Planting, tending and harvesting wheat is a fascinating and often complicated process. Check out these resources to learn about how we get wheat.

What Types and Where They Come From

Six classes of wheat are produced in the United States, each with a different end use. This page from the Minnesota Association of Wheat Growers gives more in-depth information about the six classes. Click here for a PDF map of where each variety of wheat is grown in the United States, from U.S. Wheat Associates. Also see U.S. Wheat’s brochure The World’s Most Reliable Choice, which offers information about planting and harvesting schedules, wheat varieties and grade requirements.

The Process, Start to Finish

A wheat-growing briefer from the Wheat Foods Council’s Urban Wheat Field project gives basic background information on the wheat plant and harvest. To follow the process from start to finish, check out this page from Kansas Wheat, which describes the details of each step in the growing season.

Harvest

Wheat harvest is best experienced live – there’s really nothing else like it. But, those who can’t make it this year can get a glimpse at the action in these harvest videos from Oklahoma and Washington state, provided by America’s Heartland, a public TV show about agriculture.

Many wheat producers work with custom harvesters to get their wheat out of the field and into the bin. These “harvesters for hire” travel the country throughout harvest season – April to September, depending on geography. Learn more about custom harvesters in this segment from America’s Heartland or at the All Aboard 2009 Wheat Harvest blog, written by two women who traveled the nation in the summer of 2009 with their families’ custom harvesting operations.

Below, listen to Will Roehm, a wheat producer from Montana, talk about his harvest process:

Detailed Agronomic Information

For those interested in more detailed information about the life cycle of wheat, see Wheat: The Big Picture.

Kansas State University’s Wheat Page is another excellent resource for detailed information on a number of agronomic subjects.

Field to Fork

How wheat becomes food is equally as fascinating and complicated as wheat production. The Wheat Foods Council’s Urban Wheat Field gave residents of New York City a glimpse at the “farm to fork” process in October 2008, and WFC also offers a number of online resources from the Urban Wheat Field project.