Farmer Vance Ehmke surveyed his freeze-damaged fields near Healy, Kansas, on Friday. The physical reality of the American agricultural belt is diverging violently from historical norms, and the commodity markets are rapidly pricing in the failure. The United States Department of Agriculture shocked the grain trade in early May by forecasting the overall winter wheat harvest at 1.048 billion bushels, a 25 percent drop from the previous year and the smallest yield since 1965.

The collapse is a direct result of compound hydrological failure. Western Kansas, eastern Colorado, and the Panhandle region have been devastated by relentless drought, dry air, and late May temperature freezes. Hard red winter wheat projections fell by 36 percent. In response to the evaporating supply, the USDA projects the average farm price for wheat will surge to $6.50 per bushel. This is the brutal arithmetic of a changing climate: as the thermodynamic inputs of water and predictable weather disappear, the baseline cost of domestic food production inevitably skyrockets.