[Crain's Chicago Business] The latest victims of climate change could be Oreos, as drenched fields across the U.S. make the wheat that’s a key ingredient a scarcer commodity.Winter-wheat plantings fell to their lowest levels in more than a century as the grain got harder to seed. That was especially true for soft red winter wheat, with sowings in critical states like Illinois slumping 25%.
That might be bad news for snack fans‐the variety is used in the flour that forms the base for crackers, biscuits and beloved goodies including Mondelez International Inc.’s Oreos and Kellogg Co.’s Cheez-Its.
The warming atmosphere is making the spring planting season a lot wetter and a lot muddier in the Midwest. Last year, things were so bad that record rains meant plantings were done at the slowest pace ever. That’s pressuring farmers to abandon a strategy known as double-cropping‐when the same fields get sown in the spring with soybeans and then in the fall with wheat. Forced to choose just one, growers are giving up on wheat.
Changing weather patterns are wreaking havoc on traditional agriculture calendars all over the world. The U.S. is in the midst of what some measures are showing as the second-warmest winter in 70 years, prompting fruit plants to bloom weeks early across the South.
In Vietnam, earlier-than-normal saline buildup in the Mekong Delta is threatening rice paddies, and timing for precipitation is fluctuating across the globe. That’s on top of other climate threats to food production like Australia’s wildfires and drought in Russia.
For America’s breadbasket, record rainfall in the spring of 2019 resulted in unprecedented planting delays that pushed harvests deeper into autumn, when farmers would normally want to sow winter-wheat seeds.
"Weather dominated the decision-making process," said Angie Setzer, vice president of grain at Citizens Elevator in Michigan, where plantings of soft red winter wheat fell 7%, U.S. government data show.