Regulation

Wheat is lightly regulated as a product but deeply shaped by farm policy. The touchpoints — identical at both code levels — are the Farm Bill commodity programs Price Loss Coverage (PLC) and Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) run by USDA's Farm Service Agency (FSA); federally subsidized crop insurance via the Risk Management Agency (RMA); grain grading under the Federal Grain Inspection Service (FGIS); pesticide rules from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); conservation compliance via the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS); and foreign-ownership disclosure under the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA).[13][16][17][18][19] The 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) raised wheat's statutory reference price from $5.50 to $6.35/bushel through the 2030 crop year — materially supportive for a crop sitting below break-even.[14] Net: policy here is mostly stability and upside, but also a dependency. Section 7 of the 111140 primer has the complete list.

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8. Consolidation

Because output already sits in one industry, consolidation is a single story, not a cross-segment one. Farm count fell 43% since 2002 while the midpoint harvested acreage for major field crops (wheat included) rose 166–243% between 1987 and 2017 — output concentrating by scale without becoming publicly owned.[5][15] Consolidation is more visible in the value chain (the 2025 Bunge–Viterra merger; Ardent Mills' three-way ownership by Conagra, Cargill, and CHS) than in farm ownership, where local competition among elevators and co-ops persists. Land is the moat: institutional farmland investors and REITs increasingly compete to own appreciating cropland and lease it back.

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9. Risks

The same risk stack as the child, in the same order: price cyclicality (below full cost of production for a fourth straight year) is dominant, followed by weather and yield loss, disease and pests, input-cost inflation, interest-rate and leverage sensitivity, trade and geopolitical shocks (a rising dollar, tariffs, a bumper Black Sea harvest), basis and logistics constraints, policy dependence, long-run land/water/climate pressure on the semi-arid Plains, and farmer-succession demographics.[4][14] For public proxies, add instrument-specific risks: the WEAT ETF carries futures roll cost (contango can erode returns even if spot is flat), and farmland REITs are interest-rate-sensitive and only fractionally wheat-exposed.

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10. How to invest & outlook

Because 11114 is its single child, the playbook is identical. Public, liquid, indirect: WEAT for a wheat price bet (mind roll cost); FPI/LAND for cropland values and rents; the ecosystem names (ADM, BG, ANDE, CTVA, NTR, CF, DE, CME, CAG) as broad-ag plays diversified far beyond wheat. Private, illiquid, direct: own cropland and lease it to an operator to capture land appreciation plus a low-single-digit rent yield, or operate directly (highest risk, a low-cost-at-scale and disciplined-marketing game). Outlook: mixed — prices below break-even for several years and eroding U.S. export share on the bearish side; the OBBBA safety-net increase (reference price to $6.35 through 2030) and a tight 2026/27 balance (production forecast at its lowest since 1970/71) on the supportive side.[4][10][14] Land values — the real long-run return driver — have held up better than operating margins, so the land thesis is generally a steadier way into this industry than a bet on the crop or the growers. For the complete how-to-invest checklist and editorial judgment, read the 111140 primer.

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Sources

Drawn from the child primer (NAICS 111140); numbering preserved for cross-reference.

1. USDA Economic Research Service. "Wheat Sector at a Glance." 2026. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/wheat/wheat-sector-at-a-glance
2. USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service. "Crop Values 2024 Summary." February 2025. https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Todays_Reports/reports/cpvl0225.pdf
3. World Grain. "USDA estimates US all-wheat crop up 9% from 2023." 2024. https://www.world-grain.com/articles/20554-usda-estimates-us-all-wheat-crop-up-9-from-2023
4. Capital Press. "Wheat, corn, soybean prices are below breakeven, signaling fourth year of losses." 2026. https://www.capitalpress.com/2026/05/08/wheat-corn-soybean-prices-are-below-breakeven-signaling-fourth-year-of-losses/
5. USDA Economic Research Service. "2022 Census of Agriculture: Fewer U.S. farms are growing wheat." 2024. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/108898
6. U.S. Small Business Administration. "Table of Size Standards." 2023. (Ground-truth ingested figure: $2.25 million average annual receipts for NAICS 111140.) https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
7. U.S. Wheat Associates. "U.S. Wheat Exports Rebound in 2024/25 Thanks to Increased Production and Price Competitiveness." 2025. https://uswheat.org/wheatletter/u-s-wheat-exports-rebound-in-2024-25-thanks-to-increased-production-and-price-competitiveness/
8. USDA Economic Research Service. "Wheat Outlook: July 2026." 2026. https://ers.usda.gov/media/29343/whs-26g.pdf
9. USDA Farm Service Agency. "Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) & Price Loss Coverage (PLC) Overview." 2026. https://www.fsa.usda.gov/resources/income-support/arc-plc
10. Colorado Wheat. "OBBBA Agriculture Provisions — Statutory Reference Price Increases under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act." 2025. https://coloradowheat.org/wp-content/uploads/FINAL-OBBBA-Agriculture-Provisions-06.09.2025-MA.pdf
11. USDA Economic Research Service. "Three Decades of Consolidation in U.S. Agriculture" (EIB-189, Summary). 2018. https://www.ers.usda.gov/sites/default/files/_laserfiche/publications/88057/EIB189_summary.pdf
12. USDA Risk Management Agency. "Insurance Plans." 2026. https://www.rma.usda.gov/about-crop-insurance/managing-farm-risk/insurance-plans
13. USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (Federal Grain Inspection Service). "Grain Standards." 2026. https://www.ams.usda.gov/grades-standards/grain-standards
14. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "Pesticides: Regulatory and Guidance Information." 2026. https://www.epa.gov/regulatory-information-topic/regulatory-and-guidance-information-topic-pesticides
15. USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. "Conservation Compliance." 2026. https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/getting-assistance/financial-help/conservation-compliance
16. USDA Farm Service Agency. "Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA)." 2026. https://www.fsa.usda.gov/resources/economic-policy-analysis/afida
17. Teucrium. "WEAT — Teucrium Wheat Fund." Accessed 2026. https://teucrium.com/weat
18. Bunge Global. "Bunge and Viterra Complete Merger to Create Premier Global Agribusiness Solutions Company." 2025. https://www.bunge.com/Press-Releases/Bunge-and-Viterra-Complete-Merger-to-Create-Premier-Global-Agribusiness-Solutions-Company
19. CHS Inc. "Ardent Mills Connects Growers to Changing Consumer Demand." 2026. https://www.chsinc.com/news-and-stories/2026/07/15/ardent-mills-connects-growers-to-changing-consumer-demand
20. U.S. Census Bureau. "North American Industry Classification System: 2022 NAICS, Wheat Farming (111140)." 2022. https://www.census.gov/naics/?details=111140&year=2022