Kansas and North Dakota perennially vie for the title of the largest wheat-producing state in the nation; last year, they reaped 35 percent of the U.S. wheat crop. This year, Kansas and North Dakota are leading the U.S. stampede into soybeans.
In fact, North Dakota will plant more land to soybeans than to wheat, according to USDA estimates based on a March survey of growers – 6.9 million acres of soybeans vs 6.6 million acres of wheat. In Kansas, farmers say they’ll plant 950,000 more acres of soybeans and 1 million fewer acres of wheat this year than in 2016, although wheat will still be the acreage king.
It’s part of two potential records for U.S. farmers this year – the largest soybean plantings ever, now estimated at 89.5 million acres and record-low wheat sowings, forecast for 46.1 million acres, the smallest total since recordkeeping began in 1919.
Soybeans are more likely to generate a profit this year than wheat or corn, underlining the long-running ascendancy of soybeans and the withering of wheat acreage. USDA analysts Mark Ash and Jennifer Bond say seven states in the Plains and Midwest – Kansas, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas, South Dakota, Nebraska and Michigan – are driving the switch to soybeans.
“Since 2011, soybean acreage in the seven states has expanded by one-third,” they write in the monthly Wheat Outlook. “After multiple years of wheat prices that have trended lower…farmers are likely responding to the higher prices and potential returns associated with soybeans.”
For this year, the seven states would expand soybean plantings by a combined 2.8 million acres, nearly half of the U.S. increase of 6 million acres, and they would reduce wheat area by 3.5 million acres, the bulk of the U.S. decline of 4.1 million acres. As the two largest wheat states, Kansas and North Dakota would play a leading role in the switch – soybean plantings would rise by 1.8 million acres in the two states while wheat acreage would fall by nearly 2 million acres.