Normally, the corn-planting season is over by the first week of June, but this year, 31 million acres — one-third of the intended corn land nationwide — have yet to be sown due to a persistently rainy spring. Soybean planting is also far behind schedule, raising the possibility that production of the two major U.S. crops will be skewed: the corn crop could be smaller than projected and the soybean crop larger.
Economist Scott Irwin of the University of Illinois said he expects that at least 10 million acres of corn will not be planted. “Maybe another 5 million acres switched to soybeans. That would leave 15 million acres of corn to be planted in June,” said Irwin on social media. Todd Hubbs, a University of Illinois colleague, wrote on the farmdoc daily blog, “The potential for adding more than three million acres [of soybeans] is high.”
At the start of the growing season, farmers said they would plant 92.8 million acres of corn and 84.6 million acres of soybeans. In May, based on that acreage, the USDA projected a corn crop of 15 billion bushels, the second-largest ever, and a soybean crop of 4.15 billion bushels, the third-largest on record.
“Additional soybean acreage is not needed under current consumption expectations,” said Hubbs. “It seems prudent at this point to assume soybean production at or above the 4.15 billion bushels projected by the USDA.” The U.S. stockpile is expected to be nearly 1 billion bushels when this year’s crop is ready for harvest.
In the weekly Crop Progress report, the USDA said that as of Sunday, 67 percent of the corn crop and 39 percent of soybeans had been planted. The five-year average for the start of June is 96 percent for corn and 79 percent for soybeans.