USDA Issues Latest Prospective Plantings Report

Apr 01, 2020

The latest prospective plantings report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture is out.

According to the document, corn planted acreage in the United States is up 8 per cent (7.29 million acres) from 2019 to an estimated 97 million acres.

Soybean acreage climbed 10 per cent to an estimated 83.5 million acres.

Meantime, all wheat planted area for 2020 is down 1 per cent from 2019, estimated at 44.7 million acres. This represents the lowest all wheat planted area since records began in 1919, according to the report.

Down slightly from the previous estimate, the 2020 winter wheat planted area at 30.8 million acres is down 1 per cent from 2019. In total, about 21.7 million acres are Hard Red Winter, 5.69 million acres are Soft Red Winter, and 3.42 million acres are White Winter.

Area expected to be planted to other spring wheat for 2020 is estimated at 12.6 million acres, down 1 percent from 2019. Of this, about 11.9 million acres are Hard Red Spring wheat.

Durum planted area for 2020 is expected to be down 4 per cent from the previous year for a total of 1.29 million acres.

With many acres left unharvested after last year, we asked Dan Basse, President of AgResource Company in Chicago, if that would affect seeding intentions moving forward.

"Well North Dakota (farmers) indicated that they would plant a lot less acres of corn, down almost nine per cent, and so we see in the data already that those unharvested acres are unlikely to be planted and maybe going to prevent planting another crop, but North Dakota farmers indicated they wouldn't plant those acres to corn again. But everyone else in the mid-west indicated that they liked the corn opportunity and planted more acres," said Basse.

Meantime, the USDA also issued its latest grain ending stocks report Tuesday.

According to the latest data, corn stocks are down 8 per cent from March 2019 to 7.95 billion bushels. Of that, 4.45 billion bushels were stored on farms, down 13 percent from the prior year.

Soybeans are down 17 per cent to 2.25 billion bushels with 1.01 billion bushels stored on farms, that's down 20 percent from 2019.

Additionally, all wheat stocks are down 11 per cent totalling 1.41 billion bushels with an estimated 339 million bushels stored on farms, down 8 percent from last March.

The agency says March 1st on-farm stocks include 2019 production from acres that were still standing and expected to be harvested when the survey was conducted in early March.

 

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