WARSAW—In rainy weather and in sunshine, participants of this year’s annual wheat tour surveyed and measured the predicted yield on Virginia cropland.
Organized by Virginia Farm Bureau Federation and Virginia Cooperative Extension in partnership with the Eastern Virginia Agricultural Research and Extension Center, this year’s tour participants visited 10 farms between the Northern Neck and Middle Peninsula. Buyers, millers, researchers and other industry stakeholders built on their knowledge of wheat production by estimating yield potential, inspecting grain quality and scouting for disease pressure.
This is the 10th year that Virginia fields were included in the multi-state Mid-Atlantic Wheat Tour, which also surveys farms in Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The tours are designed to offer stakeholders an idea of what to expect from this year’s wheat crop to help with purchasing and milling decisions. The tour also promotes an opportunity to build relationships between buyers and farmers.
“We want buyers, millers and mill managers from across the industry to meet the farmers,” said Robert Harper, VFBF grain marketing specialist. “Some of these industry folks may not have farming backgrounds. So, we give them an opportunity to get in the field and meet the farmers.”
Harper noted that this year’s tour showed that five wheat farms in the Northern Neck averaged 76.14 bushels per acre. Averages for the Middle Peninsula farms totaled 75.3 bushels per acre.
Virginia farmers expect to harvest a total of 5.7 million bushels of winter wheat this year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Statistics Service. That would give growers a 3% increase in production compared to the 2024 harvest season.
Ryan Gehringer, plant manager for Ardent Mills at Culpeper, oversees flour milling operations.
“A couple of these farmers on the wheat tour have delivered to Ardent in the past,” Gehringer said. “There is the business side of things, then there are experiences like this that offer perspective and context that is important for our team.”
The 2025 wheat tour invited farmers to attend and speak about their farm at the 10 tour locations. This gave participants the opportunity to ask questions directly from the source about what methods, varieties and crop protectants they used to manage the crop this season.
“That’s what we do best at Farm Bureau,” Harper noted. “Bringing everyone together at the same table.”
Wheat growers seeded about 150,000 acres in the fall last year; 80,000 acres will be harvested for grain, and the other 70,000 acres will be used as cover crops or will be cut for silage or hay across all 95 counties in Virginia.
-Virginia Farm Bureau
