http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/16/business/16wheat.html

Once the driving force behind transforming the United States into
the “breadbasket of the world,” wheat is being steadily replaced by corn as the
crop of choice for American farmers. Genetic modifications to corn seeds, the
growing demand for corn-based ethanol as a fuel blend and more favorable farm
subsidies are leading farmers to plant corn in places where wheat long
dominated. In Kansas, known for a century as the Wheat State, corn production
quietly pulled ahead of wheat in 2000, with Kansas producing 23 percent more
corn than wheat last year.


And while corn acreage nationwide passed wheat about a decade ago, its footprint
and that of soybeans are spreading across a greater swath of the Midwest,
farther north and west into the Dakotas and central Minnesota — traditional
wheat country, where growing corn and soybeans was once almost unthinkable.


“It is getting harder and harder for American farmers to say they feed the
world,” said Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, an
environmental research group based in Washington. “Instead, they feed S.U.V.’s.”


The spread of corn and soybeans at the expense of wheat, while not expected to
significantly affect food prices, could nevertheless put more pressure on scarce
water supplies, since both crops are more water- and energy-intensive than
wheat.