Aside from planning a 4-percent expansion of corn area, U.S. farmers aren’t enthusiastic about spring planting. With little improvement expected in commodity prices, growers say they will plant fewer acres of soybeans, wheat, cotton, rice, sorghum and oats than in 2018, and they’ll stand pat on barley.
Based on its survey of growers, the USDA said in its Prospective Plantings report that 250.1 million acres will be planted to the eight major crops — corn, soy, wheat, cotton, rice, sorghum, barley and oats — this year, compared to 257.1 million acres in 2018, a drop of 3 percent. The eight major crops account for roughly 80 percent of U.S. crop acreage.
Growers are shifting to corn because futures markets indicate corn will be a better money-maker than soybeans, a victim of the Sino-U.S. trade war. “A lot of those (soy) acres are coming out of places where corn is going in,” USDA chief economist Rob Johansson told USDA’s radio news service.
Corn plantings are estimated to rise 4 percent, or 3.7 million acres, while soybean area falls 5 percent, or 4.6 million acres. Sorghum plantings are forecast to drop 10 percent, wheat 4 percent, cotton 2 percent, rice 3 percent and oats 7 percent.
In its quarterly Grain Stocks report, the USDA said soybean stocks of 2.7 billion bushels were up 28 percent from March 2018, a reflection of the slowdown of soybean exports in the trade war. The stockpile was the largest ever at the start of the planting season, said AgriCensus. The sorghum stockpile was up 37 percent from last March. Sales to China, the world’s largest sorghum importer, are down due to the trade war.