Farmers say they’ll plant the third-largest amount of corn grown since World War II and the third-highest soybean area on record, superlatives that disguise some of the bad news in the annual USDA Prospective Plantings report. The slump in commodity prices since 2013 is driving down the total area planted in the eight major U.S. field crops: wheat, rice, corn, sorghum, barley, oats, soybeans and cotton. The USDA’s survey of growers during the first half of March found they would plant 251.2 million acres to the eight crops, down 900,000 acres from 2015 and 6.4 million acres from 2014.
With low commodity prices projected for years to come, the USDA says eight-crop plantings will shrink in the near term, dipping below 247 million acres in 2020. Smaller plantings would help hold down U.S. crop production, allowing time for processors, exporters and livestock feeders to eat into the large corn, wheat and soybean stockpiles that overhang markets now. The smaller plantings would be offset to some extent by rising yields per acre.
The Prospective Plantings report showed corn gaining ground at the expense of wheat. But it also showed corn shouldering aside other feed grains. Sorghum plantings would be down 15 percent from last year; oats would be down 11 percent for the third-smallest planted area on record; and barley would be down 12 percent for the fourth-smallest area. Here’s one way to assess it: Corn area could climb 5.6 million acres this year while total plantings of corn, sorghum, barley and oats would increase 3.5 million acres. That means corn would take 2.1 million acres from the other feed grains.
Cotton plantings are estimated to rise 11 percent, to 9.56 million acres this year. Even so, it would be the seventh-lowest planting on record. Rice plantings are forecast to rise 17 percent, to 3.06 million acres, the first time they topped 3 million acres since 2010. “Lower prices for competing commodities are contributing to the expected increase in rice acres compared with last year,” says USDA.
USDA projects that the decline in crop prices that began in 2013 will continue into 2017.