U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) officials plan to release the Prospective Plantings report later this month, despite disruptions caused by coronavirus.
Today we compare USDA’s estimates to results from a nationwide producer survey.
Allendale, Inc., an Illinois based analytical research/brokerage firm, released its annual acreage survey results.
Survey results suggest farmers intend to dedicate more acreage to corn. Greg McBride, commodities broker with Allendale, Inc., says this should not come as a surprise.
?USDA was at 94 million (acres). That?s not survey-based, just their information ahead of this report. Our number came in (at) 94.63 million. That?s about five million (acres) higher than last year,” McBride said.
Soybean planting intentions came in at 83.740 million acres, 1.26 million acres short of USDA’s prediction. McBride says acreage estimates reaffirm current market prices.
?It kind of reinforces the idea that beans aren?t priced for planting this year, at least (not) right now. Everybody?s going to flock to corn at this point. The big surprise that we have is two big corn producing states – Kansas and Nebraska – are going to be down on corn acres,” McBride said.
Soybean prices should rebound, once China starts to fulfill the purchase agreements made in the Phase One trade deal. That won’t, however, change farmers’ planting decisions.
?With the Phase One buying that China is going to do, we should see prices for soybeans go higher. Having to make that (planting) decision, farmers are still going to go to corn because the price of beans is so low,” McBride said. We have to deal with quarantees and social distancing, but I think the biggest thing to watch out for is going to be weather. For right now, it looks a little bit wet. We are a little bit surprised that we?re only going to be adding about 12 million acres back to what we planted last year. That puts us about 3 million shy of where we were in 2018.”
