USDA releases Prospective Plantings report

Apr 03, 2023

Farmers plan to plant more corn and soybeans than in 2022

By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com

U.S. farmers plan to plant more corn in 2023 than they did in 2022, a USDA report says.

The March 31 USDA Prospective Plantings Report has corn acres for 2023 estimated at 92 million acres. This represents an increase of 3.42 million acres from 2022.

From a state perspective, farmers in multiple states indicated they’ll plant more corn in 2023.

In Illinois, for example, corn farmers there are prepared to plant 11 million acres of corn. This is up from 10.8 million acres in 2022.

Or in North Dakota, corn growers indicated they’ll plant 3.75 million acres of corn in 2023. This would be an increase from 2.95 million acres last year.

Farmers in a few states are scaling back corn production slightly.

In Wyoming, for example, corn farmers plan to plant about 85,000 acres of corn USDA’s report says. That acreage would be down from 95,000 in 2022.

And in Montana, farmers are ready to plant 120,000 acres of corn in 2023 compared to 130,000 in 2022.

U.S. soybean acres in 2023 could also be up from 2022’s figures.

The USDA estimates farmers will plant 87.5 million acres of soybeans this year. Soybean farmers planted 87.45 million acres in 2022.

The largest increase in soybean acres could come in North Dakota.

Farmers indicated they’ll plant 6,555,000 acres of soybeans in 2023 compared to 5,700,000 acres in 2022.

The challenge now for U.S. farmers will be getting the crops planted in time.

Planting is likely to be held up, said Moe Agostino, chief commodity strategist with Farms.com Risk Management.

“It looks like a delayed planting season for all as it remains cool and wet,” he said. “The south is too wet, and the north still has too much snow.”

In terms of total principal crops, the USDA projects farmers will plant 318.1 million acres of crops. This would be up from 312,113,000 acres in 2022.

This number seems high, Agostino said.

“Maybe some prevent acres are back in play,” he said. “But we would argue that by June, corn acres will come in lower as will cotton and spring wheat acres.”

Video: Wheat Yields in USA and China Threatened by Heat Waves Breaking Enzymes

A new peer reviewed study looks at the generally unrecognized risk of heat waves surpassing the threshold for enzyme damage in wheat.

Most studies that look at crop failure in the main food growing regions (breadbaskets of the planet) look at temperatures and droughts in the historical records to assess present day risk. Since the climate system has changed, these historical based risk analysis studies underestimate the present-day risks.

What this new research study does is generate an ensemble of plausible scenarios for the present climate in terms of temperatures and precipitation, and looks at how many of these plausible scenarios exceed the enzyme-breaking temperature of 32.8 C for wheat, and exceed the high stress yield reducing temperature of 27.8 C for wheat. Also, the study considers the possibility of a compounded failure with heat waves in both regions simultaneously, this greatly reducing global wheat supply and causing severe shortages.

Results show that the likelihood (risk) of wheat crop failure with a one-in-hundred likelihood in 1981 has in today’s climate become increased by 16x in the USA winter wheat crop (to one-in-six) and by 6x in northeast China (to one-in-sixteen).

The risks determined in this new paper are much greater than that obtained in previous work that determines risk by analyzing historical climate patterns.

Clearly, since the climate system is rapidly changing, we cannot assume stationarity and calculate risk probabilities like we did traditionally before.

We are essentially on a new planet, with a new climate regime, and have to understand that everything is different now.