The June 30 acreage report from USDA shows farmers planted slightly less acres than last year. However, American Farm Bureau Federation Senior Economist Veronica Nigh says USDA will resurvey some planted acreage, which could change the data.
“USDA’s June 30 acreage report indicates that for the ’22-23 crop year, farmers planted 237.8 million acres of corn, soybeans, wheat and cotton,” she said. “This is down about 700,000 acres from ’21. However, USDA has indicated that a special follow-up survey will be carried out due to the significant number of acres left to be planted per farmers’ stated intentions.”
Nigh says farmers didn’t seem to change planting decisions based on high input prices.
“Ahead of the report’s release, much of the conversation focused on whether farmers would switch to corn despite the higher planting costs in hopes that the revenue received in the fall would be higher than soybean returns,” she said. “The acreage report indicates that farmers made small shifts to plant a few more acres of corn and cotton and pulled acres from beans and wheat, but that was likely due to weather.”
This month, USDA NASS will collect updated data for crops planted in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota, where excessive rainfall delayed planting.
“If the newly collected data justifies any changes, NASS will publish updated acreage estimates in the crop production report on August 12. There were four million acres left to be planted of corn and 15.8 million acres of soybeans left to be planted,” she said. “For corn, if all four million acres are planted, that puts us slightly ahead of 2021 plantings. And if all of acres indeed got planted to soybeans, that will mean that farmers planted more than 104 million acres of soybeans, which would be an incredible 19 percent increase over 2021.”
The NAFB and American Farm Bureau contributed to this report.
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Sabrina Halvorson
National Correspondent / AgNet Media, Inc.
Sabrina Halvorson is an award-winning journalist, broadcaster, and public speaker who specializes in agriculture. She primarily reports on legislative issues and hosts The AgNet Weekly podcast. Sabrina is a native of California’s agriculture-rich Central Valley.