How Much of Bread's Price Is the Wheat?

Описание: In 2025 a pound of white bread cost $1.87 on average in US stores. On the US Department of Agriculture's count, everything farmed in it, the wheat, soybean oil and corn syrup, was worth about 6 cents at the farm (3.2%), and the wheat alone, by our arithmetic on its figures, about 5 cents. This is where the rest goes: what a Kansas City miller pays for wheat and gets for flour, how a big packaged baker spends each dollar it is paid, how USDA splits the bakery products dollar between industries, what it costs to grow an acre of wheat, and how the price of wheat can jump 29% in a year while bread gets a little cheaper.

Chapters
0:00 The farmer's share of a loaf
0:39 The 6 cents
2:14 The mill
3:38 The bakery
5:09 The bakery dollar
6:23 The farm
7:41 Wheat up, bread down
8:59 The farmer's share of a loaf

Sources
USDA Economic Research Service, Price Spreads from Farm to Consumer (white pan bread and all-purpose flour tables, documentation, highlights): https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-product...
USDA Economic Research Service, Price Spreads documentation: https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-product...
USDA Economic Research Service, Wheat Data (tables 1, 18 and 32): https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-product...
USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, Agricultural Prices, 29 September 2026: https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publication...
US Bureau of Labor Statistics, average price, bread, white, pan, per pound (APU0000702111): https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/APU00...
USDA Economic Research Service, Commodity Costs and Returns (wheat) and documentation: https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-product...
USDA Economic Research Service, Food Dollar (March 2026 release) and summary findings: https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-product...
USDA Economic Research Service, Food Dollar documentation: https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-product...
Flowers Foods, Form 10-K for fiscal 2025: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/da...
Conagra Brands, Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended 31 May 2026 (Ardent Mills, note 8): https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/da...
Ardent Mills, About: https://www.ardentmills.com/about
Grupo Bimbo, fourth quarter and full year 2025 results: https://www.grupobimbo.com/en/investo...

Figures marked "our arithmetic" on screen are calculated by us from those sources: the value of the wheat in a pound of bread (USDA's 0.5964 pounds of flour per pound of bread times USDA's farm value of a pound of flour), the oil and corn syrup cent (by difference), the pounds of wheat in a pound of bread and of bread in a bushel (USDA's recipe and its 73% flour yield), every per pound figure from the Kansas City wheat and flour table, every cents per dollar figure for Flowers Foods, Ardent Mills and Grupo Bimbo, the cost per bushel of wheat, and every percentage change. Bread prices are US city averages per pound across all brands and loaf sizes; the 2025 average covers 11 months, because BLS published no October 2025 price ("Data unavailable due to the 2025 lapse in appropriations"). USDA's farm value nets out the bran and middlings sold from the milling, and gives water, yeast, salt and other ingredients no farm value. The Kansas City figures are for June 2025 to May 2026 and for top grade, 13% protein wheat, so setting the flour against the 2025 shelf price is an approximation. Flowers' figures are per dollar of its own sales across all its products, not the shelf price of bread. Grupo Bimbo reports the US and Canada together, in Mexican pesos. Ardent Mills' figures are Conagra's 100% basis disclosure. USDA's food dollar shares measure value added by industry, not profit. USDA's wheat costs include noncash costs, such as the rent a farmer's own land could earn and the farmer's own time, and exclude government payments. The wheat value in chapter 6 is a gross value at the all wheat farm price (and, for comparison, the hard red winter price), before any credit for bran and middlings: an illustration in the way USDA describes passing a farm price change through to retail, not a USDA figure.

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