It may seem early, but it?s already time to be thinking about the next crop year. Farm Futures recently surveyed hundreds of farmers about their 2023 planting intentions, and corn looks like a winner. Jacqueline Holland, a grain marketing analyst for Farm Futures, said farmers will be planting a lot of corn next year.
?Our survey found that farmers expect to plant 94.3 million acres of corn next spring,? Holland said. ?That is a five percent increase from the current acreage estimates USDA has on their books right now. And if that holds, it would also be the largest corn acreage planted in the U.S. since 95.4 million acres were planted in 2013. For soybeans, we expect farmers to plant 87.3 million acres next year. That’s nearly a one percent decrease from this year’s acreage. And a big reason we’re going to see smaller soybean acreage is that cotton acreage in the Mississippi Delta is likely going to provide some stiff competition against those soybean acres.?
Holland said one surprising result from the survey is how much wheat acres are expected to rise in 2023.
?We’re also forecasting that wheat acreage will rise for another year, and that’s largely due because of increased winter wheat acreage in the eastern Corn Belt.? Holland said. ?We are expecting farmers to plant 36.6 million acres of winter wheat next year, and they’ll pare back spring wheat sowings, which we expect the 12.3 million acres, for a grand total of 48.8 million acres of wheat planted next year.?
Holland noted that the emphasis on corn is a little surprising because soybeans tried hard to overtake corn this past spring.
?We saw a lot of price responsiveness to the higher fertilizer prices last year,? Holland said. ?And when farmers were making their decisions about 2022 acreage last December, soybean prices were rallying nicely. But with all of the issues we’ve seen with corn flows in the Black Sea this year, as well as the struggles that the U.S. corn crop has faced, corn is really kind of facing some bullish prospects as we look to the 2023 planting season.?
For more information, visit https://www.farmprogress.com/farm-futures.
