Farmers in the United States have been slowly switching their cropland to just two field crops.
Corn is king in the United States. Soybeans have been on a swift move upward. And wheat acreage has been on the decline for about 40 years.
About half-way through those four decades two important things happened. Congress passed the 1996 farm bill – often called Freedom to Farm because it eliminated the last vestiges of supply controls for program crops, and Monsanto introduced Round-Up Ready soybeans, that was 1995. The latter made it a whole lot easier to raise beans and the former, says University of Illinois Agricultural Economist Gary Schnitkey, let farmers react to the market.
From 1996 to 2012 U.S. farmers increased soybean acreage by 20 percent, corn acreage was up a bit more, but not much, and wheat acreage plummeted 36 percent.
Back to that “Corn is King” thought for a moment. Most would likely say the reason wheat acreage has declined in the U.S. is because of the ethanol build-out. It is, but it’s also not says Schnitkey.
Wheat is/was the primary feed grain for much of the world. In the United States corn is fed to livestock and used to make ethanol. It is best managed when rotated with other crops, the most profitable of which is soybean. This past year U.S. farmers planted about 90 million acres of corn and 90 million acres of soybeans. It is a new trend says the economist.
Soybean acreage has substantially gained on corn acreage since 2012. While last year the acreage planted was equal, U.S. farmers actually harvested about 6 million more of the soybean acres than they did of corn. So, by harvested acreage soybeans are the number one crop in the United States and it’s not that first time that has happened. The soybean was king in 2015 as well.
From the National Association of Farm Broadcasting News Service.