Agricultural News
Surprise, Surprise- Corn Acres Much Larger Than Predicted
Fri, 30 Mar 2012 08:33:02 CDT
The grain trade was fooled by USDA- a couple of days ahead of April Fools Day- as USDA was dramatically higher on corn acres and dramatically lower on soybean and wheat acres than what guesses that came out from analysts ahead of the Friday morning USDA Prospective Plantings report for the 2012 growing season.
According to the USDA numbers- US farmers are likely to plant 95.9 million acres of corn this year, the largest US corn crop since 1937. The pre report average guess was for just 94.7 million acres- and the highest pre report guess was for 95.7 million acres. If realized, this will represent the highest planted acreage in the United States since 1937 when an estimated 97.2 million acres were planted.
US Soybean plantings are pegged by USDA well under what the trade was projecting before the Friday morning report- as USDA projects soybeans plantings at 73.9 million acres- far under the average guess by the trade of 75.5 million acres. Traders had largely assumed that a recent runup in soybean prices would have a lot of farmers switching to soybeans from corn and cotton- depending on where they are in the country- but that did not happen in as large of numbers as they had expected. Analysts believe that this number could mean underlying strength for soybean prices for much of the growing season.
The US cotton acreage number came in above trade guesses- at 13.2 million acres- the pre report guess average was 12.7 million acres.
Finally, US Wheat plantings are well under what the trade predicted- USDA pegs the total US wheat acreage for the 2012 harvest season at 55.9 million acres versus the trade's guess of 57.45 million. For the winter wheat crop planted- Oklahoma is shown as planting 5.4 milliona acres this past fall(up 6 percent from the 2011 crop), which is the fourth largest acreage in the country on a state by state basis. Kansas, North Dakota and Texas planted larger numbers of acres to winter wheat than did Oklahoma for the 2012 harvest.
Click here to see the full USDA report as released on Friday morning by USDA.
Shortly after the report, we talked with Oklahoma State University Extension Grain Marketing Economist Dr. Kim Anderson- click on the LISTEN BAR below to hear our conversation with him about these numbers and how they may impact grain and oilseed producers going forward.
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