Winter wheat planting season in Nebraska in the fall of 2025 began with good moisture for seeding. But then the spigot shut off as rain was minimal and snow was mostly nonexistent, causing continual drought to spread in the Panhandle and southwestern part of the state.

For the week ended Jan. 1, 2026, the NASS Crop Progress-State Stories report showed topsoil moisture in Nebraska was rated, on average, 19% very short and 49% short, while subsoil moisture supplies were rated 21% very short and 42% short. In the last State Stories report on April 1, it showed for the week ended March 29, 2026, topsoil moisture was rated 60% very short and 33% short, and subsoil moisture was rated 49% very short and 41% short.

Also, in the last State Stories report on April 1,2026, NASS said that 51% of the Nebraska winter wheat crop was rated poor to very poor. Fast forward to the week of May 17, 2026, and the poor-to-very-poor rating was at 84%. The latest Drought Monitor on May 21, 2026, showed extreme drought across much of Nebraska, but a large pocket of exceptional drought in most of the bottom half of the Panhandle and a pocket in the southwest.

WHEAT FIELDS WITHER AWAY

"Planted 1,400 acres of hard red winter wheat last fall in arguably some of the best conditions we've had in memory. Timely September rains got the crop off to a great start. I was pleased with the growth," said Jay Behrends, who has an 8,000-acre operation around Lodgepole, Nebraska, 20 miles east of Sidney, where they raise corn, milo, wheat, field peas and millet.

"Little to no precipitation over the winter and spring led to 1,100 of those 1,400 acres to be a complete loss. We'll probably end up harvesting 2-3 fields. And those might make 10-15 bpa. Really not worth even getting the combine out," added Behrends. "Probably will plant wheat in the fall back into most of those acres. No use throwing more money into another crop in these conditions."

"Noticed a major decline in the wheat's appearance in late January 2026. 70-75 degree days along with 50-60 mph winds just sucked the moisture right out. Later planted wheat seems to be hanging on to life, but it's been taking a step backward the past 3-4 weeks with little to no moisture. 6-8 inches tall and heading out. Wheat should be 2-2.5 feet tall right now," said Behrends. "We usually stream on nitrogen in late March or April. My agronomist advised against this application for this year. In an already stressed crop, this might end up killing it off completely. With high input prices, we just kept waiting for a rain to wake this wheat back up and put out some more N, and it never came."

Behrends said, "Mother Nature is boss around here. We know each year that the crop we put in the ground is susceptible to drought, hail, wind and whatever else she can throw at us. We can get 25 inches of precipitation one year and 8 inches the next. We live in that part of the world where it's feast or famine out here in western Nebraska."

Matt Klingman, who farms in the Panhandle counties of Deuel and Cheyenne, said, "We have roughly 3,400 acres of wheat and to this point, we will abandon over half of those acres with more to come it appears. I am going to try and harvest some to try and fill contracts."

I asked Klingman if he could hay any of the poor crop. "As it looks now (May 19), there is not enough growth to hay," he said. "I've spoken with some ranching friends, and they don't think they'd even get much grazing out of it as it is headed and we are worried about high nitrates."

Klingman added, "I grew up as a wheat fallow kid, but I've been on my own for quite some time. We've had to start growing other crops which has really helped our farm diversify. Wheat has really been a great cover crop for my spring crops in the last 10 years."

He thanked me for telling the story because he didn't think most people realized how extremely dry it is there. Until I talked to him, Behrends and their insurance adjuster, and saw the pictures, I was shocked at how bad it really is. In my 40 years of being in the ag business, and much of that in wheat and durum, I have never seen fields destroyed that badly from drought.

INSURANCE ADJUSTERS INUNDATED WITH CLAIMS

I asked Ben Rand, regional director for Federal Crop Agency, how many claims he has had from farmers who are dealing with losses. He said, "It's my entire book across three offices in two states, Nebraska and Colorado. Some will go to harvest but still have deep, deep losses. Basically, any continuous wheat crop is smoked. Meaning, it wasn't summer fallow.

"Of the summer fallow wheat, the acres planted early are just as bad as the continuous crop. The late planted acres are the best of the worst. The new issues I've never dealt with is that the wheat is so short, it isn't mechanically harvestable and it won't put on any more height at this point. So, even the stuff that may have a few bushels out there, the producer can't get a head underneath it because it's so short."

Rand added, "Combine that with the absolute train wreck of irrigation water supply failure, and overall drought conditions and it's a tough deal. I had guys abandon seeding garbanzos because the ground was too hard and they couldn't get the drill in the ground."

The "train wreck of irrigation" Rand mentioned is that aside from the drought in Nebraska over the winter, no snow fell on the front range or intermountain range. That snow is what melts, recharges reservoirs, and is used to feed the canal and ditch system. Because there was no snow, what happened was that reservoirs filled once with what they did get.

"Because of the warm system in March, what little snow there was melted. And it is gone. There is no way to recharge the surface or subsurface reservoirs now. As such, the irrigation districts have had to curtail or reduce allocations. The conundrum here is that a good, irrigated practice definition by the RMA and federal crop program does not qualify now as irrigated acreage because we are in a situation where the water is not available in quantity or timing or both," said Rand.

"For the first time in my career, I have Prevented Planting (PP) on irrigated acres due to irrigation water supply failure. Not only do I have them for the first time, I have more PP claims than I've ever had in a single year. And we haven't even started turning in the PP on drought acres for non-irrigated practices. That will start on June 1.

"We keep adding more and more acres to appraisals and losses because none of it is coming out of the ground. It's really difficult to say how many acres because it just keeps expanding every day. What we thought would make it to harvest won't now," said Rand.

"I've never had this claim load this early in the year and spring crops aren't totally in the ground. It is unprecedented," added Rand.

Mary Kennedy can be reached at mary.kennedy@dtn.com

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